Robots Watching Football: On Wilson's List

Monday, September 27, 2010

On Wilson's List

At the end of last week, I submitted this to David Wilson's list of ranking algorithms. (Click on the "Power Ratings and Ranking Systems" link.)

Woohoo! :)

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Ranker Properties

Some important facts about the ranking algorithm used here:

* The dates of the games are independent. Losing early in the season is just as detrimental as losing later in the season.

* Prior ranking does not affect the value of a matchup. If a team is ranked number 1 early on, but then lose their first week, the team that beats them does not get any bonus for beating them while they were ranked high. The value of that win will change every week.

* It does not pay attention to whether a game was Home or Away. (This is the most reasonable change to the algorithm that could be made, I believe.)

* It does not care what league or division each team is in. This means that often non-FBS teams appear on the Top 25 Overall list. One problem with this is that I can't easily "harvest" the NAIA results for this blog. If you know of a way to do that, please let me know so I can add those results! Currently there are some NAIA teams that appear because they play NCAA teams, but their schedules are incomplete.

Possible Future Features

Some functionality I would like to add:

* A record of the number of upsets and points-in-upsets each week.

* Comparison of this list to other lists (BCS, AP, Blogpoll, USA) by showing relative differences for teams, as well as comparing the number of upsets per week.

* An interactive page for tinkering with the parameters so visitors can try out alternative rankings. (This one will likely be the hardest!)

Sadly, I'm always quite busy in the fall, which is when I'm also most motivated to make changes!