About the Application

Data sets to work with:

These results are compiled in publicly available Google Drive Spreadsheets, and could be transferred into a MySQL database if needed. Most likely, they will be transferred.

Problems Identified:

The NCDA is a small, divided league, mostly concentrated in the Midwest with 25 Member Teams. There isn't a set or required amount of games per season, nor required opponents, and in many ways the Nationals weekend is the only league matches a Team could get all year. In order to be a fair representation, Rankings needs to take in effect the following:

• Isolated, satellite teams on the periphery (Nebraska, Louisiana, New York)
• Teams that play each other many times over the Season (MI, KY, East Coast, Chicago)
• Dominating programs in close proximity to each other (Michigan)
• Some teams may have 20 game seasons, some may have 4 game or fewer seasons.
• Teams may not play at all during one season, then pick up play in the next.
• Results are not explicitly cumulative. For example, a tournament may have 10 matches played, but they might not be reliably listed chronologically, in an hour by hour way. This is a problem for strength of schedule calculations. (Must include a special rule that all games on the same date have the same inherent SoS or Ratings Change for that day.)
• Using a margin of victory bonus is not reliable because of:
• Inaccurate reporting of the actual final point total of the match.
• Point differential is not an accurate display of team strength in the sport of Dodgeball. A more reliable statistic would rely on throws, catches, team catches and the other types of actual gameplay, but obviously this is unfeasible for a large ranking scale.
• Retaining the ability to change the formula on a year to year basis, adapting to the needs of the League.
• Overtime can gain more prominence because of stallball tactics.

Nationals:

Any ranking system we come up with is ultimately designed for the Nationals event. Considering Nationals, the Event consists of two portions, pool play and a tournament bracket.

Pool play is used by many teams to be a considerable amount of that team's matches during the course of the Season. The goal has always been to give teams games against teams they wouldn't normally meet because of geographic/funding/travel difficulties. Pool play matches should be scheduled to give a competing team:

1. A fun and valuable experience (matches relating to hard, even, and easy levels of play).
2. Matches against opponents they might not have played before (because of the sheer amount of games played in the Season, some Teams can't be guaranteed never-played-before teams)

Conventional tournament seeding dictates high seeds against low seeds, but this assumes that the seed has a reliable "predictive accuracy". The IRB rankings explanations explains: "If, over a period of time, the system tends to be good at predicting which side will win each match, then we can be confident that it is presenting an accurate and reliable picture of current strength, and responding appropriately to changes in form." A reliable predictive accuracy is what we should be focused on creating, in regards to a dodgeball ranking system.

Other Misc (Radical Radical) Ideas:

• Dismissing Standings all together for pool play, teams sort out their own matchups, pick up style.
• Dismissing pool play, teams play a bunch of fun based Rulesets instead of NCDA rules. Sunday remains using the classic NCDA Tournament bracket.
• Only using the last 10 matches (or variation of) to determine Standings
• Including last year’s Nationals results in the pool play calculation, along with the regular season results.
• Using a weighted average of all the different systems instead of a equal average idea that was presented.