Further Proof that Sagarin is Idiotic

JoeJoeBrown · 11-28-2010, 01:50 PM

Alabama with 3 losses is ahead of every Big11 team? Absolute idiocy. An ELO ranking system barely works after 20 games. It certainly doesn't work after a mere 12. There is way too much bias and noise in these computer rankings.

Rk Team (Last Wk)
1 Auburn (1)
2 Oregon (2)
3 Arkansas (6)
4 Stanford (4)
5 LSU (3)
6 TCU (5)
7 Oklahoma (16)
8 Missouri (13)
9 Alabama (8)
10 Nebraska (12)
11 Wisconsin (9)
12 Texas A&M (14)
13 Oklahoma State (10)
14 Michigan State (15)
15 Ohio State (11)
16 Boise State (7)
17 South Carolina (18)
18 Nevada (22)
19 Mississippi State (17)
20 Utah (20)
21 Arizona (19)
22 Virginia Tech (21)
23 Florida State (NR)
24 Baylor (24)
25 Texas Tech (25)
Dropped out: Iowa

Others: Iowa (33), Michigan (34), Penn State (39), Northwestern (59)

redbills · 11-28-2010, 02:02 PM

How did tOSU drop 4 spots by beating UM 37-7?

JoeJoeBrown · 11-28-2010, 02:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by redbills

How did tOSU drop 4 spots by beating UM 37-7?

It's because his system is idiocy.

The explanation is that a bunch of OSU's opponent's suck and lost yesterday.

soybean · 11-28-2010, 02:18 PM

Stanford would whoop on Arkansas.

ElectricEye · 11-28-2010, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by soybean

Stanford would whoop on Arkansas.

Wisconsin would too.

descendency · 11-29-2010, 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeJoeBrown

It's because his system is idiocy.

The explanation is that a bunch of OSU's opponent's suck and lost yesterday.

That actually makes good sense...

Beating crappy teams is exactly why tOSU's president doesn't want TCU/Boise in the national title game. So if tOSU's opponents are crappy, they should drop, right?

HindSight · 11-30-2010, 08:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by descendency

That actually makes good sense...

Beating crappy teams is exactly why tOSU's president doesn't want TCU/Boise in the national title game. So if tOSU's opponents are crappy, they should drop, right?

they're still better than most of what Boise plays on Tuesday nights at the local Y

JoeJoeBrown · 11-28-2010, 02:20 PM

Oh, and a Pac10, Big12, or SEC team takes up 28 of the 30 top spots for SOS. Idiocy. (ND at 22 and UM at 30).

The OOC schedule differences between the BCS conferences is not that great.

It's a complete and utter crock of dog poop, and it shows how broken his system is.

SchizophrenicBatman · 11-28-2010, 04:34 PM

I would take Bama to beat every Big 10 team

They were a hair from beating the #2 team in the country after all, even in spite of choking for the entire second half

JoeJoeBrown · 11-28-2010, 05:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SchizophrenicBatman

I would take Bama to beat every Big 10 team

They were a hair from beating the #2 team in the country after all, even in spite of choking for the entire second half

Anyone that is a Tony Pike fan needs their head examined. Your little brother complex is showing.

SchizophrenicBatman · 11-29-2010, 09:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeJoeBrown

Anyone that is a Tony Pike fan needs their head examined. Your little brother complex is showing.

LOL

perhaps i should change my avatar to a pic of brian st pierre

JoeJoeBrown · 11-29-2010, 10:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SchizophrenicBatman

LOL

perhaps i should change my avatar to a pic of brian st pierre

:) That is funny!

wonderbredd24 · 11-28-2010, 06:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SchizophrenicBatman

I would take Bama to beat every Big 10 team

They were a hair from beating the #2 team in the country after all, even in spite of choking for the entire second half

Alabama should be undefeated and this is easily the worst coaching job of Saban's tenure.

I'd take Boise State to beat a number of teams ahead of them, but they lost and are gonna go down as such and Alabama should as well, especially considering how overrated the SEC is this year.

Florida was taken apart by Florida State and they were a game away from representing the SEC East in their title game.

Bob Sanders Dreadlock · 11-28-2010, 09:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wonderbredd24

Alabama should be undefeated and this is easily the worst coaching job of Saban's tenure.

