ELynah Forum

Quote from: BearLover on September 30, 2025, 03:47:26 PM

Quote from: adamw on September 30, 2025, 01:41:50 AM

Quote from: BearLover on September 29, 2025, 04:46:58 PMAny idea how "Quality win base" and "quality win multiplier" work exactly? I know the general concept behind quality wins, but not sure what these numbers mean.

Overtime 3x3 down to 60/40 sounds fairer than the 65/35 we the had last few years, I like it.

The fact the home/away weighting goes away in the postseason benefits teams like us that get home playoff games. But I guess not really since most teams competing for a at-large will have home playoff games. (Actually, doesn't this now hurt good teams that have playoff games at neutral sites? So the new rule most helps teams like Minn State that get home ice and play their entire tournament in conference rinks.) Still not sure where the 1.2/.8 weighting in the regular season comes from; is there any scientific basis for those numbers?

Removing the .500 threshold is weird. Has that ever even been relevant?

The QWB base and multiplier is not a whole lot different than it was for RPI. Instead of starting with wins against teams in the top 20 of RPI, it will start with wins against teams with a 51.0 NPI - and the multiplier just means the sliding scale.

So let's say Cornell defeats the #1, #10, and #40 team in the NPI. How much of a bonus do we get for each win?

there's no way to know from that info...

($oppNPI - $base) * $magnitude

Quote from: BearLover on September 29, 2025, 04:46:58 PMAny idea how "Quality win base" and "quality win multiplier" work exactly? I know the general concept behind quality wins, but not sure what these numbers mean.

Overtime 3x3 down to 60/40 sounds fairer than the 65/35 we the had last few years, I like it.

The fact the home/away weighting goes away in the postseason benefits teams like us that get home playoff games. But I guess not really since most teams competing for a at-large will have home playoff games. (Actually, doesn't this now hurt good teams that have playoff games at neutral sites? So the new rule most helps teams like Minn State that get home ice and play their entire tournament in conference rinks.) Still not sure where the 1.2/.8 weighting in the regular season comes from; is there any scientific basis for those numbers?

Removing the .500 threshold is weird. Has that ever even been relevant?

The QWB base and multiplier is not a whole lot different than it was for RPI. Instead of starting with wins against teams in the top 20 of RPI, it will start with wins against teams with a 51.0 NPI - and the multiplier just means the sliding scale.

1.2/0.8 is not all that scientific.  Making it 1/1 in the postseason is mainly meant to help a team that loses like a 2 out 3 series at home from being over-penalized for having earned home ice for that series.

Quote from: George64

Quote from: Trotsky

Quote from: BearLoverBecoming an adult is realizing that none of this actually matters.

Also that it is all manipulated.  A few years ago an article brutally exposed Vandy for marketing to unqualified students with the express purpose of rejecting them, inflating their acceptance rate, and moving up the USnooze rankings.

On matters of finance, universities are the moral equal of car companies, and with the Apotheosis of the MBAs everything in academia since 1980 has been reduced to finance.

Apropos, an interesting opinion piece in today's NY Times.

Written by Ithaca College alum Jeff Selingo - one-time editor of The Ithacan.  Proving, of course, that being an Ivy doesn't matter

Quote from: BearLoverI'm not even convinced yet he's a great coach—I mean, he probably is a good coach, but what basis do we have? A slightly over .500 record in 12 years at Clarkson? Let's have a good season or two before we start talking about national championships.  

The college hockey landscape has completely changed the last few years. ASU just signed a kid straight out of the AHL. Casey is going to need to revamp how Cornell recruits if we want to compete nationally.

This is a stretch (go figure), and no one should be worried about what ASU or Bemidji (and now Quinnipiac) has done. It's hyperbole to say "straight out of the AHL" ... The kid was in the ECHL - which is where players go after major junior when they've aged out and have nowhere else to go. The ECHL is filled with players barely as good - if at all - than what is currently in college.  The fact that he was "called up" to the AHL and played a few games, is commonplace for Double-A players and means pretty much nothing.  He played half a season in the ECHL after aging out of MJ. That's about it.

