USCHO.com poll, 2/17

Section A · February 17, 2003, 03:50:34 PM

Team (First Place) Record Pts Last Week
1 Colorado College (30) 23-4-5 589 1
2 Cornell (10) 20-4-1 553 3
3 Maine 22-5-5 505 2
4 New Hampshire 19-7-4 466 6
5 Boston College 19-8-3 406 4
6 Minnesota 17-7-7 384 7
7 North Dakota 22-6-4 375 5
8 Ferris State 23-8-1 313 9
9 Boston University 20-10-2 268 11
10 Michigan 21-8-1 256 8
11 Ohio State 21-7-3 190 10
12 MSU-Mankato 14-7-9 131 12
13 Denver 18-9-5 121 14
14 St. Cloud State 14-11-3 85 15
15 Harvard 16-8-1 78 13

EDIT: forgot to include these...

Others receiving votes: Providence 35,
Michigan State 19, Yale 18, Minnesota-Duluth 5,
Dartmouth 2, Miami 1

rhovorka · February 17, 2003, 04:06:26 PM

This is exciting. Polls don't mean anything, especially at this point of the year, but following them can be a game itself. 10 first place votes and being closer to #1 than we are to #3...wow.

I still like the fact that we only have 5 non-wins. Next closest on the list...CC, FSU, Mich, and Harvard with 9.

Give My Regards · February 17, 2003, 04:12:05 PM

This is what you call "arriving". This is probably the first time in history anybody ever dropped a point to an ECAC team (and an unranked one at that) and went up in a poll.

Josh '99 · February 17, 2003, 04:12:55 PM

Ouch... Harvard whoops an unranked team, loses a nailbiter to #2, and gets dropped two spots.

ugarte · February 17, 2003, 04:31:32 PM

Not that surprising: Harvard fell behind Denver, who took 3 points off of then #5 (now #7) NoDak and SCSU, who split with #1 CC.

melissa · February 17, 2003, 06:09:18 PM

My initial response was HOLY F#$%!! ......... not about the ranking but about the # of #1 votes ... 10!!!! WOW!

Keith K · February 17, 2003, 06:33:31 PM

Likely vote distribution:


Team     1st  2nd  3rd   Points
CC       30    9    1   589
Cornell  10   13   17   553

I think that's the only way for CC to get 589 with 40 votes. There are other combinations for our ranking and maybe it's likely that we had some lower votes. But every #4 vote would have to be compensated for by an additional #2.

No point in speculating much as you go further down in the poll, except that Maine has to have some votes for #4 or lower.

Section A · February 17, 2003, 06:35:42 PM

how exactly does it work? how many points for a 1st place, for a second place, etc.?

Keith K · February 17, 2003, 06:36:46 PM

40 voters. 15 points for 1st place vote, 14 for 2nd, 13 for 3rd, etc.

squarooticus · February 17, 2003, 07:44:11 PM

I haven't said anything all year, as I've just been enjoying the season in silence. Now, however...

Dayumm! 2nd place? 10 votes for first? Of course polls are meaningless in terms of how well a team is going to play on the following weekend, but it sure is a good indicator of confidence.

I must admit that I am very excited. Sorry not to have made it to the game on Saturday, but by the time I started looking for tickets, the game had been sold out. Apparently having received numerous calls from the Boston-area Cornell alumni, the Harvard ticket office even went so far as to put a message on their answering maching saying that there were no tickets, not even SRO, left for the Saturday game. =)

Cheers,
Kyle

Keith K · February 17, 2003, 08:54:02 PM

Some further thought about the numbers leads me to guess that we had more second place votes than 13, with fewer 3rd's and some 4th's to balance out. Wish I could easily back out the vote numbers. Unfortunatley I'm not sure you can solve the Ax=b system for A given x and b, even knowing a constraint u'A=c (given u and c). There might be a regression type approach that would work, but it doesn't jump to mind (esp. considering you have to restrict to integers). And the brute force approach is not reasonable.

I really need to do some real work instead of working on thought problems about ceramic dalmatians...

AJD-04 · February 17, 2003, 10:39:01 PM

You have to analyze the sums for all the top 15 and others receiving votes to even slightly have an idea of what number of which votes we received. I am not about to even try. It is nearly impossible.

Robb · February 17, 2003, 10:46:09 PM

The magic square problem from hell.... I'm 99.99% positive that there would be a set of points that could be achieved with two different sets of votes; therefore, the problem is not solveable in general. On the other hand, if all the voters voted exactly the same, then the problem is solveable - so there are specific cases which would be solveable. The question is, how could you tell by looking at the scores if it is solveable, or more generally, would there be a way to calculate the number of different voting schemes that would have resulted in those scores? Where's a numbers theorist when you need one?

atb9 · February 17, 2003, 11:02:17 PM

We know that Miami got one 15th place vote... ::nut::

Greg Berge · February 18, 2003, 03:19:25 AM

Does anyone else find the little muscle guy in Adam Doyle's sig extremely disturbing?