Bracketology 2019

[Dafatone]

My take is that "bubble" doesn't apply. College basketball, where the bracket is determined by handwaving and magic, has a bubble of teams whose future is up in the air.

College hockey uses a hard and fast system (or, a system that closely resembles a hard and fast system). We can pin down odds to the extent that we can predict odds of winners of future matchups. In any given simulation, there's no guessing about bubbles or who is in or out once all the games are played.

We're probably out if we lose two straight. But we're a lot closer to the teams ahead of us than the teams behind us, and it's more likely than not that our current position, 12th, gets in. It's fair to say that we're closer to in than out.

[Trotsky]

This comes down to the fear that using math to predict our likelihood of winning will anger the Hockey Gods and cause us to lose.

That is magical thinking.

But the Hockey Gods are, objectively, a bitch, so I wouldn't provoke them.

[Jim Hyla]

Yes, he emphasizes the relatively high likelihood of up to three conference winners from outside the top 16, which would still leave the top 13 in the tournament. Notwithstanding the possibility for individual sub-18 teams to have surprising runs, at a certain point when you're projecting a tournament field at the end of a few-dozen-games-long season, you have to assume the teams in the top 12 belong there and will perform more or less according to their ranking. The point of the bubble teams' peril is that they could perform more or less according to their top 16 ranking and yet still not make it. If you're going to go by the mere possibility of Cinderella runs combined with the mere possibility of top teams underperforming, we should be talking about #8-16 as "the bubble" pretty much every year.

That's what I've always thought that was meant by hockey teams being on the bubble.

We're different than bball in that when our pre-NCAA games are over, we know who is in and out. There's no bubble then.

When bball is at the same point, they have teams that the gods can choose to include or exclude, thus a bubble.

[ugarte]

I think Bear Lover's interpretation of the bubble - a reasonable chance that one bad game/series will move you from in to out - isn't bad. It's how I'd have instinctively thought about it too. I definitely see us as a bubble team. That said, I wouldn't care if someone had a different (non-stupid) definition, as long as they roughly defined it and arguing about someone else's definition is ...

is ...

is what we do around here mostly I guess.

[adamw]

There's bubble teams, and then there's BUBBLE teams ... I think, as Beeej (thank you) pointed out, I gave the reasoning for putting the line there, while also acknowledging that there were teams above 13 that still could possibly not make it. Had to draw the line somewhere in terms of focusing on the BUBBLE BUBBLE. ... Last thing I want to do is jinx anything however, so, sure, Cornell is on the bubble, hockey gods.

[adamw]

Adam's first take on the NCAA seeding difficulties.

And Adam takes his annual(?) swipe about bracket talk before it really matters.

While everyone else has been pondering their "bracketology" — explaining in fine-point detail the architecture of brackets that will never actually happen — we'll just calmly remind everyone of what to be looking for as we approach selection day.

Adam, don't you think having fun is important? Isn't that why we go to games?

So why is it so hard to understand that having fun with brackets is okay?

Plus, anyone who goes through the process each week has a much better understanding of why some things work out the way they do.

Fun and education, what's not to like about that?

Jim, my good sir, we'll never agree on this I suppose. And those remarks are never aimed at you, by the way, or fans in general. ...

I love fun - but fun is in the eye of the beholder - and I don't find pointless exercises to be fun. Fun is figuring out what could happen, and why. Fun is explaining these things to readers in ways that hopefully make sense. Therein is the education. The mechanics of how these things work have been written about ad nauseum where I don't feel the need to repeat them each week, using examples that will be moot by the next week.

And there's more I could say, but shall not. So it will have to be left at that.

[adamw]

I assume that Adam didn't major in math or another scientific or engineering field, not that it is necessary to be a scientist to have interest in bracketology and how PWR works.

I'm not sure whether you are intending that as a criticism or not - because I can't figure out why you brought it up.

The answer is no, but then again, neither did Bill James. I've been writing about this stuff forever, and Pairwise math is certainly simpler than KRACH math, so I don't think it requires an engineering degree. When I need that, I turn to John Whelan - and then I take his stuff and turn it into English, for readers

[Trotsky]

I don't find pointless exercises to be fun.

Pointless exercises are the only things that are fun.  Everything else has too much riding on it.

That's why we invented sports and games in the first place.  The other shit was war, work, and parenting, and all that shit's exhausting.

[ursusminor]

I assume that Adam didn't major in math or another scientific or engineering field, not that it is necessary to be a scientist to have interest in bracketology and how PWR works.

I'm not sure whether you are intending that as a criticism or not - because I can't figure out why you brought it up.