As for Casey, I've said it a thousand times - but let's do it again. He's a top shelf recruiter, and certainly a good to great coach. Equaling Schafer is a high bar. Casey is right there. He basically coached the Ohio State team that went to a Frozen Four - in addition to recruiting 3 first rounders. If you know the history there, you know what I mean when I say he basically was the head coach of that team.  What he did at Clarkson, in and out of the pandemic, was very good, given they have less to work with than Cornell does when it comes to recruiting in this landscape. He lost 2 All-American goalies at the last minute when they bailed out to go to "bigger" schools.  Goaltending was their biggest problem in the last few years, and they still knocked on the door of the NCAAs.

I'm not going to bother arguing about this - but that's it in a nutshell.

Quote from: Trotsky

Quote from: adamwmy turn to say I agree a billion percent with Trotsky (I know there's no a billion percent, don't at me). I've been having these same conversations with my wife and her AI-loving friends. I win these arguments every time -- at least, in my limited mind.

You could also play them this video.

My prediction is we will eventually reach the tipping point where the regurgitation of comfortable, well scrubbed existing sounds, ideas, and I dunno maybe smells and textures will feel more "real" to people than actual new things, and then we can bring down the curtain on the whole human experiment.

Apex predators die of suicide.

Ha - I watch every Rick Beato video (former Ithaca College professor after all) and have mentioned that video plenty.

Quote from: BearLoverI hadn't realized he was color commentator alongside Al Michaels for the miracle on ice, nor that he was president of the Maple Leafs the last two times they reached the conference finals. RIP

Dryden will always be known for the follow up to Michaels' "Do you believe in miracles? YES!" ... Dryden: "Unbelievable"

He's also prominently heard right before Eruzione's game winner ... "The U.S. team is relying too much on Jim Craig, he's had to make too many big saves" -- BOOM, Eruzione scores.

His book -- not ghost written -- "The Game" is quite simply the best sports book I ever read.

Quote from: TrotskyWell, I don't mean to.  The point is the fundamental approach of AI is based on a misreading of what consciousness and intelligence are.  What changed in the last 5-10 years was a shit ton of money got behind it so now we're all going to find out quickly what a handful of pointy headed philosophers figured out 50 years ago.  

Which is good, actually.  AI is really cool in a lot of ways.  It just isn't "I."  It's math.  Math is great, I keep a lot of my stuff in it.  But it is a model.  The world is going to find out that the model of human cognition represented by math for the last 500 years is a model, not the actual thing.  The map, not the territory.

Descartes wanted to understand houses, so he drew a crude picture of a house.  Now he had a picture, so he could do all sorts of things with it: measure it, break it into pieces.  Centuries passed, and we got better and better at pictures.  A pretty weird guy named Frege developed a beautiful method of reducing all the components of houses to a syntax.  An infinitely weirder guy named Wittgenstein had Deep Thoughts about this and announced he had drawn the final, inexhaustible picture of The House and no others would be necessary, then 20 years later recanted, scratched it all out, and announced houses were really just whatever we agreed at any given time was a "house."  And then finally we had computers that could support tremendous CAD images of houses.  And with that library finally "AI" is able to generate new images of houses which never existed before.  That is remarkable and can be used for all sorts of purposes.

BUT YOU CAN'T FUCKING LIVE IN ONE!  It's still just an image.  It's not a house.  It doesn't keep the rain off your head.  It's in your head, it's not in the world.  That's the difference.  You want to tell me about the great new advances in imagery, and yes there have been.  But it's still all just imagery.

Here is what ChatGPT itself has to say about Trotsky's critique ....

Quote1. AI as Math, Not "I"
The author argues that AI is just "math" -- models and statistical systems -- not true intelligence or consciousness.
AI's perspective: That's essentially true. Modern AI (especially deep learning) is built on statistical pattern recognition and optimization, not on conscious experience or self-awareness.
Philosophical angle: This reflects the map vs. territory problem: AI produces symbolic or mathematical "maps" of the world but does not inhabit the territory of lived experience. This echoes Alfred Korzybski's idea ("the map is not the territory") and critiques of representationalism.

