Polls 2019-20

[JasonN95]

I think whoever said the OOC records will likely even out over the holidays is right. My baseline expectation is the league will be pretty similar to where it was last year overall, when ECAC teams went .481 in inter-conference play. Right now it looks awful though - .381 to date. :/

On a related note, Cornell has the 51st ranked schedule strength in KRACH, and it's so terrible largely due to the ECAC part of the schedule (note: it is set at NaN, so I don't really know how it gets ranked anywhere other than last, but Colgate is 44th so it's probably not too far wrong). By contrast, Minnesota State is 12-1-1 against the toughest schedule in the nation, and NoDak and Denver have run up impressive records against similarly tough competition.

On the other hand, Cornell is 9-0-0. I'm enjoying that.

Is that SoS looking at the entire schedule including games not yet played? If it is, I'd be interested in SoS of only games played for a sense of how impressive, or not, Cornell's 9-0-0 is. (Well, it's impressive regardless not having had an "off" day through nine games, but could be more so if SoS of those games is higher than 51st.)

[adamw]

Is that SoS looking at the entire schedule including games not yet played? If it is, I'd be interested in SoS of only games played for a sense of how impressive, or not, Cornell's 9-0-0 is. (Well, it's impressive regardless not having had an "off" day through nine games, but could be more so if SoS of those games is higher than 51st.)

SoS in KRACH is always only looking at games already played.

[Trotsky]

I figure the ECAC ooc record has to improve, largely because it can't get much worse.

Harvard at the Beanpot: "challenge accepted!"

[adamw]

I guess my biggest point is if there were an authoritative, completely FOSS version of software to compute RPI and Pairwise, an individual's coding mistake would not only be discovered quickly, but also multiple users of the software would be likely to bring this discovery to light.

That's not really possible. See below.

I didn't know you were loading official data into your database. In fact, I didn't know such data are available. Certainly this is preferable to scraping web pages, although one could argue that a web page is just another data format. I frequently use data that are downloadable in a database-friendly format (e.g., csv files), but sometimes an agency only publishes data on a web site. In both cases, once the code is written to import the data, I hardly notice any difference between different kinds of sources. (How the data are organized -- e.g. as a time series versus one-shot, Saturday night results -- is an entirely different matter.)

Off the top of my head, if I were to choose a single data source, it would be the NC$$'s official results.

This is the data we receive. We pay for it. It still needs to be processed and tallied.

Your last point is also mine. I was assuming there would be one authoritative package that's known to produce correct results. This would be the starting point for any enhancements.

There is. The one the NCAA uses. Everyone else, reverse engineers from there.  You need to understand, I think, that an error like this is pretty rare. The last one that caused a calculation issue on CHN was probably 6 years ago. I can't vouch for other places. Of course, enhancements like you mention are wonderful ideas. My suggestion on that is - if you want to see more enhancements, come help me at CHN

So, to follow up this discussion, what software do you use? What programming language is it written in? Is it publicly available? If so, how? Is it free? What copyright or other licensing restrictions does it have? Is it open source?

I use PHP - but that's pretty much neither here nor there. It could be done in anything. No it's not publicly available, no it's not open source, and it won't be. At least not mine. Like I said, if you - or whoever - wants to have a go at that, go for it. But CHN is theoretically attempting to make some pennies at doing this, so I'm not sure it's wise to make it open source. It also would probably be frowned upon by the NCAA - because reasons. That said, as I alluded to before, in the spirit of collegiality I converse with a few other "fan" blogs/people/sites that also attempt to do their own Pairwise, to compare notes, and make sure we're not making errors.

But understand, you will never know whether what you are doing is incorrect because of your own error (or the collective nerds), or because of CHN's error. Because you will have no textbook to refer to. No official source. That is why I wasn't sure whether the discrepancy was USCHO's fault, or CHN's. I assumed the former because, well, reasons again - but I was wrong this time. What CHN publishes is technically not official. There is no official, except what the NCAA produces - which is kept secret. I can't get into it much further than that.

[ugarte]

On a related note, Cornell has the 51st ranked schedule strength in KRACH, and it's so terrible largely due to the ECAC part of the schedule (note: it is set at NaN, so I don't really know how it gets ranked anywhere other than last, but Colgate is 44th so it's probably not too far wrong). By contrast, Minnesota State is 12-1-1 against the toughest schedule in the nation, and NoDak and Denver have run up impressive records against similarly tough competition.

On the other hand, Cornell is 9-0-0. I'm enjoying that.

I think the tournament in Vegas will be very telling - it's a strong field overall, so if we can come out of there with two wins I'll have some genuine confidence for March.

I was going to say something like "Since the worst thing that can happen to our SOS is to have Army do whatever we do in the first game, Army will do whatever we do in the first game." Then I checked and Army is at 20, hardly a material difference from Providence at 17.

[Beeeej]

On a related note, Cornell has the 51st ranked schedule strength in KRACH, and it's so terrible largely due to the ECAC part of the schedule (note: it is set at NaN, so I don't really know how it gets ranked anywhere other than last, but Colgate is 44th so it's probably not too far wrong). By contrast, Minnesota State is 12-1-1 against the toughest schedule in the nation, and NoDak and Denver have run up impressive records against similarly tough competition.

On the other hand, Cornell is 9-0-0. I'm enjoying that.

