<<Thank you for the rhetorical statement - the main purpose of my statistical analysis was that there ARE certain methods which IMO are better indicators than the formula NAQT used this year.>> <<While I use head-to-head matchups and Samer (and NAQT) uses total points scored, each is correct in their opinion. However, I believe my logic has a more correct fundamental basis, and thus I continue to post and present arguments in our defense - not for this year's results, but for future teams who may be slotted in the same position.>> Just as you are entitled to your opinion, I am entitled to mine. In a sense, it has a ring of holism v. reductionism: the method you advocate looks at individual parts, while the method NAQT chooses is more concerned with the overall whole. Personally, I think the best approach would be a 'two-pronged' system. As an example, let us assume that there is an agreed-upon and reasonable method for comparing W-L performance among regionals, as well as a method of comparing teams by points. There is no reason you couldn't then alternate teams off the lists: take the top team by record, then the top remaining team by points; the highest remaining team by record, and so on until all the spaces are filled. --STI P.S. One method of doing this (using as the 'record' method [W/L record] x [field strength]) gave the following top 14 at-large bids: Michigan, Wisconsin, Caltech, Pittsburgh, Virginia, Florida, Texas A&M, GWU, Maryland, Penn State, Georgia, Yale, Penn, and Illinois. The next four qualifiers would be, in order, FAU, MIT, WUSTL, and Oklahoma. An added advantage of this system is that it would make it significantly harder for a team to 'leapfrog' over a much higher-ranked team from the same sectional, unless its performance were markedly better: Princeton B would be eighth on the waitlist, behind every team ahead of it at the MidAtlantic SCT. [In fact, the only teams that would 'leapfrog' ahead of teams with better records would be Penn, Yale, and MIT.]
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