NCAA Basketball Rankings – 2/20/2012
Rankings as of 4:14pm on 2/20/2012. Sagarin Ratings for games though 2/19/2012.
Previous rankings are here.
Syracuse, Kentucky, and Missouri remain atop the rankings. Ohio State drops 2 spots after losing to Michigan this past week knocking them out of the top 5, while Duke and Michigan State both move up one spot rounding out the top 5. Indiana is the weeks biggest loser, falling 4 spots to number 16 after a 12 point loss at a barely above .500 Iowa team. Florida St. moves up 10 spots to number 22 and sits in a three way tie for first in the ACC. Murray State moves up 7 spots to number 19 and back into the top 25 after it’s bracket buster win over St. Mary’s-CA. Two teams make their season debut in the top 25: Vanderbilt and Saint Louis at 24 and 25, respectively. Saint Louis joins fellow Atlantic 10 team Temple in the top 25 as the league now sports two top 25 teams. The Mountain West is moving in the opposite direction as UNLV and San Diego State have fallen out of the top 25 in recent weeks leaving only one team, New Mexico, to represent to MWC.
Breakdown by conference: 3, 4, 5, 3, 0, 3, 1, 2, 4
ACC Big East Big Ten Big 12 Pac 12 SEC MWC MVC Other
| Team | Rank | Change | Record | AP | Sagarin |
| Syracuse | 1 | – | 27-1 | 2 | 4 |
| Kentucky | 2 | – | 26-1 | 1 | 1 |
| Missouri | 3 | – | 25-2 | 3 | 7 |
| Duke | 4 | ↑1 | 23-4 | 5 | 9 |
| Michigan St. | 5 | ↑1 | 22-5 | 6 | 5 |
| Ohio St. | 6 | ↓2 | 22-5 | 8 | 2 |
| Kansas | 7 | ↑1 | 22-5 | 4 | 3 |
| Marquette | 8 | ↑1 | 22-5 | 10 | 15 |
| North Carolina | 9 | ↑1 | 23-4 | 7 | 6 |
| Baylor | 10 | ↓3 | 22-5 | 13 | 14 |
| Wichita St. | 11 | ↑2 | 24-4 | 19 | 10 |
| Georgetown | 12 | ↑3 | 20-5 | 9 | 12 |
| Louisville | 13 | ↑1 | 21-6 | 17 | 18 |
| Wisconsin | 14 | ↓3 | 20-7 | 16 | 8 |
| Michigan | 15 | ↑1 | 20-7 | 11 | 22 |
| Indiana | 16 | ↓4 | 20-7 | 23 | 11 |
| Creighton | 17 | ↑2 | 23-5 | 26 | 27 |
| Florida | 18 | ↑4 | 21-6 | 12 | 13 |
| Murray St. | 19 | ↑7 | 26-1 | 14 | 47 |
| Temple | 20 | ↑3 | 21-5 | 22 | 32 |
| New Mexico | 21 | ↑4 | 22-4 | 18 | 16 |
| Florida St. | 22 | ↑10 | 19-7 | 15 | 21 |
| Gonzaga | 23 | ↓2 | 21-5 | 27 | 30 |
| Vanderbilt | 24 | ↑5 | 19-8 | 31 | 28 |
| Saint Louis | 25 | ↑5 | 22-5 | 29 | 17 |
26-35: Virginia, St. Mary’s-CA, UNLV, Notre Dame, Southern Miss, California, San Diego St., BYU, Alabama, Memphis
BCS: My offer still stands…….if you want to contact me you can send me a tweet @StatsInTheWild.
Cheers.
NCAA Basketball Rankings – 2/13/2012
Rankings as of 9:53am on 2/13/2012. Sagarin Ratings for games though 2/13/2012.
Previous rankings are here.
I had a bit of a data problem and the rankings were wrong last week. I’ve updated them and they are now correct.