2. Historical Framing: From Descartes to Wittgenstein
The house metaphor illustrates the progression of thought:
Descartes: first crude pictures -- early attempts to model cognition.
Frege: formal logic and syntax -- symbolic representation.
Wittgenstein (early): language as a logical picture of the world -- the "Tractatus" view.
Wittgenstein (later): language as use and agreement -- the "Philosophical Investigations" shift.
AI today: powerful computational images/models -- generative systems.
AI would agree that this is an apt genealogy. In fact, many in cognitive science argue that current AI reflects a long history of reducing thought to symbols, structures, and formal systems.

3. The "You Can't Live in It" Argument
The analogy says: an AI model is like a picture of a house. You can admire it, manipulate it, and generate endless variations -- but you can't actually live in it.
AI's perspective: Correct. Models are abstractions. They simulate or generate representations, but they don't embody physical reality or consciousness.
Counterpoint from AI researchers: While you can't "live in" a CAD drawing, you can use it to design a real, livable house. Similarly, AI outputs -- even if "just math" -- can shape the world when coupled with action (robots, decision systems, medical tools).

4. Money and Acceleration
The critique that "a shit ton of money" made AI explode is accurate historically:
The last decade saw unprecedented funding in AI research, leading to scaling laws -- the realization that bigger models with more compute/data can achieve surprising abilities.
AI researchers would acknowledge that while the philosophical critique isn't new, the practical consequences of AI systems becoming widely deployed are unprecedented.

5. AI's Likely Reply
If AI itself were to respond to this critique, it might say:
"You're right that I am not consciousness. I am a tool that works with patterns and representations. But representations can be useful -- even world-changing. A map may not be the territory, but without maps, you'd get lost."

Bottom line: The critique is valid: AI is not conscious, it is representational and mathematical. But that doesn't negate its power -- just as architectural drawings aren't houses, yet without them, we wouldn't build skyscrapers. The tension lies in remembering the limits of AI models while appreciating their generative and practical potential.
[\\quote]

my turn to say I agree a billion percent with Trotsky (I know there's no a billion percent, don't at me). I've been having these same conversations with my wife and her AI-loving friends. I win these arguments every time -- at least, in my limited mind.

Quote from: arugulaNot a lot of jobs in your business though, as you know. Hopefully she finds a good one.  Not too many Mollie Walkers who are good and have luck and timing—she parlayed a summer internship with Larry Brooks' semi retirement from beat writing to go directly from covering UMass to the NY Rangers beat at the NY Post.

true - except the way of the world these days, is to hire very young people to cover these beats now, replacing old guard - because they are cheaper. It doesn't mean Mollie (another CHN writer at one point) or Jane aren't good -- but it's one tiny mark in their "favor" if you will.  But yes, over the last 20 years, most of my friends in the biz were laid off.

I've dealt with dozens of student reporters over the years. Jane is in the very top tier. She first reached out to me while in high school wanting to help out. It grew from there.  I am hoping she will continue working with CHN for a long time, but like the others in that tier, she is too good to stay.

Quote from: marty

Quote from: adamw

Quote from: BearLoverTV ratings would surely be higher for on-campus regionals though? The atmosphere is so bad, it's not a good tv product.

I've yet to see any evidence that seeing the stands full on TV, would make more people watch the game.

There's an argument to be made that it would make TV ratings worse. Since all the people who want to see it but couldn't make it, would be at the arena now instead of watching on TV.

Adam,
Do you know whether the monetary impact of the Regionals is a net positive for the NCAA.  Do the well attended Regionals offset the clunkers? I'm thinking the NCAA would never release the number$.

Pretty sure it's a net positive, because they also get some sort of guarantee from the host. But note that the NCAA would still make its money on campus.  Just like the ECAC takes a cut of all ECAC playoff games, regardless of site.