The answer is no, but then again, neither did Bill James. I've been writing about this stuff forever, and Pairwise math is certainly simpler than KRACH math, so I don't think it requires an engineering degree. When I need that, I turn to John Whelan - and then I take his stuff and turn it into English, for readers

It was not meant as a criticism. It was just a comment on the previous post and based upon my misinterpretation of that post. :-/

Way back when RPI was frequently on the bubble and always missed the NCAA tourney in the early Fridgen years and before IIRC, it was fun calculating what minor changes would have gotten the 'Tute in. And then there was the more recent year that RPI was eliminated early in the ECAC tourney, but by the way that PWR was then calculated, most scenarios would have get the team in the NCAA tourney, and that was what happened, only for them to embarrass themselves as usual in the opening round.

BTW, lack of the ability to write clear English, as in the previous paragraph, is certainly one of my characteristics.

[Jim Hyla]

Adam's first take on the NCAA seeding difficulties.

And Adam takes his annual(?) swipe about bracket talk before it really matters.

While everyone else has been pondering their "bracketology" — explaining in fine-point detail the architecture of brackets that will never actually happen — we'll just calmly remind everyone of what to be looking for as we approach selection day.

Adam, don't you think having fun is important? Isn't that why we go to games?

So why is it so hard to understand that having fun with brackets is okay?

Plus, anyone who goes through the process each week has a much better understanding of why some things work out the way they do.

Fun and education, what's not to like about that?

Jim, my good sir, we'll never agree on this I suppose. And those remarks are never aimed at you, by the way, or fans in general. ...

I love fun - but fun is in the eye of the beholder - and I don't find pointless exercises to be fun. Fun is figuring out what could happen, and why. Fun is explaining these things to readers in ways that hopefully make sense. Therein is the education. The mechanics of how these things work have been written about ad nauseum where I don't feel the need to repeat them each week, using examples that will be moot by the next week.

And there's more I could say, but shall not. So it will have to be left at that.

Adam, you're probably correct, "we'll never agree on this I suppose."

But look at what you said, "I love fun - but fun is in the eye of the beholder - and I don't find pointless exercises to be fun."

That's okay and I agree with you. You have your fun and I have mine. As long as our funs(?) don't hurt anyone, there's no need to criticize each other for what we enjoy.

You say, and let me say that I totally believe you when you say it, that "those remarks are never aimed at you, by the way, or fans in general."

But criticizing the subject is indirectly criticizing the people who enjoy it.

I know you don't mean to criticize fans who follow it, but saying "we'll just calmly remind everyone of what to be looking for as we approach selection day." has an elitist ring to it. It's as if you're saying, "We're the calm ones, while the rest are just screamers. You shouldn't pay attention to them."

You have the right to say that you think what is being done is pointless, and to an extent I agree, but you don't need to put down those that have their fun in this "pointless exercise."

Trotsky is correct, "Pointless exercises are the only things that are fun."

Hockey is inherently a pointless exercise. In the end the athletes have gotten good exercise, but for the rest of us, we were just sitting on our butts and, aside from the fun of watching, could have done a lot of other more "important" things with that time.

Sitting at their computer and reading about bracketology can be no less fun for some, than is it for me to sit and read, and respond to eLynah posts. Both are pointless and that's the point.

Enough fun for me, now I have to go back to dictating patients charts. That's the epitome of the opposite of pointless fun.

[ugarte]

You say, and let me say that I totally believe you when you say it, that "those remarks are never aimed at you, by the way, or fans in general."

But criticizing the subject is indirectly criticizing the people who enjoy it.

It's entirely up to you how to react to learning that someone thinks something you like is silly.

[Trotsky]

You say, and let me say that I totally believe you when you say it, that "those remarks are never aimed at you, by the way, or fans in general."

But criticizing the subject is indirectly criticizing the people who enjoy it.

It's entirely up to you how to react to learning that someone thinks something you like is silly.

Whaddya mean by that?!  ::flipd::

[Beeeej]

Once again we're rooting against Providence tonight; the unlikely event of #37 Boston College defeating #9 Providence would drop PC to #13 and kick us up a notch to #11.

...which as you know is still totally on THE BUBBLE^tm, because non-zero unlikely catastrophic doom blah blah blah.

[Swampy]

I don't find pointless exercises to be fun.

Pointless exercises are the only things that are fun.  Everything else has too much riding on it.

That's why we invented sports and games in the first place.  The other shit was war, work, and parenting, and all that shit's exhausting.

Not to mention birth control. Don't forget about birth control, an innovation that prevents parenting, making sex pointless but casual.

[Jim Hyla]

You say, and let me say that I totally believe you when you say it, that "those remarks are never aimed at you, by the way, or fans in general."

But criticizing the subject is indirectly criticizing the people who enjoy it.

It's entirely up to you how to react to learning that someone thinks something you like is silly.

I'm not reacting to thinking that bracketology discussion in mid-season is silly, it is, but that not discussing it implies that you're somehow better.