2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

[TonyTheTiger20]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

I'll try to explain some of the basics of KRACH. I'm going to do so in a way that I think gets the conceptual point across though it may end up somewhat misleading as to the actual mathematical calculations used, so don't quote it if you want to talk about the math.

The underlying principle is that every team has a rating and that you can calculate the implied probability of each team winning. (I'm going to ignore ties because essentially that's what KRACH does; a tie is considered half of a win and half of a loss and just added to those totals.)

You start out giving each team the same rating; I think USCHO's calculation uses 100 as the opening rating but it doesn't really matter what value you use; what is important is the ratios of the ratings and you'll end up with the same ratios no matter what starting value you use.

You then look at every game that has been played to date; this process of evaluating games rather than season records is one of the things that makes KRACH very different from RPI. You calculate the probability of either team winning each game; obviously in the first calculation every team will have a 0.5 probability of winning each game since the ratings are the same. Conceptually what happens is that each win increases a team's rating by an amount proportional to the difference between 1 and their probability to win the game. Conversely, every loss decreases a team's rating by the difference between their probability of winning and 0. (This is where I'm bending the math out of recognition; this isn't the actual process but the effect is pretty much the same.)

Once you've run every game played through this process you have a new set of ratings for every team. These will not be correct, or at least the likelihood that they are correct is vanishingly small. So you go through the whole process again to get a new set of ratings. And so on. You stop when the new set of ratings is identical to the previous set to whatever degree of precision you desire; USCHO uses four decimal places.

So a win never hurts your rating and a loss never helps because you don't have a "strength of schedule" component in the calculations; the rankings of SoS are derived after the ratings are determined, not before. If you beat a bad team, it just means that the difference between 1 and your probability of winning is very small, so there is little advantage in the ratings. Conversely, the system expected you to lose to Minnesota so it doesn't lower your rating very much when you do.

Wow that's really interesting. Why doesn't USCHO give some kind of explanation like this? I like reading about how rankings work as much as I like looking at the rankings themselves --

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

I feel like I ask this on a monthly basis, so sorry in advance... but the CHA does not get an autobid until NEXT year, right?

 

[ARM]

I feel like I ask this on a monthly basis, so sorry in advance... but the CHA does not get an autobid until NEXT year, right?

Definitely not this year. They expect to get one next year, but I'm not sure that has been officially announced yet.

 

[Cali]

I feel like I ask this on a monthly basis, so sorry in advance... but the CHA does not get an autobid until NEXT year, right?

Correct.

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Thanks!

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

I posed this question here and wonder what everyone else's take is on this:

1) Minnesota
2) xxx
3) xxx
4) xxx
5) North Dakota
6) xxx
7) xxx
8) Princeton/UNH

Would the committee give Minnesota the 8 seed team, or penalize both NoDak and Minnesota to avoid a flight?

 

[ARM]

I posed this question here and wonder what everyone else's take is on this:

Where is Wisconsin in that model? While it may require one additional flight to pair the Badgers with either UND or UM, my guess is that is what the committee would do rather than go completely against bracket integrity.

 

[pokechecker]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Where is Wisconsin in that model?

It's looking to me, unless the Badgers can pass the Gophers in the WCHA, this year it will be the Badgers who play UND 6 times.
You can't expect one of the eastern schools to take a bus to the Midwest, they've never traveled by land beyond Pennsylvania, they'd get lost.

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Where is Wisconsin in that model? While it may require one additional flight to pair the Badgers with either UND or UM, my guess is that is what the committee would do rather than go completely against bracket integrity.

If they would be willing to have a flight from UND to Wisco, wouldn't they also be willing to send UND to, say, Cornell, if it keeps bracket integrity? By the "a flight is a flight" philosophy.

 

[ARM]

If they would be willing to have a flight from UND to Wisco, wouldn't they also be willing to send UND to, say, Cornell, if it keeps bracket integrity? By the "a flight is a flight" philosophy.

They'd send UND to Cornell if UM and UW were playing each other. I don't think they will have three flights to/from WCHA cities if they can easily avoid it. Plus, it's unlikely UND flies to Madison during the season, so I doubt that they would fly for an NCAA game either.

 

[brookyone]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Anyone else not seeing winning%, records vs. TUC and winning% vs. TUC with the latest updates?

 

[Eeyore]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Things would be a mess if the NCAA had to seed right now:

1) Minnesota
2) Wisconsin
3) Cornell
4) Harvard
5) Robert Morris
6) North Dakota
7) Clarkson
8) Boston College

Seeding this by the numbers would involve flying all four teams. The problem is that to avoid flights you'd have to really screw up the seedings. The only team within the bus radius of #4 Harvard is #8 Boston College. The only team within bus radius of #3 Cornell is #7 Clarkson. Then you'd send #6 North Dakota to #1 Minnesota and #5 Robert Morris to #2 Wisconsin. That would leave one flight. You could do it with only two flights if you send RMU to Harvard and Boston College to Madison. But there isn't any way for the #1 seed to play a team ranked lower than #6 without three flights.

I think it would be awesome if North Dakota managed to slide up to the #4 slot and three WCHA teams host. I was really hopeful when Harvard was down two goals in the third period yesterday with Cornell coming up. Alas, it didn't work out.

 

[NMH]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

I'm almost positive Wisconsin and NoDak fly between each other.

Hell, Wisco flew to Bemidji this weekend.