I'd take Boise State to beat a number of teams ahead of them, but they lost and are gonna go down as such and Alabama should as well, especially considering how overrated the SEC is this year.

Florida was taken apart by Florida State and they were a game away from representing the SEC East in their title game.

What has Alabama done this season to give any proof that they should be undefeated?

wonderbredd24 · 11-28-2010, 09:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob Sanders Dreadlock

What has Alabama done this season to give any proof that they should be undefeated?

The team that went undefeated last year came back almost completely intact and was the #1 team in the country without question coming into this year and the games they've lost... they gave them away.

descendency · 11-30-2010, 09:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob Sanders Dreadlock

What has Alabama done this season to give any proof that they should be undefeated?

Did you miss the Auburn game? They basically stomped their throat in for 1.5 quarters. Then started playing like they were supposed to win.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HindSight

they're still better than most of what Boise plays on Tuesday nights at the local Y

True, but you are completely missing the point. The same "if your opponents are not very good, then you don't deserve a high ranking in the BCS" logic applies to both major and minor conferences.

edit: I was just trolling tOSU's president really.

I really haven't read about an ELO ranking system ever. (and quite frankly, I could probably wikipedia it but one is just as flawed as another)

Michigan · 11-28-2010, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wonderbredd24

I'd take Boise State to beat a number of teams ahead of them

Eh... I guess "1" is a number since MSU's 8th...

wonderbredd24 · 11-28-2010, 10:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michigan

Eh... I guess "1" is a number since MSU's 8th...

So you don't think they can beat TCU, since they did that last year?

I think Boise State would beat Ohio State, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas A&M, and Nebraska and anyone I have a good shot against the other teams mentioned.

Wisconsin and Alabama would give them the most trouble purely on their size

keylime_5 · 11-28-2010, 04:45 PM

I would take Wisconsin to beat every SEC team, two can play.

Texas Am and Oklahoma State ahead of MSU and OSU is ********.

bustabinary · 11-28-2010, 06:17 PM

Some of the systems weigh SOS more heavily than others.

There's a reason that the highest/lowest are dropped, the rest are averaged, and it's only one component in the BCS.

I'm no expert on the math behind ELO (havn't really studied it), but I think you can only be ranked high if you beat other highly ranked teams or your losses are only against quality teams. You don't benefit at all from beating someone ranked lower than you. Because of that, the non-conference schedules are crucial in determining initial scores for teams in your conference.

yourfavestoner · 11-30-2010, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bustabinary

Some of the systems weigh SOS more heavily than others.

There's a reason that the highest/lowest are dropped, the rest are averaged, and it's only one component in the BCS.

I'm no expert on the math behind ELO (havn't really studied it), but I think you can only be ranked high if you beat other highly ranked teams or your losses are only against quality teams. You don't benefit at all from beating someone ranked lower than you. Because of that, the non-conference schedules are crucial in determining initial scores for teams in your conference.

Exaaaactly. The computers are infinitely less biased than, um, human voters and THE COACHES OF THE TEAMS.

I say get rid of the AP and coaches polls completely, since none of them watch games anyways. It ain't the computers that are broken. It's the human element of the rankings.

JoeJoeBrown · 11-30-2010, 10:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yourfavestoner

Exaaaactly. The computers are infinitely less biased than, um, human voters and THE COACHES OF THE TEAMS.

I say get rid of the AP and coaches polls completely, since none of them watch games anyways. It ain't the computers that are broken. It's the human element of the rankings.

The computer systems have a ton of error AND human bias. And those computer algorithms are pretty much written by one or two people per "system".

I'll take the biases of a collective group of people across the country, across many different fan bases, with disparate wants and needs (nefarious or with good intent), and with widely different approaches to ranking teams. All of their biases tends to cancel each other out, a hell of a lot more than just a handful of geeks with their own biases.

I have no idea people can't see this. The computer systems simply do not have enough non-human biased info to form a reasonably accurate network of comparative rankings.

For example, ELO (which most of these algorithms borrow from), requires 20, yes 20, games for the rankings to even be accepted in the chess world. And every player in the chess world starts off with the same points (1200 pts).

Do these computer rankings start everyone off with the same points? I don't think so. Otherwise there would be no rankings at the beginning of the season. They use historical data and human data.

