Bear of Bad News
"The Worst Guy on the Site" - user feedback
- Sep 27, 2005
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Given a playoff series between Team A and Team B, what variables can be reliably used to estimate Team A's chance of winning the series (prior to the start of the series)?
You'll hear a lot of things bandied about by pundits (usually in early April). Some off-the-cuff thoughts:
Relative seeds?
Points earned in the regular season? (In the season prior? In the season prior to that?)
Goals for / goals against in the regular season? (In the season prior? In the season prior to that?)
Playoff success in the most recent N seasons?
Power play success / penalty-kill success?
Average age of the team?
Amount of prior postseason experience on the team?
Team A's record against Team B during the season?
Ideally, we'd be able to come up with a logistic regression of sorts that takes in all sorts of available information to predict how Team A and Team B would fare if they squared off in the playoffs. We could come up with an R^2 value (and other descriptive metrics) and improve upon those values.
Parallel to that, we could also look at what types of teams regularly outperform the predictions. Are these teams special in some way that would improve the model? Or are they just special?
This could also lead into insights about how to construct a team that's playoff-optimal.
You'll hear a lot of things bandied about by pundits (usually in early April). Some off-the-cuff thoughts:
Relative seeds?
Points earned in the regular season? (In the season prior? In the season prior to that?)
Goals for / goals against in the regular season? (In the season prior? In the season prior to that?)
Playoff success in the most recent N seasons?
Power play success / penalty-kill success?
Average age of the team?
Amount of prior postseason experience on the team?
Team A's record against Team B during the season?
Ideally, we'd be able to come up with a logistic regression of sorts that takes in all sorts of available information to predict how Team A and Team B would fare if they squared off in the playoffs. We could come up with an R^2 value (and other descriptive metrics) and improve upon those values.
Parallel to that, we could also look at what types of teams regularly outperform the predictions. Are these teams special in some way that would improve the model? Or are they just special?
This could also lead into insights about how to construct a team that's playoff-optimal.