[EM] Re: Condorcet baseball rankings

[Ted Stern]

On 29 Oct 2004 at 15:40 PDT, Paul Kislanko wrote:
> You can't substitute "games-won" for "votes". They are two different things.
>
> I take things seriously, including mathematical logic.

[Insert old joke about balloonist in clouds and mathematician on the ground]

>
> If you were "implying that Condorcet completion methods such as RP or
> Beatpath could be used to evaluate the round-robin winner when no team is
> undefeated by any other" you are mistaking both sports contests and voting
> methods.
>
> It is much more likely that the hundreds of rating systems developed for
> comparing sports teams who haven't played head-to-head would be applicable
> to a voting system than it is for a voting system to be applicable to
> sorting out who's the best team in a sporting event.
>
The Boston Red Sox may have won, in part, because they have followed the
"Moneyball" credo seriously for several years in order to put together a more
powerful team on their budget than conventional baseball statistics would have
predicted.  So I think my original question isn't *too* far off topic.

Otherwise, you can ignore simply ignore this thread if you think it too
frivolous ;-).

If you're willing to engage in a less serious but constructive discussion,
then help me out here: I don't think that total games won is the optimal
criterion for the best team in a division.  What would be a better measure?
And why doesn't MLB use it?

Ted
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