Hi CPT.. Below two entries for the non-human division. I didn't have tome to assemble these until now, but rest assured they are based on the published poll of the United Soccer Coaches and published rankings of Top Drawer Soccer. Ignore or do as you think best with these entries. I personally think that they are interesting just to compare with the machine/statistical division. In my mind the individual entries are assumed to contain bias, hunches, and partisan wishful thinking while the poll (especially as conducted by the USC) is an amalgam of the informed views of local and regional coaches. Such an amalgam should be pretty close to how a statistician would devise a method to calculate a ranking, it would seem. The Top Drawer Ranking is an enigma in that we do not have any idea of how it is concocted. It could be a single employee in his booth to a gang at a weekly party at the bar. Who knows? The USC entry is fundamentally based on Poll #12 published on 11/12/19. All but two games wins are simply a product of which team was ranked higher by the USC coaches. The two games that had to be based on an earlier version of the USC poll (in that there was no mention of the teams involved in poll #12) were St Louis-Notre Dame and Arizona-TCU. (The higher ranking in a previously published poll determined the winner.) The same method is used for the Top Drawer Rankings #13 published 11/13/19. However in this case, 3 of the 32 winners had to be dug out from previously published TDS rankings, and one entry (AZ vs TCU) had to be fudged (AZ) in that neither of these teams had ever been mentioned in the TDS rankings this year. So do with these as you see fit! Cheers! United Soccer Coaches Poll First Round Stanford Hofstra TCU PSU Askansas NCSU Louisville BYU UCLA Vanderbilt Duke Wisconsin Washington Florida Brown FSU Virginia Memphis Georgetown Rutgers Kansas Xavier St Louis South Carolina USC TAMU Santa Clara Oklahoma St Texas Tech Michigan Colorado North Carolina Second Round Stanford Penn State Arkansas BYU UCLA Wisconsin Washington FSU Virginia Rutgers Kansas South Carolina USC Oklahoma St Texas Tech North Carolina Third Round Stanford BYU UCLA PSU Virginia South Carolina USC North Carolina Fourth Round Stanford FSU Virginia North Carolina Semi Final Stanford North Carolina Champion Stanford *********** Top Drawer Soccer First Round Stanford Hofstra Arizona Penn State Arkansas NCSU Louisville BYU UCLA Clemson Duke Wisconsin Washington South Florida Brown FSU Virginia Memphis Georgetown Rutgers Kansas Virginia Tech Notre Dame South Carolina USC TAMU CAL Oklahoma St Texas Tech Michigan Colorado North Carolina Second Round Stanford Penn State Arkansas BYU UCLA WIsconsin South Florida FSU Virginia Rutgers Kansas South Carolina USC Oklahoma St Texas Tech North Carolina Third Round Stanford BYU UCLA PSU Virginia South Carolina USC North Carolina Fourth Round Stanford FSU Virginia North Carolina Semi Finals Stanford North Carolina Champion North Carolina
They're in! I put them in a "groups" group with the Committee, since they're group predictors supposedly with some expertise. Altogether now we have 27 humans, three groups, and four machines, for a total of 34 contestants. At the moment, Mills continues in sole possession of first place, by 1 point!
@cpthomas I just realized that I forgot to add the winner of the Virginia vs Rutgers winner in the 3rd round. It should be Virginia. You can verify by looking at the rounds above the 3rd, and by looking at my pick in the 4th round. I picked Virginia to advance in the 4th in the match between Virgnia and South Carolina. You can also verify by looking at my exact same bracket on the November Madness website (which is locked to any changes): http://www.novembermadness.com/bracket.php?u=7770 Thanks.
No problem, I saw who you had in the next round when I entered your predictions and put Virginia in where you had intended it.
Here are the standings after today's (Saturday's) Round 1 games, with the last Round 1 game set for tomorrow (Notre Dame v St Louis). Mills continues to lead the Human Division by a point and also has the all-Division lead. The Committee leads the Group Division. The machines are tied in the Machine Division. Crane 65, Playsimple, the Committee, and all of the machines are a point behind Mills. [Tomorrow, I'll change the programming for the Rank column so it shows those tied for second as ranked #2, and so on. That will make it easier to interpret.]
Only 1 entry better than NCAA selection committee and the coaches poll not looking so good after round one.
Thanks to Crane65, I see that I had not entered an actual game result into the data base. It was Virginia's win, which everyone predicted, so it doesn't affect the standings. Here are the correct numbers, with the standings format revised so that #2 means tied for second, etc. Thus 2 humans, 1 group, and all 4 machines tied for second.
