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Certified Legendary Thread Race for the flag, in squiggly lines

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View attachment 277136 Totally erratic and pointless question Final Siren but I look at a few different measures and probabilities concerning outcomes this year. One of them is the Premiership Standard
http://premiershipstandard.com/?rnd=current
A while ago you posted a pic of "The Squiggle Sweet Spot" which was the centre of all premierships. I just wonder if this might also fall into the centre of the Premiership Quadrant. I've no idea how you would determine this and just thinking out aloud so apologies if it's a stupid and irrational question.
Wouldn't put much faith in that "premiership standard" "system". It's been debunked as just a selective use of stats that aren't effective at indicating a premier outside of a carefully selected period.
 
There's a reliable method of determining "premiership standard" - the team which wins the grand final was of "premiership standard"
So essentially what you're saying is the benefit of hindsight is a reliable method of determining it.

Colour me shocked.
 

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For your prediction to come off it requires Hawthorn to have gone:

Loss (Melbourne)
Win (North Melbourne)
Loss (West Coast)
Win (Collingwood)
Loss (Sydney)
Win (GWS)
Loss (Adelaide)

That's just 3 wins from 7 games. Or to put it another way, 3 losses from our next 5 games. We've only had 3 losses from our past 15 games.

I understand Hawthorn are on a decline and I'm not saying your prediction can't happen... but geez, that'd be a sudden drop off. Particularly with so many proven finals performers fit and playing good footy. And with blokes like Hodge and Burgoyne still a possibility of retiring at the end of the season I can't see them not responding strongly to a loss like we did on the weekend.

Does highlight at least just how important it is for Hawthorn to win their next 2 games and lock up top spot for home finals.
That wouldn't even be the most sudden drop-off this year, with last year's minor premier set to finish bottom-3 and North winning 9-0 then 3-8.

And of course once you hit finals, good teams commonly lose games. Last year Sydney went 16-6 then out in straight sets; Freo went 17-5 then 1-1. Hawthorn are probably the only team of the last few years not to exhibit a sharp drop in win rate come finals.

Plus there's a bit of the gambler's fallacy around the idea that you lost a game recently so you can't be due for another.

All that said, the Hawks are indeed proven finals performers like no other, and know how to peak at the right time, so I put nothing beyond them.
 
View attachment 277136 Totally erratic and pointless question Final Siren but I look at a few different measures and probabilities concerning outcomes this year. One of them is the Premiership Standard
http://premiershipstandard.com/?rnd=current
A while ago you posted a pic of "The Squiggle Sweet Spot" which was the centre of all premierships. I just wonder if this might also fall into the centre of the Premiership Quadrant. I've no idea how you would determine this and just thinking out aloud so apologies if it's a stupid and irrational question.
Not at all! I like questions.

I guess you could calculate the mean point and variance in both charts and fit one on top of the other. At this point of the year they'd even look pretty similar, because the season is old enough that fixture bias has mostly evened out, and that's the chief difference between the two: the squiggle cares about you're playing while PQ doesn't. Plus squiggle has the axis facing the right way. And it came first. And it doesn't say six teams are all premiership standard at once. But otherwise they are similar.

The real point though is I don't think there is a sweet spot. Collingwood 2011 had insanely good ratings (and were a mile inside the "Premiership Quadrant") but so did Geelong. It's not enough to look at a single team to judge whether it can win the flag; you have to consider who they need to beat.
 
That wouldn't even be the most sudden drop-off this year, with last year's minor premier set to finish bottom-3 and North winning 9-0 then 3-8.

And of course once you hit finals, good teams commonly lose games. Last year Sydney went 16-6 then out in straight sets; Freo went 17-5 then 1-1. Hawthorn are probably the only team of the last few years not to exhibit a sharp drop in win rate come finals.

Plus there's a bit of the gambler's fallacy around the idea that you lost a game recently so you can't be due for another.

All that said, the Hawks are indeed proven finals performers like no other, and know how to peak at the right time, so I put nothing beyond them.
Well the only way a top 4 side can exit a finals series with a greater than 1:1 winning record is by making a GF.

Given Hawthorn would rightly (given our recent form and close results) go in underdogs against the Swans in Sydney and the Crows in Adelaide and the only way those 2 games hit our finals fixture is if we drop 1 of our next 2 games I guess it is fair and logical to suggest we lose 3 of our next 5.

Again highlights the importance for Hawthorn to close out the next 2 games and finish top if we want a good chance of wining the flag.
 
West coast v Hawks at domain

If west coast win ....the flag is open race between all the sides even Hawks from 4th (I suspect that's where they will finish if west coast win)

Swans GWS crows Geelong all in it

West coast, dogs can't win it probably but they will provide very stiff competition whoever they play

Great season
 
Yep Friday night is a huge game in the context of this season. If Hawks win they will be very hard to stop again.


I agree

Geez I hope we can't beat them

I'm confident we can win ...our form is ok ...despite all the blah blah we've lost one game since the bye .....

Friday night ...big lights big stage ......Subiaco will be pumpin ....even if we can't win flag I'd be happy for us to stop the Hawks from winning it
 

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I agree

Geez I hope we can't beat them

I'm confident we can win ...our form is ok ...despite all the blah blah we've lost one game since the bye .....

