Hoophead2001
01-15-2016, 04:14 PM
After a couple years of hard work, and working out a bunch of kinks, I'm finally ready to release my site to the public.
http://www.rpistats.com
After a few years of missing the NCAA tournament (I’m a Terps fan), I noticed that our schedule was contributing to our poor RPI and it made our chances of making the NCAA tournament even slimmer. I also noticed that many in the media would continue to tout teams RPI when comparing one team to another. I also realized that many in the media didn't understand how the RPI formula works. The RPI formula does a decent job of providing a tool to evaluate teams but it has some pretty obvious flaws which I realized could be fixed.
Beating a team with a bad RPI actually hurts your RPI. Many teams are penalized for WINNING games. I thought this was absurd. I can certainly understand that teams shouldn’t be rewarded for beating “cupcakes” but I do not feel any team should be penalized for winning games.
Losing to a good RPI team can help your RPI. That’s right, LOSING games against good teams helps your RPI. I believe teams should be rewarded for winning against a good opponent but they shouldn’t be rewarded for LOSING games.
RPISTATs Index Enhancements: The RPISTATS Index improves on these flaws by removing bogus games from the RPI equation. Bogus games are defined as games where a win will hurt a team’s RPI and a loss will help a team’s RPI. RPISTATS has developed two new formulas which improve the existing RPI formula.
RPISTATS Index (RPIS) - This formula improves upon the existing RPI formula by removing what we consider Bogus games from the calculations. A bogus game is a win that actually hurts a team's RPI or a loss that helps a team's RPI. It seems crazy to think that winning a game could hurt your RPI ranking but very often that is exactly what happens. Similarly a loss against a good team can actually help your RPI. In the RPIS calculation, a win never hurts the index and a loss never helps. We think that's better way of comparing teams, and not surprising, after analyzing thousands of historical data, the RPIS is better at predicting wins vs losses as compared to the RPI. So both math and logic dictate the RPIS is a better formula than the RPI.
RPISTATS Premium Index (RPISP) - This formula goes a step further than the RPIS. In addition to the improvements of the RPIS, the weighting of Winning Percentage, Opponents Winning Percentage, and Opponents Opponents Winning Percentage have been optimized to a percentage that best predicts how good a team is based on wins and losses. It also improves upon the home court weighting factor to use the true home court advantage as determined by comparing home vs road records of teams within their own conference. The current RPI formula gives a little too much credit to road teams and this formula fixes that. Not surprising, after testing this formula against the RPI and RPIS it was found to be the most accurate at predicting wins and losses.
Currently Xavier’s RPI rating is 2, its RPIS rating is 1, and it RPISP rating is 1. Xavier’s wins over Miami(Ohio), Missouri, Northern Kentucky, Western Kentuky, Wright St, Auburn, St. Johns, and Depaul are currently hurting your RPI score.
The site is still a work in progress and there are many more enhancements coming in the near future like win-out RPI calculations, graphs which track changes in the rankings over time, and a cool bracketology feature. Please check out the site and let me know what you think. You can also follow me on twitter @RPISTATS
http://www.rpistats.com
After a few years of missing the NCAA tournament (I’m a Terps fan), I noticed that our schedule was contributing to our poor RPI and it made our chances of making the NCAA tournament even slimmer. I also noticed that many in the media would continue to tout teams RPI when comparing one team to another. I also realized that many in the media didn't understand how the RPI formula works. The RPI formula does a decent job of providing a tool to evaluate teams but it has some pretty obvious flaws which I realized could be fixed.
Beating a team with a bad RPI actually hurts your RPI. Many teams are penalized for WINNING games. I thought this was absurd. I can certainly understand that teams shouldn’t be rewarded for beating “cupcakes” but I do not feel any team should be penalized for winning games.
Losing to a good RPI team can help your RPI. That’s right, LOSING games against good teams helps your RPI. I believe teams should be rewarded for winning against a good opponent but they shouldn’t be rewarded for LOSING games.
RPISTATs Index Enhancements: The RPISTATS Index improves on these flaws by removing bogus games from the RPI equation. Bogus games are defined as games where a win will hurt a team’s RPI and a loss will help a team’s RPI. RPISTATS has developed two new formulas which improve the existing RPI formula.
RPISTATS Index (RPIS) - This formula improves upon the existing RPI formula by removing what we consider Bogus games from the calculations. A bogus game is a win that actually hurts a team's RPI or a loss that helps a team's RPI. It seems crazy to think that winning a game could hurt your RPI ranking but very often that is exactly what happens. Similarly a loss against a good team can actually help your RPI. In the RPIS calculation, a win never hurts the index and a loss never helps. We think that's better way of comparing teams, and not surprising, after analyzing thousands of historical data, the RPIS is better at predicting wins vs losses as compared to the RPI. So both math and logic dictate the RPIS is a better formula than the RPI.
RPISTATS Premium Index (RPISP) - This formula goes a step further than the RPIS. In addition to the improvements of the RPIS, the weighting of Winning Percentage, Opponents Winning Percentage, and Opponents Opponents Winning Percentage have been optimized to a percentage that best predicts how good a team is based on wins and losses. It also improves upon the home court weighting factor to use the true home court advantage as determined by comparing home vs road records of teams within their own conference. The current RPI formula gives a little too much credit to road teams and this formula fixes that. Not surprising, after testing this formula against the RPI and RPIS it was found to be the most accurate at predicting wins and losses.
Currently Xavier’s RPI rating is 2, its RPIS rating is 1, and it RPISP rating is 1. Xavier’s wins over Miami(Ohio), Missouri, Northern Kentucky, Western Kentuky, Wright St, Auburn, St. Johns, and Depaul are currently hurting your RPI score.
The site is still a work in progress and there are many more enhancements coming in the near future like win-out RPI calculations, graphs which track changes in the rankings over time, and a cool bracketology feature. Please check out the site and let me know what you think. You can also follow me on twitter @RPISTATS