RD2L EST-SUN Playoffs: Ranking the Teams, Part I

Overcoming the Initial Rankings which have Less Diversity than USC Athletic Admissions

As RD2L playoffs start, there will be the inevitable comparisons, punditry, and discussions to determine who’s going to make a deep playoff run while who is set to crater in the first round. The problem you may quickly find is that all of the teams from a record perspective appear quite similar.

Just win baby!

Needless to say, lots of teams are bunched together. However, not all these teams are created equal. Some teams got their wins by beating talented squads, and others scraped by with byes, beating up garbage teams and sneaking in at the last minute.

Ranking Methodology: Rank-Order Scoring

In order to rank teams, we will be using a rank-ordering based method. A team’s total score is the sum of the reversed rank-orders of all the teams they’ve beat multiplied by the number of times they’ve beaten them. For example, beating the top team twice would earn one a score of 70 (35 x 2) for the series. This metric has the benefit of being easy to compute, easy to see what’s happening and giving some differentiation to all the teams.

However, there is an issue. After scoring all the teams the order can change. In order to combat this, the team’s rank-order scores are changed after the algorithm is run, new rank-order scores are assigned to each team and the ranks are re-calculated. This is run until the algorithm converges (until no teams change places after re-running).

This allows us to see what happens each time we run the algorithm, how the teams change places, and better understand the implication of the algorithm run.

Final Team Ranks

In the interest of not burying the lead, I’ll put the final ranks at the start of the article and leave the runs and computations for those interested in how I arrived at this result. I’ve also showed the results of all the runs

Torn (+1), 258 points

2. Insane Corndog (-1), 254 points

3. Econ, 235 points

4. Logical (+2), 231 points

5. Iceyeti (-1), 221 points

6. Chup (+2), 213 points

7. Znyper, 200 points

8. Squid (+1), 186 points

9. Tiramisu (+2), 152 points

10. Hullcity, 149 points

11. Pepega (+1), 144 points

12. Shmeezy (+3), 139 points

13. Mao (-8), 137 points

14. Droziki??? (+8) 124 points

15. Acidrain (-2), 120 points

16. Smacktrick, 119 points

17. Warcraft (+2), 116 points

18. Foosquash (-4), 106 points

19. United States Daniel (-1), 102 points

20. Unregister, 85 points

21. Trav2s, 86 points

22. Mu (-5), 60 points :-(

What follows is a summary of each run, how the ranks change, and what results seem to stand out. This can show how we reached these final rankings, why the Silicon gods are so confident in Droziki (and not so confident in Mao) and how an algorithm can quickly converge.

Run 1: First Run Rankings and Scores

The Silicon Gods are Pleased with Dogical

The first run produced some strong separation across the various teams. Teams that earned their wins beating up squads at the bottom were heavily penalized, while teams putting up quality wins were rewarded. Torn and Logical were both rewarded for a helping of quality wins over strong teams, boosting them over Corndog.

On the other end of the spectrum, Droziki was heavily awarded for wins over Shmeezy and Unregister near the start of the season.

Some separation among teams. Teams are ordered based on their initial ranks at end of season.

The sixth bar (in purple)shows a striking picture of how Logical’s team has a significantly higher score in the new rankings.

Run 2

Silicon gods giveth and taketh

Back to Reality

In the second run, Logical’s score falls back in line with some of his opponents and he drops 3. There is essentially a seesaw effect as the lower ranking of Corndog hurts logical, which in turn lets Corndog rise again. Generally speaking the scores themselves are becoming less volatile with fewer large swings, although the computers really seem to have a thing for Droziki.

Run 3

The computers wisely decide fuck Smactrick.

Run 4: Final Run

Mao loses the tiebreak on re-run

It may seem strange for only one team to drop, but this is the result of Mao and Shmeezy being tied on the previous run. Re-running the algorithm resolves the tie. Re-running again doesn’t change the order of any teams.

You’ll notice very little changes between the graphs in runs 3 and 4.