Friday night ...big lights big stage ......Subiaco will be pumpin ....even if we can't win flag I'd be happy for us to stop the Hawks from winning it

Yes, I hope you can't beat us too. ;)
 
Even if you know which teams will make up the top eight, and which teams will make up the bottom ten, there are still 146313216000 possibilities.
This is a bit out of my depth, but does that not assume complete randomness of selections available for each position though? Positions on the ladder are not completely random? They're based on previous outcomes (wins/losses) etc. So expected outcomes/predicted outcomes would significantly reduce possibilities. Just my thoughts, but I reckon you could narrow most teams down to within a 3-4 position range at the start of the season.
 
This is a bit out of my depth, but does that not assume complete randomness of selections available for each position though? Positions on the ladder are not completely random? They're based on previous outcomes (wins/losses) etc. So expected outcomes/predicted outcomes would significantly reduce possibilities. Just my thoughts, but I reckon you could narrow most teams down to within a 3-4 position range at the start of the season.

Yes that is using complete random conditional probability.

I actually started a post the other day how this could be narrowed down greatly simply by choosing 4 teams most likely to be #1, and only doing ladder combinations with those 4, and narrow further by selecting 4 teams which will be last on ladder

However then looked at reality in that Fremantle would have definitely been in most peoples top 8's (and not in their bottom 4) so using this method would still result in you getting it wrong.

So fully random conditional probability is probably over-stating it, but even if you narrow it down from 18^18 (fully random) to 16^16*4^4 (1st and last each 4 teams possible), its still a number in the hundreds of billions.

And once you narrow it down too much you actually miss reality because a team that you had in 1 band falls to a scenario you didnt do.

Edit: that math may be off as well, I havent done conditional probability modelling in ages so have probably made a mistake.
 
This is a bit out of my depth, but does that not assume complete randomness of selections available for each position though? Positions on the ladder are not completely random? They're based on previous outcomes (wins/losses) etc. So expected outcomes/predicted outcomes would significantly reduce possibilities. Just my thoughts, but I reckon you could narrow most teams down to within a 3-4 position range at the start of the season.
That's pretty optimistic... this article analyzes the similarity of ladders year to year, and there's actually a wide spread, especially for the teams that finish 4th-14th. For example, the team that finished 6th in 1997-2012 only finished between 3rd-12th 53% of the time the following year.

But even if each ladder rung had only 3 possible teams that could fill it, that's something like 86 million different combinations (3^16 x 2 x 1)!
 
Yes that is using complete random conditional probability.

I actually started a post the other day how this could be narrowed down greatly simply by choosing 4 teams most likely to be #1, and only doing ladder combinations with those 4, and narrow further by selecting 4 teams which will be last on ladder

However then looked at reality in that Fremantle would have definitely been in most peoples top 8's (and not in their bottom 4) so using this method would still result in you getting it wrong.

So fully random conditional probability is probably over-stating it, but even if you narrow it down from 18^18 (fully random) to 16^16*4^4 (1st and last each 4 teams possible), its still a number in the hundreds of billions.

And once you narrow it down too much you actually miss reality because a team that you had in 1 band falls to a scenario you didnt do.

Edit: that math may be off as well, I havent done conditional probability modelling in ages so have probably made a mistake.

As you stated yourself, it still doesn't work when you've got unexpected falls like Freo (who would have put them in the bottom 4 at the start of the season) and unexpected rises (who would have put Adelaide in the top 4 at the start of the year?).

So if you get one of those wrong then you've already got a 0% chance of getting things right.

Even if you did it mid-season you'd have no guarantees. North were 9-0 to start the season. If they'd gone on with it they would have been top 2. Instead they could potentially finish 9th.
 

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Flagpole! Crows were 3rd on that before the start of the season.

Although only 8th on the Ladder Predictor, so your point stands.

Where were they on net rating? The predictor would have viewed the Crows' prospects grimly, before it became apparent that some of Adelaide's double matchups were in declne.
 
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Footy Maths do calculations like that every week. They have Melbourne on 0%.

Tower of Power agrees. I did 100,000 simulations and Melbourne didn't make the 8 in any of them. So that's 0.000%.

Edit: Wrong, see below.

I'm a bit late to this discussion, but yes mid week last week Melb was listed as 0% (was a very low % but I trim off the small fry).
Current estimation has them at 3% (actual 2.95%).

Interesting that throughout the 2nd half of the year, the outsiders for 8th have been mainly PA and STK. Melb have not had any notable (+1% !) claim on 8th since R9 (by my data anyway).
 
Flagpole! Crows were 3rd on that before the start of the season.

Although only 8th on the Ladder Predictor, so your point stands.
Adelaide were pretty high throughout last season too, even though they really didn't make much of a dent.

Question is though, who will finish higher, Swans or Crows?
 
Said it earlier in the season and saying it again, Adelaide are overrated. They may lead the league in score for, but are 7th on the least conceded list. They've won away from home but not with regularity and have even struggled at home.

If Adelaide has a home final they'll make a prelim, but I doubt they'll make the big dance.
 

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