Saturday, December 19, 2015

Bowl Game Predictions and Confidence Rankings

For those participating in a Bowl Mania type competition, below I list the RWFL predictions and confidence rankings for each of the bowl games. The predicted winners are simply the higher ranked teams, while the confidence rankings are set by ranking the difference in percentage of random walkers voting for each team.

The RWFL rankings correctly picked 25 of 42 games for a total confidence score of 580 out of a possible 903. For reference, in the ESPN Capital One Bowl Mania competition, the RWFL rankings finished at the 70.1% of all entries. The winner had a score of 789 after correctly picking 34 of 42 games and remarkably left the confidence levels in their default order based on the chronological ordering of bowl games.

WinnerLoserConfidence Score
AkronUtah St1
Oklahoma StMississippi2
CincinnatiSan Diego St3
Southern CalWisconsin4
Western KentuckySouth Florida5
Michigan StAlabama6
Washington StMiami FL7
ConnecticutMarshall8
Colorado StNevada9
ToledoTemple10
MinnesotaCentral Michigan11
North CarolinaBaylor12
Winner of Cotton BowlWinner of Orange Bowl13
Virginia TechTulsa14
Georgia StSan Jose St15
MichiganFlorida16
TCUOregon17
Northern IllinoisBoise St18
HoustonFlorida St19
IndianaDuke20
GeorgiaPenn State21
ClemsonOklahoma22
North Carolina A&TAlcorn St23
IowaStanford24
Ohio StateNotre Dame25
West VirginiaArizona St26
Arkansas StLouisiana Tech27
Appalachian StOhio U.28
ArizonaNew Mexico29
UCLANebraska30
Western MichiganMiddle Tennessee St31
WashingtonSouthern Miss32
Bowling GreenGeorgia Southern33
Texas A&MLouisville34
NavyPittsburgh35
MemphisAuburn36
Mississippi StNorth Carolina St37
ArkansasKansas St38
UtahBrigham Young39
CaliforniaAir Force40
LSUTexas Tech41
NorthwesternTennessee42

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Sunday, December 6, 2015

Final Regular Season Rankings for 2015

The field is set! After some tight finishes, there were no real upsets yesterday. Later today the CFP committee will announce that the 4 team playoff will include Michigan State, Alabama, Clemson, and Oklahoma. The only suspense will be the seeding and the teams for the other major bowl games. Stanford sealed its Rose Bowl berth but just missed out on a playoff berth as Pac-12 champ. But will they play Iowa or Ohio State? 

Back to the seedings if you look at the figure below, you can see that the rankings for the top 3 change around p=0.75. For p around 0.5, where strength of schedule is more important, Alabama and Michigan State are 1 and 2. However, for p around 1, where win-loss record is more important, Clemson and Alabama are 1 and 2. And in the middle, Michigan State is number 1 and briefly Alabama and Clemson are number 2. Our ranking system agrees that the seeding is not an obvious decision and will depend on what criteria you weight the most.