mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
|
01-24-18 10:49 AM - Post#244509
In response to rbg
I think your "rules of thumb" are all pretty solid for this year (could change across years depending on the strength of the league, especially in the middle).
The way the process works - and why YUSAG and I come up with essentially the same numbers is this:
Start with a rating system. I use KenPom. You could use Sagarin, Bart Torvik, Massey, etc. You could use a blend of each. Derive a rating for each team. Then, use the historically "best-fit" formulas to use those ratings (plus home court advantage) to derive odds to win each game (using KenPom, Massey, Bart Torvik, etc. which already have these odds calculated can help you skip a step).
Now you have a list of all 56 games with win pct odds. Put a column next to each with a random number between 0 and 1 in it. That will determine who wins each game in the sim (set all games that have been played to a flat 0 or 1 depending on who already won the game).
From there, you write a for loop to run each individual season simulation 100, 1000, 10000, 100000 times depending on what strikes your fancy. (Technically, the reasoning behind how many sims you run should be grounded in what you're trying to figure out... if you're focused on longer odds events, you might want to run more sims to get more clarity, but if you're focused on the meat of the curve, you won't get very different answers even after 100 sims).
There's a LOT of code around the fakakta tie breakers the Ivies have put in place that comes into play when taking the Ivy wins from each sim and turning that into the rank order of finish. Then, there's more to simulate the Ivy tourney that would result. But let's leave that aside.
From there, it's just some simple math to figure out the odds of finishing in any spot, making the tourney, winning it, etc.
The key point about the odds is that they represent the likelihood of qualification given that the team continues to be exactly what it is today. That is to say that a team doesn't necessarily HAVE to improve to make the tourney if it has, say, 33% odds. From here, game results will move the odds more dramatically than the associated changes in team rating.
|
