To me it's a terrible thing. If the idea is to get the best estimate for how
strong a team is, how can you just throw out how badly they beat other teams?

I heard a guy call in to a local sports talk show a few weeks ago, discussing
this topic. He said when he devised his system, he simulated with a wide
variety of parameters, and to judge how well it did, looked at how well it
retrodicted the games from that year. According to these tests, the most
accurate way to rank the teams was to have no cap at all.

I personally have a cap on mine, but I use a special formula anyway to
consider other MOV factors.

As a statistician, my opinion is that it is asinine to throw away valuable
information like that. Their reasoning is terrible too, thinking that it will
keep coaches from running up the score. We all know that MOV has a larger
effect on poll voters than it ever does on computers anyway.

-Brad














>===== Original Message From "Patrick E. Fleming" <pfleming@...> =====
>Robert B. Kiser wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>
> Hi Robert and welcome. This will be the first full college football
>season for the CompRatings mailing list. I hope we can have some lively
>and insightful discussion (emphasis on the latter of course.) I hope
>everyoen will feel encouraged to follow your lead and introduce themselves
>and maybe share a little bit about their opinions, philosophies,
>mathematics and any other spects of their ratings systems.
>
>As one suggestion for a topic of discussion, what are people's feelings on
>the BCS descision to drop margin of victory from the computer ratings
>portion? Good thing? Bad thing? neutral?
>
>I hope everyone is having a safe and enjoyable summer. cheers!
>
> - Pat
>
>-- Patrick E. Fleming
>-- Department of Chemistry
>-- San Jose State University
>-- pfleming@...
>
>
>
>
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