Breakdown by conference: 4, 4, 5, 3, 0, 2, 1, 2, 4
ACC Big East Big Ten Big 12 Pac 12 SEC MWC MVC Other
| Team | Rank | Change | Record | AP | Sagarin |
| Syracuse | 1 | – | |||
| Kentucky | 2 | ↑1 | |||
| Missouri | 3 | ↑3 | |||
| Ohio St. | 4 | – | |||
| Duke | 5 | – | |||
| Michigan St. | 6 | ↑1 | |||
| Baylor | 7 | ↓5 | |||
| Kansas | 8 | ↑2 | |||
| Marquette | 9 | ↑2 | |||
| North Carolina | 10 | ↓2 | |||
| Wisconsin | 11 | ↑2 | |||
| Indiana | 12 | ↑3 | |||
| Wichita St. | 13 | ↑6 | |||
| Louisville | 14 | ↑6 | |||
| Georgetown | 15 | ↓3 | |||
| Michigan | 16 | ↑5 | |||
| UNLV | 17 | ↑1 | |||
| St. Mary’s-CA | 18 | ↓2 | |||
| Creighton | 19 | ↓10 | |||
| San Diego St. | 20 | ↓6 | |||
| Gonzaga | 21 | ↑7 | |||
| Florida | 22 | ↓5 | |||
| Temple | 23 | ↑11 | |||
| Virginia | 24 | ↓1 | |||
| New Mexico | 25 | – |
26-35: Murray St., Southern Miss, Mississippi St., Vanderbilt, Saint Louis, Illinois, Florida St., Alabama, Iowa St., Memphis
BCS: My offer still stands…….if you want to contact me you can send me a tweet @StatsInTheWild.
Cheers.
Academic Spring
I’ve been reading a lot about the boycott against Elsevier lately, and today I came across this article from slate.com called “The other academic freedom movement”. As I’ve moved along through graduate school and published a few articles, I’m a little bit surprised at some of the strange forces at work in the whole peer-review process. It seems to me that, and others have pointed this out, that scientists write articles for free, then get them peer-reviewed for free, then give away their copyright to a publisher who then make a ton of money. (Thats how Elsevier made $1.1 billion last year.) I resent the idea that some CEO of a publishing company is making millions of dollars a year off of the work of scientists at universities who are making a fraction of that. (How different is this than the CEO of a college bowl game making millions while the athletes get nothing but tuition?) Of course, the problem isn’t that simple. This is science and a big part of science is to share work with as many other people as possible. Science needs this communication with other scientists and a peer-review process. What if there were a way to get both of these without a publisher?
In my mind, at this point in time, a journal is just a stamp of approval. It’s just an abstract concept. In the past, journals needed to be physically published. It was the only way. But now I can publish whatever I want (this blog for instance), and it will reach potentially everyone one earth with an internet connection. So why not start an “abstract journal.” No head quarters, no profits, no business plan. Just a group of editors and experts who put their stamp of approval on the work you have done. If you’re work is accepted, it’s up to the author to make his work freely available on the internet somewhere (like a wordpress blog, which is free). The editor of the journal would simply post a list of accepted work with links to accepted articles, and anyone in the world could access this whether they are a top research scientist or just a curious individual with an internet connection.
Cheers.
Final NFL rankings – 2/9/2012
I was looking back at my NFL rankings over the past few months, and I found something interesting in my week 16 rankings. I actually had the NY Giants ranked higher than San Francisco.
Anyway, below are my final 2011-2012 NFL rankings.
