Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era
It is a legit criticism, but it is important to remember, at least in regards to this formula, that conference strength plays a role in how many points a team gets for those conference titles. For example, the 2005 WCHA Titles were worth quite a bit more than the 2005 CCHA Titles.. Whether you agree with that philosophy or not is completely up to you. I have never claimed that it is a perfect formula, but it was the best that I could come up with, and I think it does a good job of ranking a team's dominance.
You outlined the components of your formula early in this thread (# 19). [punctuation of quote edited, words unchanged]
basically the methodology was to build a formula that accurately reflected how strong a team was, both nationally and in conference:
> Basically, conference accolades (Regular Season Championship, Tournament Championship, All-Conference members, etc.) built conference points, and then conference points were compared with how strong the conference was.
> Then, national accolades (NCAA Tournament performance, Out of Conference Play, All-American members, etc.) built national points, which stood on their own.
> Those two sections were added together to come up with total points.
Not sure if you want to speak in general terms about some of the relative importance of these criteria or not, it might calm the roiling waters slightly. [SUP]Note One.[/SUP]
For those who like to cry 'bias', it might help them drill down: where on this list of criteria
is the 'bias', exactly?
I myself would not use the word 'bias' as that is pejorative; a word like 'judgment' or 'necessary subjectivity in assigning weights' is perfectly understandable [SUP]Note Two.[/SUP]
I really appreciate what you've undertaken and the patient and thorough manner with which you've explained it.
Dissenters please refer to specific parts of the formula rather than dismiss the whole thing out of hand merely because you don't like which way it was going [SUP]Note Three[/SUP]
[SUP]Note One[/SUP] Are Regular Season and Tournament Champion the same value? do you weight All-Conference members by number of teams in the conference? blah blah blah for the cogniscenti, ho hum yawn for everyone else
[SUP]Note Two[/SUP]would you need to develop a sub-formula to assess relative strength of conference to feed into the formula for the conference strenght multiplier that calculates conference points??
or the "out of conference play" component, if you beat Michigan twice in out of conference play in a year, do you change the value of those points depending upon how strong Michigan was that particular year, or do you have an 'average' value for beating Michigan in out of conference play no matter in what year you beat them? etc.
[SUP]Note Three[/SUP]Regarding that Harvard team, you did say they came in # 30 on your list and were not very many points away at all, a small bounce here or there might have moved them up ten spots (maybe later I will edit this and find that post in this thread too, we'll see).
