With the regular season over and the playoff bracket set, I can't help but ponder how much "luck" played a part in the final standings. Last year, I looked at Yahoo! projected points vs. actual points to see who was “supposed to” do well; but projected points are very subjective. This year, I decided to take a statistical approach using only the actual points.
In a heads-up league - like the 3FL - the schedule plays an important role in who wins each week. Anyone who scored the third highest points in a given week and happened to be playing the team with the most points can attest to that.
The schedule is set based on the order we sign up at the beginning of the season. Assuming the Predacons are always the first to sign up, that leaves 11 possible teams to take the second spot, 10 remaining teams for the third spot, and so on creating 11! (11x10x9x…x1) permutations.
Being the dork that I am, I created a MATLAB program to run through all of the roughly 40 million schedule permutations and calculate the final rankings for each case. Here are the results:
Probable Rank (Actual Rank) Team (% permutations that yield playoff berth)
Overall, the rankings worked out close to expected, but there were a few teams that got an uncharacteristic roll of the dice.
Most Fortunate Team: Renegades Most Unfortunate: Predacons
So the Preds have a legitimate reason to complain; and when the Lightning get knocked off by ray ray haw in the first round of the playoffs, you’ll know they should have been playing the Predacons!
With the regular season over and the playoff bracket set, I can't help but ponder how much "luck" played a part in the final standings. Last year, I looked at Yahoo! projected points vs. actual points to see who was “supposed to” do well; but projected points are very subjective. This year, I decided to take a statistical approach using only the actual points.
ReplyDeleteIn a heads-up league - like the 3FL - the schedule plays an important role in who wins each week. Anyone who scored the third highest points in a given week and happened to be playing the team with the most points can attest to that.
The schedule is set based on the order we sign up at the beginning of the season. Assuming the Predacons are always the first to sign up, that leaves 11 possible teams to take the second spot, 10 remaining teams for the third spot, and so on creating 11! (11x10x9x…x1) permutations.
Being the dork that I am, I created a MATLAB program to run through all of the roughly 40 million schedule permutations and calculate the final rankings for each case. Here are the results:
Probable Rank (Actual Rank)
Team (% permutations that yield playoff berth)
1 (1) Lightning (99.93%)
2 (3) Marauders (96.68%)
3 (2) Misfits (95.41%)
4 (5) Baltimorons (87.27%)
5 (6) Spiked Vipers (79.03%)
6 (8) ray ray haw (73.44%)
7 (4) Renegades (63.92%)
8 (11) Predacons (54.49%)
9 (7) Dumbbums (51.77%)
10 (9) Yuengling Brewers (43.23%)
11 (10) The Comfy Chair (39.59%)
12 (12) Rough Riders (15.22%)
Overall, the rankings worked out close to expected, but there were a few teams that got an uncharacteristic roll of the dice.
Most Fortunate Team: Renegades
Most Unfortunate: Predacons
So the Preds have a legitimate reason to complain; and when the Lightning get knocked off by ray ray haw in the first round of the playoffs, you’ll know they should have been playing the Predacons!
And to think where this family (or league) would be if there were no engineers around...
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