Rankings updated as of 2/9/2012; Records updated as of 2/9/2012; CHFF rankings as of 12/28/2011
| Team | Rank | Change | Record | CHFF Rank |
| Green Bay | 1 | ↑ | 15-2 | 1 |
| New England | 2 | ↓ | 15-4 | 3 |
| Pittsburgh | 3 | – | 12-5 | 6 |
| Baltimore | 4 | – | 13-5 | 5 |
| New Orleans | 5 | ↑ | 14-4 | 2 |
| Atlanta | 6 | ↓ | 10-7 | 11 |
| NY Giants | 7 | ↑↑ | 13-7 | 10 |
| NY Jets | 8 | ↓ | 8-8 | 15 |
| Chicago | 9 | ↓ | 8-8 | 23 |
| San Francisco | 10 | – | 14-4 | 4 |
| Philadelphia | 11 | ↑ | 8-8 | 12 |
| San Diego | 12 | ↑ | 8-8 | 18 |
| Detroit | 13 | ↓↓ | 10-7 | 8 |
| Kansas City | 14 | ↑↑↑ | 7-9 | 26 |
| Oakland | 15 | ↓ | 8-8 | 14 |
| Tennessee | 16 | ↑↑↑↑↑↑ | 9-7 | 20 |
| Tampa Bay | 17 | ↓↓ | 4-12 | 31 |
| Houston | 18 | ↑ | 10-7 | 7 |
| Dallas | 19 | ↑↑ | 8-8 | 13 |
| Miami | 20 | ↓↓ | 6-10 | 22 |
| Seattle | 21 | ↓ | 7-9 | 19 |
| Denver | 22 | ↑↑ | 9-9 | 16 |
| Jacksonville | 23 | ↑↑↑↑↑↑ | 5-11 | 29 |
| Cincinnati | 24 | ↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓ | 9-8 | 9 |
| Indianapolis | 25 | – | 2-14 | 30 |
| Arizona | 26 | ↑↑ | 8-8 | 21 |
| Buffalo | 27 | ↓↓↓↓ | 6-10 | 24 |
| Washington | 28 | ↑↑ | 5-11 | 25 |
| Minnesota | 29 | ↓↓↓ | 3-13 | 28 |
| St. Louis | 30 | ↑↑ | 2-14 | 32 |
| Cleveland | 31 | ↓↓↓↓ | 4-12 | 27 |
| Carolina | 32 | ↓ | 6-10 | 17 |
BCS: My offer still stands…….if you want to contact me you can send me a tweet @StatsInTheWild.
Cheers.
Mindless Statistics
Below is the opening paragraph of the article Mindless Statistics by Gerd Gigerenzer (The bold was added by me):
I once visited a distinguished statistical textbook author, whose book went through many editions, and whose name does not matter. His textbook represents the relative best in the social sciences. He was not a statistician; otherwise, his text would likely not have been used in a psychology class. In an earlier edition, he had included a chapter on Bayesian statistics, and also mentioned (albeit in only one sentence) that there was a development in statistical theory from R.A. Fisher to Jerzy-Neyman and Egon S. Pearson. To mention the existence of alternative methods and the names associated with them is virtually unheard of in psychology. I asked the author why he removed the chapter on Bayes as well as the innocent sentence from all subsequent editions. “What made you present statistics as if it had only a single hammer, rather than a toolbox? Why did you mix Fisher’s and Neyman–Pearson’s theories into an inconsistent hybrid that every decent statistician would reject?”
To his credit, I should say that the author did not attempt to deny that he had produced the illusion that there is only one tool. But he let me know who was to blame for this. There were three culprits: his fellow researchers, the university administration, and his publisher. Most researchers, he argued, are not really interested in statistical thinking, but only in how to get their papers published. The administration at his university promoted researchers according to the number of their publications, which reinforced the researchers’ attitude. And he passed on the responsibility to his publisher, who demanded a single-recipe cookbook. No controversies, please. His publisher had forced him to take out the chapter on Bayes as well as the sentence that named alternative theories, he explained. At the end of our conversation, I asked him what kind of statistical theory he himself believed in. “Deep in my heart,” he confessed, “I am a Bayesian.”
If the author was telling me the truth, he had sold his heart for multiple editions of a famous book whose message he did not believe in. He had sacrificed his intellectual integrity for success. Ten thousands of students have read his text, believing that it reveals the method of science. Dozens of less informed textbook writers copied from his text, churning out a flood of offspring textbooks, and not noticing the mess.
Cheers.
NCAA Basketball Rankings – 2/6/2012
Rankings as of 11:05am on 2/6/2012. Sagarin Ratings for games though 2/5/2012. AP Poll as of 1/30/2012. (It’s 11:11 am on Monday and the AP poll isn’t out yet. What takes these guys so long?)
Previous rankings are here.
Two new teams this week: Murray St. and New Mexico. Murray St. is in the SITW top 25 for the first time this season, whereas New Mexico has been bouncing in and out all season. Murray St. finally gets into the top 25 at 23-0. It takes a lot to crack the top 25 when you’re playing in the Ohio Valley Conference.
Vanderbilt and Gonzaga drop out of the top 25. Vanderbilt falls out after losing both of it’s games this week (at Arkansas and at Florida) and Gonzaga drops out after a loss to BYU.
