[OT[ ECAC trivia

[billhoward]

Truly trivial, sort of interesting, from this week's USCHO ECACHL column http://www.uscho.com/m/ec/?data=preview

>>> Aside from the Crimson and the Bears [Brown], all other travel partners are back-to-back in the standings. Cornell-Colgate are 1-2, Dartmouth-Vermont are tied for fourth, Clarkson-St. Lawrence are tied for seventh, Union-RPI are 9-10 and Princeton-Yale are 11-12.


The column picks Cornell to beat RPI and Union 3-1 and 3-0, respectively. (It also picks Harvard to beat Brown, 3-1, next Tuesday, which, if true, means Cornell's hope for the Ivy title falls to Dartmouth next weekend.)

And the miscellany at the end starts off lauding Adam D'Alba's three shutouts as a freshman for Brown. [McKee had five last year.] It then notes how Mckee is doing on shutouts, but now how many: "• Cornell sophomore David McKee's 5-0 shutout on Friday tied him with David LeNeveu for second on the school's all-time list, two behind Ken Dryden." That would be 11 to Dryden's 13.

[atb9]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

And the miscellany at the end starts off lauding Adam D'Alba's three shutouts as a freshman for Brown.  It then notes how Mckee is doing on shutouts, but now how many: "• Cornell sophomore David McKee's 5-0 shutout on Friday tied him with David LeNeveu for second on the school's all-time list, two behind Ken Dryden." That would be 11 to Dryden's 13.
[/q]

You're right, the column is trivial...  ;-)

Martinez dislikes Cornell; that has been clear to me for some time.  He's a Harvard fan, right?  Unfortunately, Big Red sympathizers can't produce all of the ECACHL material  B-]

[Trotsky]

Not so trivial.  Up until very recently, historically we had balance between partnerships, with a good and bad partner in most cases:

Cornell (good) Colgate (bad) -- except sporadially they'd reverse for one season
Harvard (good) - Brown (bad)
RPI (good) - Union (bad) -- then they both gravitated to the middle
UVM (good) - Dartmouth (bad) -- then they reversed
North Country -- both good, sometimes SLU would temporarily drop off
Yale/Princeton -- both bad, sometimes Yale would temporarily step up

Now we've got a spectrum of partnerships, from excellent to terrible:

R: Cornell/Gate
O: Harvard/Brown
Y: Dartmouth/Vermont
G: Clarkson/SLU
B: Union/RPI
I: Yale/Princeton

and it should only be exascerbated by the shakeup next year:

R: Cornell/Gate
O: Harvard/Dartmouth
Y: Clarkson/SLU
G: RPI/Union
B: Yale/Brown
I: Princeton/Quinnipiac

This too shall pass, but the oscillation between tough weekends and "easy" weekends make the season feel very different than the formerly balanced situation.

[Chris 02]

What's the

R
O
Y
G
B
I

mean?

[atb9]

You must not be into science!  ;-)

It's the band of visible light that consists of a spectrum of wavelengths.  In this instance, Greg didn't include V, or Violet.  ROY-G-BIV is a well known acronym in the science community to remember the order.

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet

[Trotsky]

I hereby give Army Violet, in honor of their former ECAC perpetual suckitude.

[Bio '04]

Wasn't Indigo dropped from the spectrum?

[atb9]

[Q]Bio '04 Wrote:

 Wasn't Indigo dropped from the spectrum?[/q]

"Incidentally, indigo is not actually observed in the spectrum but is traditionally added to the list so that there is a vowel in Roy's last name"

Have fun with that!  ;-)

The spectrum of visible light is such a small part of the enormous range of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation that you can add something small and trivial to help out with the acronym and not effect the big picture.

edit: here's a link on Indigo http://madsci.wustl.edu/posts/archives/oct2000/971471304.Ph.r.html

[/science]

[Bio '04]

[Q]atb9 Wrote:

The spectrum of visible light is such a small part of the enormous range of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation that you can add something small and trivial to help out with the acronym and not effect the big picture.
[/q]

Even though Princeton and Yale are small and trivial (most of the time), too bad they do effect the big picture (at least in terms of RPI)... :-P

[billhoward]

Not mentioning McKee's # of shutouts is what I used to call "airplane writing" in author seminars -- meaning the author could have known or looked up the fact, but he was on an airplane with no press kit or (this is about to change) Internet connection, and when the plane landed, he didn't go back and fill in the TKs. Synonyms for this would be "forgetful" or "lazy" if one were into name-calling and it happened a lot.

Again, I don't want to start a dump-on-USCHO thread, because we're far better off with it than a decade ago with no online news about college hockey. You're seeing the effects of people trying to do a lot for what is probably not a lot of money under some time constraints. That, I believe, explains but not excuses an error like this one.

Does he have an anti-Cornell bias? It could be an anti-coach-who-doesn't-say-much-of-quotable-interest bias. If Schafer (deliberately) says nothing interesting, writers hate that ... and it's probably great for the team because it doesn't give the opponents anything to paste to their locker room bulletin board. So if Schafer has less to say, there's an unconscious tendency to write about the other schools with more quotable or more accessible (don't know if that's the case) coaches.

Bias? Somebody should go back and compare Juan Martinez' overall percentage picking all ECACHL game winners vs. his picks for Cornell to win/lose/tie. Also, how many times has he picked shutouts for Cornell/McKee (vs. the six he has this year)? (The USCHO column this week says he is 9-2-1 (last week, when the top played the bottom in many games) and the overall record is 106-66-18 (.605). http://www.uscho.com/m/ec/?data=preview

[mjh89]

Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain is an equally effective means to remembering them.

[billhoward]

"Richard of York..."? Is that the version taught in Episcopal prep schools? Whatever happened to "Russians on Yachts..."? Or that is no longer PC because it condones alcohol and nudity?

[Molly]

[Q]Bio '04 Wrote:

 Wasn't Indigo dropped from the spectrum?[/q]

Somebody must have forgotten to tell the art teachers in middle and high schools.  I still remember Mr. BIV from my studio art classes, and it wasn't all that long ago!

[mjh89]

I'm sitting here trying to figure out the ending to your Russians on Yachts, but I can't. Please fill me in. Must be something along the same lines as: King Philip Came Over For Great Sex when remembering the old Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.

[Bio '04]

[Q]mjh89 Wrote:

 I'm sitting here trying to figure out the ending to your Russians on Yachts, but I can't. Please fill me in. Must be something along the same lines as: King Philip Came Over For Great Sex when remembering the old Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.[/q]

I learned it as King Phillip came over from Germany Swimming.  I must have had a pretty tame middle school!

I think the "worst" (in terms of word usage) mneumonic device I ever heard (from a teacher) was "All Students Take Crack" in Math Course III (that's Trig for non-NY people). :-P