Get it through your heads that the computers are controlled by only a few people, and each has their own system with it's own flaws. Do not be fooled into thinking that this is all logic, it's not. It's actually a much worse way of doing things.

bustabinary · 11-30-2010, 06:49 PM

Everything is going to have a bias, no matter what. Period. This includes any algorithm or any human opinion even if hundreds of games were played.

The real question is whether there is a motive behind these biases (whether or not they're trying to use this bias to push an agenda), and I think the only culprit here is the BCS. The biggest problem I think is that only one of the methods is open (Colley), so there is no way the algorithms can be publicly analyzed.

There are a lot of computer methods that don't require human polls or previous results, some in the BCS do for some god unknown reason. Sagarin's are phased out as the season goes on until they aren't used anymore at all (the results only actually matter at the end of the season anyways). Billingsley's ratings by design were meant to emulate human polls (total crap).

I think you're making the computer ratings out to be a lot more evil than they actually are. The vast majority of them give pretty good ratings based on how well they played against their schedule, and that's all that any computer do. Isn't that what ranks are supposed to be? Humans just provide speculation, emotion, and homerism.

Also, I don't think most of the ratings borrow ELO, see: Colley matrix. Also, the BCS can use more than 'just a handful of geeks', http://masseyratings.com/cf/compare.htm

JoeJoeBrown · 11-30-2010, 09:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bustabinary

Everything is going to have a bias, no matter what. Period. This includes any algorithm or any human opinion even if hundreds of games were played.

The real question is whether there is a motive behind these biases (whether or not they're trying to use this bias to push an agenda), and I think the only culprit here is the BCS. The biggest problem I think is that only one of the methods is open (Colley), so there is no way the algorithms can be publicly analyzed.

There are a lot of computer methods that don't require human polls or previous results, some in the BCS do for some god unknown reason. Sagarin's are phased out as the season goes on until they aren't used anymore at all (the results only actually matter at the end of the season anyways). Billingsley's ratings by design were meant to emulate human polls (total crap).

I think you're making the computer ratings out to be a lot more evil than they actually are. The vast majority of them give pretty good ratings based on how well they played against their schedule, and that's all that any computer do. Isn't that what ranks are supposed to be? Humans just provide speculation, emotion, and homerism.

Also, I don't think most of the ratings borrow ELO, see: Colley matrix. Also, the BCS can use more than 'just a handful of geeks', http://masseyratings.com/cf/compare.htm

This is great discussion. A fellow nerd!

Sagarin says his rankings have the data disappear after several games (think it's 7, but I'm not sure). Regardless, I suspect (but can't prove) that it's hogwash. There isn't enough info for the preseason rankings to dissipate. If they wiped out, then they shouldn't be used in the first place and every team should be equal on day one.

I see nothing inherently wrong in computer algorithms. I just want diversity in opinion. I want hundreds of different algorithms. I also want some human voting influence as well in the hundreds. Right now they only use 6 algorithms. The BCS is biased way too much in the favor of 6 human beings or small math teams.

I don't think any of them have ulterior motives, but even if you look at complex network theory, I just don't believe that there is enough data to come up with a decent ranking system via formula. The season is too short and the teams are too many.

Colley's rankings are interesting because they are bias free. They are as "honest" as you could get.

Here is a nice breakdown of the rankings by a BSU blog post.

So in summary, diversity in opinion trumps all. Give me a few hundred more computer algorithms to balance this stuff out.

wogitalia · 11-29-2010, 08:33 PM

Quote:

I think Boise State would beat Ohio State, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas A&M, and Nebraska and anyone I have a good shot against the other teams mentioned.

Would is the wrong word. Could or even should are better choices. Would implies it is a foregone conclusion. I personally think they "should" beat most of those teams and could beat the others.

Illinois should have a higher SOS than the rest of the Big 10, they are a major reason why the other Big 10 teams struggle on this stat. Along with Minnesota and Indiana in particular. Big 10s problem this year is that it is very top heavy and very bottom heavy. The good teams are all pretty damn good but the rest of the league has been pretty awful. Penn State and Iowa have been solid but the rest of the teams are certainly on the weaker side of average or worse. Wisconsin, OSU and Michigan State are all strong teams though who will be counted on to get the league it's bowl wins if the division is to beat any "real" teams.