On average, the selection committee should perform well since their selections confer an advantage to the selected teams with seeding placement and home field advantage. No other selectors get that luxury.
Just a note to all the contestants.... At this point everyone entered has a shot at winning the contest. The present 8 point differential represents only one different pick in the last three rounds. It is these next two rounds that really start to separate the sheep from the goats and put about a third of the contestants in a possible position to win. Past winners have also included those to who took risks by bucking the conventional wisdom, and in some cases the last in the first round shall be first! (But no promises.) Keep watching!
And, here are the standings after completion of the first round, with no changes at the top. In the second round, correct predictions are worth 3 points each, so maybe a little movement coming up?
I was going through the predictions to see which games we all missed and how often, and I discovered three data entry errors that cost predictors some points, most notably costing dmthomas49 2 points. I've made those corrections, so here are the corrected standings with dmthomas49 moving up into the second place tie.
Looking through the 1st Round scores, here are the games that had incorrect predictions, with the number incorrect listed with the game. Amazingly, there were 22 games with at least 1 missed prediction, which seems like a lot. Rutgers (Home, Loss) v Central Connecticut - 34 misses (every body and group and machine) Georgetown (H, L) v West Virginia - 29 Florida (H,L) v South Florida - 24 Virginia Tech (H, L) v Xavier - 21 Washington State (H,W) v Memphis - 14 Clemson (H,W) v Vanderbilt - 11 Texas Tech (H,W) v Pepperdine - 11 Arizona (H,W) v TCU - 10 Brown (H,W) v Monmouth - 8 Washington (H,W) v Seattle - 5 Kansas (H,W) v Iowa - 5 Notre Dame (H,W) v St Louis - 5 Duke (H,W) v Utah - 5 Southern California (H,W) v CS Fullerton - 4 Santa Clara (H,W) v California - 4 Hofstra (H,W) v Loyola Chicago - 3 NC State (H,W) v Navy - 3 Arkansas (H,W) v North Texas - 2 Wisconsin (H,W) v Milwaukee - 2 Louisville (H,W) v Lipscomb - 1 Oklahoma State (H,W) v South Dakota State - 1 Texas A&M (H,W) v Texas - 1 The 4 most missed games all were games the home team lost. In all the other games with missed predictions, the home team won.
For people with airline miles on American and United, short-notice domestic round-trips are available for as little as 10,000 miles on American and 15,000 (I think) on United. Must be a slow week for air travel. In my case, Grand Junction, Colorado to Raleigh, North Carolina to watch the Buffs and Tar Heels was $717 minimum, which means I’d be watching it on line. But I got the round trip for 10,000 miles on American. Just a thought, for anybody who would like to support your team in person but can’t or doesn’t want to pay the high short-notice airfare.
It is. And it can be a lot more. But it must be a slow air travel week. I could leave as late as Sunday and return as late as Monday for 10K round trip. Returning Tuesday bumped it to 11K. After that, Thanksgiving. It could be more from other locations, but Grand Junction is usually kind of costly to fly out of or into.
Thanks CP. Was it my data entry or yours? I know we are not related with same last name. But I think I have met you at Pilot matches some years ago.
It was my error -- I take each predictor's list and enter it manually into a spreadsheet for that predictor. I have team name conventions, so when I'm entering predictions, I translate the name the predictor used to the name that fits my convention. One of the things I have to do is spell correctly when I'm entering it. I made some misspellings for a couple of predicted winnings, including on your spreadsheet. (There's a way to avoid that happening, but I didn't use it this year, I'll probably add it next year.) This may sound tedious, but I do so much data entry that I'm used to it and it goes pretty quickly. The benefit of the way my predictions workbook functions is that once I have all the predictions entered, I simply enter the actual game winners into an Actual Results worksheet and hit f9 (the caluclation command). That immediately fills out the results table that I've been posting after each round. So, once Tournament play actually begins, everything else I do is very easy.
Woo Hoo, we have 7 humans who correctly picked NC State over Arkansas! It looks like we may have some significant standings changes by the end of the day.
lovethegsme and soccerhunter have taken over the lead in the human category, getting both games tonight, and Mills is in 3rd, with a whole bunch tied for 4th. The Committee leads the group category and is tied for 4th overall. All of the machines are tied and together sit within the bunch tied for 4th. Fourteen games coming tomorrow!