I think the tournament in Vegas will be very telling - it's a strong field overall, so if we can come out of there with two wins I'll have some genuine confidence for March.

I was going to say something like "Since the worst thing that can happen to our SOS is to have Army do whatever we do in the first game, Army will do whatever we do in the first game." Then I checked and Army is at 20, hardly a material difference from Providence at 17.

Even so, isn't SOS dynamic? If Army beats Providence, their RPI will go up and PC's down, so if we also beat OSU, we'll probably be facing #18 or 19 instead of #20. Should improve our SOS no matter what happens in the actual game. Now, if we both lose, on the other hand...

[Trotsky]

I predict if we win we'll be fine.

[French Rage]

I'll bet the 1970 team's SOS was awful.

Turns out they don't withhold the trophy for that.

I was gonna make a comment about the 1956 Clarkson team, but it looks like they were left out due to ineligible players rather than a soft schedule.

[upprdeck]

you win enough games and it wont matter who you beat, just avoid losing the really bad teams

[ugarte]

On a related note, Cornell has the 51st ranked schedule strength in KRACH, and it's so terrible largely due to the ECAC part of the schedule (note: it is set at NaN, so I don't really know how it gets ranked anywhere other than last, but Colgate is 44th so it's probably not too far wrong). By contrast, Minnesota State is 12-1-1 against the toughest schedule in the nation, and NoDak and Denver have run up impressive records against similarly tough competition.

On the other hand, Cornell is 9-0-0. I'm enjoying that.

I think the tournament in Vegas will be very telling - it's a strong field overall, so if we can come out of there with two wins I'll have some genuine confidence for March.

I was going to say something like "Since the worst thing that can happen to our SOS is to have Army do whatever we do in the first game, Army will do whatever we do in the first game." Then I checked and Army is at 20, hardly a material difference from Providence at 17.

i'm just saying i expected army to be like 36 but they aren't so it probably doesn't matter who we play in the second game (even though i suspect by the end of the season there will be more separation between providence and army and we'd rather play and beat providence)
Even so, isn't SOS dynamic? If Army beats Providence, their RPI will go up and PC's down, so if we also beat OSU, we'll probably be facing #18 or 19 instead of #20. Should improve our SOS no matter what happens in the actual game. Now, if we both lose, on the other hand...

[KenP]

Cornell was taken out of the mix because our KRACH cannot be calculated.  What does that mean for teams that played us?  I assume those games not included in their KRACH/SOS calculation... which artificially would lower their SOS... which in turn lowers our apparent SOS.

My guess is we will see an uptick in both (us and opponent) SOS if/when Cornell has a non-infinite rating.

[Give My Regards]

Cornell was taken out of the mix because our KRACH cannot be calculated.  What does that mean for teams that played us?  I assume those games not included in their KRACH/SOS calculation... which artificially would lower their SOS... which in turn lowers our apparent SOS.

Herre's hoping that's a problem all season...

[Swampy]

I'll bet the 1970 team's SOS was awful.

Turns out they don't withhold the trophy for that.

I don't know what the official SOS was, but it's funny that we played BU twice that year during the RS, and BU won the NC in 1971 and 1972. So they couldn't have been that bad in 1970.

We also played BC once. And I do remember them being a power when we first started whupping them in the late 1960s.

We played both SLU & Harvard twice during the RS and then again during the ECAC tourney. So at least by ECAC standards, they couldn't have been too bad either.

Then we played Clarkson for the ECAC championship and then again for the NC$$ NC, so Clarkson must have been pretty good too. (Of course beating them in the national title game wouldn't count towards SOS in any meaningful way. But I wonder why we didn't play Clarkson during the RS.

An interesting side note on that season is that we beat Dartmouth by one goal, 3-2 on Feb. 21 at Dartmouth. But Ned must have had a word with the boys, because on Mar. 4 we beat Dartmouth 14-0 at Lynah. It was our most lopsided win of the season.

[Beeeej]

I'll bet the 1970 team's SOS was awful.

Turns out they don't withhold the trophy for that.

Then we played Clarkson for the ECAC championship and then again for the NC$$ NC, so Clarkson must have been pretty good too. (Of course beating them in the national title game wouldn't count towards SOS in any meaningful way. But I wonder why we didn't play Clarkson during the RS.

If I understand correctly, the ECAC at the time had three divisions because of the unusual mix of schools (we were Ivy), and 17 (?) schools - so since a round-robin wasn't practical, not all ECAC teams played all other ECAC teams during the RS like they do now.

[ursusminor]

I'll bet the 1970 team's SOS was awful.

Turns out they don't withhold the trophy for that.

Then we played Clarkson for the ECAC championship and then again for the NC$$ NC, so Clarkson must have been pretty good too. (Of course beating them in the national title game wouldn't count towards SOS in any meaningful way. But I wonder why we didn't play Clarkson during the RS.

If I understand correctly, the ECAC at the time had three divisions because of the unusual mix of schools (we were Ivy), and 17 (?) schools - so since a round-robin wasn't practical, not all ECAC teams played all other ECAC teams during the RS like they do now.

The three divisions did not start until 1979-80. Everyone played the teams in their own division home and away and the teams in the other two divisions once. IIRC, before that every team played whomever they wanted to and could schedule.

Edit: The required scheduling apparently didn't start until 1982 https://www.augenblick.org/chha/ecac_his.html.