Guest Post by Heedsy
The Predictor Leaderboard – Figures Fool and Fools Figure The Predictor League has proved to be a popular bit of fun to supplement our other ramblings on WHTID and fill our every waking hours in the run up to match days. The efforts of Iain and Russell who have devoted their own time to this are very much appreciated. However, there are some things that just don’t add up and as a bit OCD when it comes to numbers, it’s been bugging me.
The problem is with the cumulative leaderboard. It doesn’t operate on the same basis for everyone because not everybody has predicted for the same number of games. For example – if 2 predictors have received say 50 points for each of their submissions, with Player 1 making 5 submission and Player 2 making 10, then the Cumulative Leaderboard will show them each as having 50 points. However, if on the next entry each player receives 70 points then the leaderboard will show Player 1 as having 53.33 points and Player 2 as having 51.82 with Player 1 gaining a mathematical advantage while making the same prediction. The opposite is also true if players receive less than their current average. In addition it can be an advantage to opt out on less predictable weeks (such as last week) and just submit the more predictable ones to get that mathematical advantage. Not that any of us would resort to such underhand tactics.
My view is that the winner should be the person that submits the most accurate predictions and not the least.
To achieve this aim it would be necessary to average everyone’s scores over the total available games. This will no doubt lead to all sorts of protests. In fact the top five would change to
1. Pie & Mash 64.5
2. Keith astley 62.7
3. Andy Smith 62.7
4. MABIRON 62.5
5. Jonathan Lane 61.8
…with many of the current leaders falling down to mid table. But surely Pie & Mashes terrific efforts of getting 64.5 points over 13 games needs to be recognised over somebody that has a higher score but only over say 9 games. It is no coincident that Pie & Mash is the only entrant in the current top 10 that has hit every game.
The downside of this is that people who enter now or who have already missed a few games stand little chance of winning, without getting a few 100 pointers.
So what do we do? Your suggestions would be much appreciated.
As another suggestion I feel it would be really helpful to be able to view the elements that you received points for each week. A few weeks ago I didn’t feel I was getting all the points I should. It transpired that the system had a glitch whereby you needed to get the crowd right to the last person to get the points. This has now been fixed and backdated but could have been solved quicker if we had the suggested facility. Having said that I do appreciate that Russell gives his limited time for free to fix these problems
A reminder that the Predictor League for Newcastle is now open.