(Note: The Missouri Valley Conference will now be represented by red. In order for the Pac-12 to earn back their color, they will need to get a team in the top 25 and have all the MVC teams fall out of the top 25. Until that happens, Pac-12 teams will be listed in the “other” category.)
Breakdown by conference: 3, 4, 6, 3, 0, 2, 3, 2, 2
ACC Big East Big Ten Big 12 Pac 12 SEC MWC MVC Other
| Team | Rank | Change | Record | AP | Sagarin |
| Syracuse | 1 | – | 23-1 | 2 | 3 |
| Baylor | 2 | ↑1 | 21-2 | 6 | 9 |
| Kentucky | 3 | ↑1 | 23-1 | 1 | 2 |
| Ohio St. | 4 | ↓2 | 20-3 | 3 | 1 |
| Duke | 5 | – | 19-4 | 7 | 11 |
| Missouri | 6 | ↑2 | 21-2 | 4 | 5 |
| Michigan St. | 7 | ↓1 | 18-5 | 9 | 6 |
| North Carolina | 8 | ↑5 | 20-3 | 5 | 7 |
| Creighton | 9 | ↓2 | 21-3 | 13 | 17 |
| Kansas | 10 | – | 18-5 | 8 | 4 |
| Marquette | 11 | ↓2 | 19-5 | 15 | 16 |
| Georgetown | 12 | ↑6 | 18-4 | 14 | 13 |
| Wisconsin | 13 | ↓2 | 18-6 | 19 | 8 |
| San Diego St. | 14 | ↑2 | 20-3 | 17 | 47 |
| Indiana | 15 | ↓3 | 18-6 | 20 | 10 |
| St. Mary’s-CA | 16 | ↓1 | 22-2 | 18 | 21 |
| Florida | 17 | ↑6 | 19-4 | 12 | 12 |
| UNLV | 18 | ↓4 | 21-4 | 11 | 14 |
| Wichita St. | 19 | ↑2 | 20-4 | 30 | 15 |
| Louisville | 20 | ↓1 | 18-5 | 27 | 24 |
| Michigan | 21 | ↓4 | 17-7 | 23 | 29 |
| Illinois | 22 | ↓2 | 16-7 | 38 | 44 |
| Virginia | 23 | ↓1 | 18-4 | 16 | 22 |
| Murray St. | 24 | NR | 23-0 | 10 | 45 |
| New Mexico | 25 | NR | 19-4 | NR | 18 |
26-35: Southern Miss, Mississippi St., Gonzaga, Florida St., UConn, Vanderbilt, Iowa St., Alabama, Temple, Minnesota
BCS: My offer still stands…….if you want to contact me you can send me a tweet @StatsInTheWild.
Cheers.
A rules question about Super Bowl squares
I just came across the article “A Statistician Shares How To Pick Your Super Bowl Pool Like A Champ” at businessinsider.com. The author of the article, Jill Krasny, asked edgehogs.com statistician, William Briggs, for some advice:
“You want to pick the scores that are most likely to happen, and look at historical information about how score differentials (i.e., pairings) are most realized,” Briggs said. “You shouldn’t pick squares out of the blue that happen infrequently.”
Then she offers this note:
Note: Some people pick the labels on the rows and columns only after all the boxes have been bought, making the game more random. If your office does it this way, and not all do, these statistics will still help you figure your chance of winning.
I would argue that a fundamental rule of the Super Bowl squares game is that you pick a square BEFORE the numbers have been placed on the grid. Instead of saying “Some people” in her note, she should say “Almost all people.” (Am I wrong about this? I’ve never, ever seen the numbers on the board before the squares are filled in.)
The article is still of some use, though, as you get some idea of what your chances of winning are after you get your numbers. Of course, the whole premise that the article was written on (you get to choose your numbers) is almost never true.
Finally, they looked at the last 2,822 NFL games, but if you’re interested in complete results for over 14,000 games in a pretty heat map grid format, I’ve compiled that here.
Go Pats.
Cheers.
A Tale of Two Bradys: It was the best of his games; it was the worst of his games
Here is an article I wrote for Significance Magazine about Tom Brady and the Super Bowl called “A Tale of Two Bradys: It was the best of his games; it was the worst of his games.”
Go Pats.
Cheers.
Stats in the Wild 
