Ross Bracco writes: > Why does the Index count a team's winning percentage for less than that of > it's opponents' opponents? It would seem to make you a better team based > more on the company you keep than on your performance against them. You note correctly that the formula is heavily biased toward strength of schedule. I think this has to do with our oft-discussed problem of lack of inter-league play. The formula attempts to measure a team's performance relative to its schedule, based only on wins, losses, and ties. Teams that schedule strong non-conference opponents will do better than those who don't. Note that strength of schedule depends on whom you play, but not how you do against a particular team. A win against a first place team counts for no more than a win against a last place team. > also, have you tried a multiplicative model, wherein the final factor is the > product of different powers of the three base terms? This would make > exaggerations like extraordinary winning percentage or terrible opponents' > winning percentage much larger factors in a team's rank. This is an interesting idea; I might look into it in the off-season, or you might want to try it yourself. I did not devise the formula; I am using what I have found in the literature. The program I use wasn't terribly difficult to write. -- Erik