Debate - World footy rankings 2008 - other countries to consider

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Debate - World footy rankings 2008 - other countries to consider

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Wednesday, February 17 2010 @ 08:36 pm ACDT

Firstly I want to own up that I love statistics. So I like the effort and idea behind what you've done. But I reckon a scientist/statistician/whatever sometimes has to accept that there just isn't enough data.

In terms of Denmark not getting within 100 of NZ or PNG (Aaron's comment), which I think you are disputing by referencing 2002 results, that's kind of the point. The nature of international footy is that it's changing pretty quickly, so 2002 and even 2005 is far too outdated to include. Would you rank AFL teams for 2009 or 2010 based on 2002 results? And actually, you mention in 2008 SA def Denmark by 45. Well PNG def SA by 47 in the same tournament. So that's 92 points between PNG to SA to Denmark, so Aaron's comment is pretty reasonable. And one and half years on I'd expect PNG will have improved even further.

Really, I think given the 3 year cycle of International Cups, when the vast majority of full scale matches with the majority of players available are played, a measure really needs to just include from the last Cup to the present, so say 2008 onwards. If that means insufficient data to be meaningful, adding out of date data won't help.

"The point of my suggestion is that as there is no official ranking scheme and altho I think your rankings were probably pretty spot on, there is little empirical data to actually support it".

Not quite right. Although the data hasn't been putting into an explicit mathematical formula, the starting point for our last rankings was the finishing positions at the end of IC08, so the starting point was a real ranking resulting from all the games played at that tournament. And as we detailed in the series of stories leading up to the rankings, we took into account subsequent matches like the EU Cup when teams were roughly representative of their country's best locals and discount some teams which were from limited areas or mainly expats, so we were careful to use just the appropriate results and that required talking to people at the time.

So really what we're looking at is a complicated algorithm that has to factor in matches but weight against them quite strongly as they drift into history, which discounts other matches if the teams were not truly representative of their countries, include those that are, and consider any other special circumstances.

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World Footy Rankings 2008

Sorry, I'm not persuaded yet. And if you agree with our results as being "probably spot on", then your algorithm has to at least get close before being a valid alternative doesn't it?

Would be happy to see your results just including 2008 onwards, and listing what games were included.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

Debate - World footy rankings 2008 - other countries to consider

Authored by: Cam Homes
on Thursday, February 18 2010 @ 04:30 pm ACDT

Brett
Forever only looking at the last half dozen or so games played will not bring about a ranking that can be tested. It will always be open to dispute eg. our team has been training hard getting expert coaching we didn't have before when the next game is played we're gunna be much better and move up the rankings!!! we might have 20 experts agree with that statement BUT that can only be tested after that next match. win = rise up rankings, star player breaks leg goal kickers have crap day kick 1 - 10 instead of 10 -1. 20 experts proved wrong. Take a look at the Rugby Rankings and their assumptions at IRB World Rankings - explanations - Probably more succinct than I can ever be. And I keep coming back to the paupacity of matches played internationally in Aussie Rules is our problem and that we must start some where and if we keep ruling out games because they were played more than 4- 5 -10 years ago and by using them they might not agree with how we think the standard of play is improving in this country or that country then we will never accumulate enough matches to ever be able to rank the countries with an empirical ranking scheme. Again as the AFL are totally unlikely to set one up and you do set up an unofficial official ranking scheme it just might prompt the AFL to do so, as we all know the AFL doesn't like other organisations doing AFL things without them having their finger in the pie, especially if it looks like it might be successful.
Cam

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

Debate - World footy rankings 2008 - other countries to consider

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Thursday, February 18 2010 @ 11:34 pm ACDT

I understand your point that some kind of mathematical system might encourage teams to compete more or the AFL to do their own system, but I think it's unlikely to make much difference in either case - countries already like to compete, it's costs and player availability that hold them back quite often. And the AFL didn't jump to implement a system in response to ours. I think they recognise that there isn't enough data.

So I can see the motivation but I just can't agree with a system if it produces a completely invalid result. I guess we agree to disagree - you reckon lack of data means include data that is old to at least get a result, I reckon it's just including bad data to give bad results.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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