Quote from: BearLover

Quote from: adamw

Quote from: BearLoverTV ratings would surely be higher for on-campus regionals though? The atmosphere is so bad, it's not a good tv product.

I've yet to see any evidence that seeing the stands full on TV, would make more people watch the game.

We haven't conducted a controlled experiment for this, but I would note that during the pandemic (empty stadiums), TV ratings of sports were very bad, even though everyone was stuck at home without anything better to do.

QuoteThere's an argument to be made that it would make TV ratings worse. Since all the people who want to see it but couldn't make it, would be at the arena now instead of watching on TV.

This is a tiny number of people (a few thousand).

how many people you think are actually clamoring to watch NCAA ice hockey Regionals?

Quote from: BearLover

Quote from: adamw

Quote from: BearLoverOverall, I prioritize fairness and excitement. On-campus regionals are more fair and more exciting.

on-campus Regionals may be a lot of things - but more fair is not one of them.

On-campus regionals seems quite a bit fairer to me than the current system. Under the current system, we have 4 seeds hosting 1 seeds, and we have teams being paired to maximize attendance rather than based on seeding. With on-campus regionals, hosting is based on an objective criterion (computer ranking), rather than which schools paid to host or where the committee wants to send you to make more money.

An imperfect (far from perfect) "objective" criterion is not necessarily more fair - any more than something being legal automatically makes it legally right. As I've written about approximately 11 billion times, the whole reason many neutral site Regional proponents like it is because of the inequity with home ice Regionals. You take flawed math and you compound it by giving that team home ice.  Note: "flawed" does not mean bad.  It just means that you take meaningless differences, based upon arbitrary weightings, and give a team an enormous advantage.  It's wildly unfair.  I've heard all the arguments the other way a zillion times.

"Well, NHL teams do it" ... a) the NHL has fully objective standings with relatively balanced schedules against similar competition ... and b) the NHL gives best-of-7 series where 3 of the 7 games are played at the lower seed. In college, the proposal is that all 3 games be played at the higher seed. Big difference. ....

"Well, it's good enough for selecting the teams" ... another hollow argument that I've addressed a ridiculous amount of times. The difference between selection and seeding is clear ... with selection, the alternative (very flawed humans deciding) is far worse than any computer algorithm. However, with seeding, we have an alternative to granting home-ice - which is the current neutral site system.  This difference is glaringly obvious, yet I hear this trope repeated constantly as a way to "zing" me. Nope.

As for the inequities you describe -- I am on record as saying that those things should never happen either.  They are relatively rare.  I believe those issues can and should be solved. The solution is not to throw out the system and do something even more unfair to everyone.

Many arguments can be made in favor of on-campus Regionals. Fairness is not one of them.

Quote from: BearLoverTV ratings would surely be higher for on-campus regionals though? The atmosphere is so bad, it's not a good tv product.

I've yet to see any evidence that seeing the stands full on TV, would make more people watch the game.

There's an argument to be made that it would make TV ratings worse. Since all the people who want to see it but couldn't make it, would be at the arena now instead of watching on TV.

Quote from: TrotskyI think overall it will help us but I just hate the regionals as a relic of when we were bending over for Bristol thinking we were going to be the next hoops.

Fuck that and fuck them, return the sport to the campuses and the barns that make it great.  If it means we play in NoDak whatevs.

It will also tend to take the air out of the balloon for expansion, and we won't have to tolerate Alabama playing USC for the title someday.  That was always just a fever dream by the college hockey media to puff themselves up.  Fuck that and fuck them.

Keep it cold, exclusive, and intimate.  Anybody comes to you selling hype shoot first ask questions never.

It's pretty funny that you want to go back to campus as a way of stopping "progress" - while all the advocates inside the sport want to go back to campus sites in order to "grow the game." So - they believe it does the exact opposite of your wishes.  I, however, have made your arguments - as a reason to not do it.