 

[Watson Rink]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Specific observation: know I'm flogging a dead horse, but what a crying shame that just when we have a week when (1) bracket integrity perfectly aligns with (2) eschewing intra-conference rematches, we realize that if these were to be the final results, the NCAA would throw in a penny-pinching monkey wrench.

General observation: I have a sinking feeling that if the more mathematically proficient posters on this thread derived some equations based on the NCAA's flight-phobia, they might be able to prove that every single permutation within the set of all brackets that perfectly align (1) bracket integrity with (2) eschewing intra-conference rematches would be struck down by the NCAA on the grounds of too many flights.

 

[Eeyore]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

General observation: I have a sinking feeling that if the more mathematically proficient posters on this thread derived some equations based on the NCAA's flight-phobia, they might be able to prove that every single permutation within the set of all brackets that perfectly align (1) bracket integrity with (2) eschewing intra-conference rematches would be struck down by the NCAA on the grounds of too many flights.

It doesn't take any math skills at all. Avoiding intraconference matchups inherently works against too many flights. New England is pretty much the only place that you will find teams from different conferences that are within 300 miles of each other. So any teams from the WCHA (except Ohio State vs. Robert Morris), the CHA or the west/north of Albany contingent from the ECAC must either fly or play someone in their own conference.

Now that I look at it, the NCAA has to fudge by about 15 miles to consider Grand Forks within their stated radius of Minneapolis to avoid a flight.

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

It doesn't take any math skills at all. Avoiding intraconference matchups inherently works against too many flights. New England is pretty much the only place that you will find teams from different conferences that are within 300 miles of each other. So any teams from the WCHA (except Ohio State vs. Robert Morris), the CHA or the west/north of Albany contingent from the ECAC must either fly or play someone in their own conference.

Now that I look at it, the NCAA has to fudge by about 15 miles to consider Grand Forks within their stated radius of Minneapolis to avoid a flight.

Is Wisconsin --> North Dakota a flight?

EDIT: I looked at a map, because that's what a smart person would have done. Obviously it is. Maybe in my head I meant Minnesota and Wisconsin.

 

[D2D]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Is Wisconsin --> North Dakota a flight?

EDIT: I looked at a map, because that's what a smart person would have done. Obviously it is. Maybe in my head I meant Minnesota and Wisconsin.

It's "Flyover Country", Grant, so everything's a flight!

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

So this is the Pairwise after Sunday's games:

1) Minnesota
2) Wisconsin
3) Cornell
4) Harvard
5) Robert Morris
6) North Dakota
7) Clarkson
8) Boston College

which is a really interesting outcome to take a look at.

What direction do we think the committee would go in here?

Straight bracket integrity:

[BRACKET #1]
#8 Boston College @ #1 Minnesota
#7 Clarkson @ #2 Wisconsin
#6 North Dakota @ #3 Cornell
#5 Robert Morris @ #4 Harvard

Which is 4 flights.

I suppose question that needs to be answered here is whether or not Robert Morris is a flight to Cornell. It's a flight everywhere else.

Let's say it is. If the committee wants to minimize flights, you could have:

[BRACKET #2]
#6 North Dakota @ #1 Minnesota (BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!)
#8 Boston College @ #2 Wisconsin
#5 Robert Morris @ #3 Cornell
#7 Clarkson @ #4 Harvard

Which results in the one flight to Wisconsin and pretty much gives a pair of high-flying middle fingers to bracket integrity.

How much is the committee willing to move things around to save flights? What is the highest seed that North Dakota has been when they've played Minnesota in the first round?

Somewhat less dramatic for bracket integrity but with one additional flight would be something like:

[BRACKET #3]
#6 North Dakota @ #1 Minnesota
#8 Boston College @ #2 Wisconsin
#7 Clarkson @ #3 Cornell
#5 Robert Morris @ #4 Harvard

I'm struggling to find a reasonable bracket with less than 4 flights that DOESN'T have North Dakota going to Minnesota. Because if you're going to send #5 Robert Morris to #3 Cornell, or #7 Clarkson to #4 Harvard, or #8 Boston College to #3 Cornell or #4 Harvard... then you've already massacred bracket integrity to the point where you might as well just say eff it and send North Dakota to Minneapolis.

Perhaps:

[BRACKET #4]
#8 Boston College @ #1 Minnesota
#7 Clarkson @ #2 Wisconsin
#5 Robert Morris @ #3 Cornell
#6 North Dakota @ #4 Harvard

But then you have three flights, so what the hell's the point? If we're thinking of swapping Clarkson and North Dakota, well then why not just then swap North Dakota with BC? Then you're left with Bracket #2 again which is right where we started.

This is probably up there on the list of possible nightmare scenarios for the committee. Thoughts on how they would set up the bracket?

Gun to my head, I guess my prediction would be bracket #2. But also that the committee would feel really gross about it.

 

[ARM]

What is the highest seed that North Dakota has been when they've played Minnesota in the first round?

It hasn't been that bad to date. IIRC, UND was sixth two years ago, but Minnesota was seeded second and Wisconsin was first.

The problem wasn't what has happened, so much as the realization that it is just going to keep happening over and over as long as one of these teams is in the top four and the other is in the bottom four, unless UMD gets involved again.

If it's two teams from different conferences, meeting every year can add spice like Cornell and BU, or UMD and UNH. But if the teams are from the same league, it just gets tired very quickly.

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

it is just going to keep happening over and over as long as one of these teams is in the top four and the other is in the bottom four

Would they really send a #5 North Dakota to a #1 Minnesota? Serious question because I'm not really sure we know.