SluSignGuy Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 Not swimming pool, but like Office Pool style. For NCAA Basketball. Since with all the talk about predictions. It may be nice to do more than just one preseason prediction. Like do a game by game thing. Anyone have any ideas (we could just use the board, but that would take a lot of time for the person compiling the data, and I don't think I can do that this year. If someone else would like to, GREAT, but it is a time consumer). So if anyone knows of good software, preferable that can be online (I can put it on through Billikens.com). Just wondering. I have only ran into the pro sports and college football and NCAA Tournament. Thanks, Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 Give me more details about what you're proposing. I'm wondering if it can't be done with Excel. I already have Excel files on my computer to compile SLU's season stats and note which games have been won or lost (after I enter each game's raw data by hand of course, but maybe one day I'll build a Perl script that can do it automatically on a server), and I might be able to come up with something for this community's contest (so long as there are only around 20 to 30 contestants -- 100 leads to too much data entry!). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SluSignGuy Posted August 20, 2003 Author Share Posted August 20, 2003 I dunno. Maybe have a point system. Let's say we have 25 People. The person with the closest to the actual FINAL Winning Percentage of the team gets 25 points. The next closest gets 24, and so on. Then before each game, people could predict the following. Who will win the next Bills game? If correct worth 1 point. What is the spread? The 3 closest get an additional 1 point. Who is the Billikens' High Scorer with how many? If exact one bonus point. Then RANDOM Question, (example) how many trips to the line will SLU get? If exact 1 Bonus. We could have a seperate board for it so the messages are easier to read and such. And I could have a default form so it is even easier formatting. You think you could do that? It will be a fair amount of work updating, especially if everyone participates. We could even have it be on an honor system somewhat. To enter you predictions you start a thread. Then after the game, you say how many points you should be rewarded IN a reply to that Message. Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjray Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 I like the idea of having a system for monitoring how well each poster does at predicting the outcome of the following Bills game--if that is what you guys are proposing. I would especially like to see how T&T does with a scoring system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 I doubt I could accomplish that with any number of linked Excel spreadsheets. I'm sure it's possible with any number of languages, including Perl, but it goes WAY beyond my current capabilities. Maybe if I started reading the Perl book I have I could have a program ready for you for the beginning of the 2004-05 season. The script could exist on your server. Users could call up the script from their browsers and input the data, and the script would calculate all the information you've outlined. I think anyone would charge for such a script (especially considering that it would be possible for clients to profit from the use of the script). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 I was thinking of having contestants pick whether SLU would win or lose a game. A correct pick would equal one point. Tally up the points at the end of the season and the person that picked the most games correctly has the most points and wins. THAT I could do with a spreadsheet. If you want to incorporate margin of victory, I think I could come up with at least one way to acheive that. For example, if a contestant correctly predicted the outcome of the game, then the absolute value of the difference between the projected margin and the actual margin could be subtracted from the actual margin and assigned as points to the contestant (I foresee lots of nested parentheses in this formula!). For instance, if a contestant projected that SLU would win by five points, and the Bills win by eight points, then 8 - 3 ( 8 - |8 - 5| ) would grant the contestant five points. Oh, never mind. That one wouldn't work well. Perhaps I could take the number 11 and subtract the result from that. I can thin of something. What I cant' think of is any way to single out individual contestants to assign bonus points. Well, let me know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 this string makes my head hurt! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basketbill Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 steve this is a web site that runs pools which a friend has participated in and sucked me into the last two years. It seems pretty professional. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SluSignGuy Posted August 20, 2003 Author Share Posted August 20, 2003 Am I mistaken, but I think that site is simply for the Tournament, not regular season setup. Correct me if I am wrong. Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 Mine too, and I was the one saying all that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SluSignGuy Posted August 20, 2003 Author Share Posted August 20, 2003 I think I figured out how to do the bonus thing. I looked in the Help file of excel to see if it had an IF then statement thing, and it did! Woo Hoo! I am unsure of how to do spread, but I have only given it like 5 minutes of thought. But check out this file and tell me if you think it would work. http://www.billikens.com/testpool/test.xls Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 However, while I can easily give bonuses to individual contestants for meeting individual criteria, I can't think of how to single out the top three or closest three. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SluSignGuy Posted August 20, 2003 Author Share Posted August 20, 2003 Hmm, I am struggling with that too. Excel has a Min value thing. With that you can find the person who is CLOSEST to the actual spread. 3 was just a number that I threw out there, we could just reward a point to the person (people) who were closest to make it simpler. Then we just use the Min value thing. What I did was made a column of the spreads (using + and - with + being the Bills winning). Then I had a column full of the actual. Then I took that abs of the actual - predicted. Then take the Min value of that by doing =MIN(D2:D10). Then you could do an IF for the points rewarded. See what I have here. http://www.billikens.com/testpool/test2.xls Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 Steve, your approach would probably require creating a sheet for each game, and calculating the total through all sheets would be difficult. Take a look at my counterproposal (http://www.tedministries.com/sports/test.xls ). What I've done there is give each game a row and each contestant a column (or set of columns which total at the right). I eliminated all criteria except picking the game and margin. Contestants get 10 points for correctly picking a game, and if they correctly predict the outcome, they get 1 bonus point for each point their predicted margin was within the actual margin provided the difference is no more than 10 points. The formulas are in place so that you can play around with the numbers (as well as see how complicated it is to formulate). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SluSignGuy Posted August 20, 2003 Author Share Posted August 20, 2003 Thicks- I love your layout, it works much better, my only worry is that it may be hard to input data quickly. But I made some changes. To make life simpler, for the margin part I did this If you are exact, you get 3 points, if you are 1-5 off, you get 2 points, 6-10, 1 point. Above 10 no points. Also for the bonus question I made it worth 3 points if you got the answer perfect. Take a look and tell me what you think, I also changed some abbreviations so check your key. http://www.billikens.com/testpool/test3.xls Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 I can work with the setup you've got. Is the bonus question FT attempts? If so, I can easily pull that information out of my current game-by-game data sheets (which is where I copied last year's schedule and scores from). Data entry could be facilitated by grouping columns together so that the cells containing formulas (other than the total) can be hidden. (http://www.tedministries.com/sports/test3.xls ) Personally, I prefer the format I suggested in which the only things that matter are picking the game and margin without adding anything else. If you get a total of 13 possible points per game, how likely would it be that there would be any ties at the end of the season? Let's see what the board thinks? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufanskip Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 I'm probably way behind on this and you guys have come up with a solution already... but someone mentioned the honor system ... where each contestant totals there own points and gives one total. Wouldn't that be easier. If we all logged our predictions on a thread and then totaled them ourselves and submitted one number. Any one could spot check anyone and put a large penalty in place for submitting a wrong score. That seems easy to me. I ran a foot ball fantasy league that way about 10 years ago and it worked well. (not on the internet ... I am a computer idiot) We had about 15 players and only one wrong score submitted ...and I think it was an honest mistake Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 slufanskip, the honor system on the internet. no disrespect to you, but that is hillarious. did you know that of all the registered posters here at billikens.com, over half have given steve fake e-mail addresses? i know that for a fact due to the campaign we ran for steve's graduation present. now if over half of the registered posters arent even honorable enough to give steve their correct e-mail address, what makes you think they will be honorable when the old competitive flame starts burning? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SluSignGuy Posted August 20, 2003 Author Share Posted August 20, 2003 The Bonus question would be some random question every week (at least that is what I was thinking). Like: How many free throw attempts will SLU get in todays game? Who will be the Billikens 2nd Leading Rebounder? Who will be the first SLU player to foul out? Who will log the 3rd most minutes? Random junk like that, it wouldn't take an extreme amount of knowledge to get it right, but it would take some, plus a lot of luck. But also it could be much more simple for the poster and you if you are compiling the data if it is just margin, and then win loss. I am not extremely attached to the idea, i just sort of based of off other Message Board pickem games I have seen. But what do you think of the way I did margin? You think that works well, 1 for 6-10, 2, for 1-5, and 3 for perfect? Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 >The Bonus question would be some random question every week >(at least that is what I was thinking). >Like: >How many free throw attempts will SLU get in todays game? >Who will be the Billikens 2nd Leading Rebounder? >Who will be the first SLU player to foul out? >Who will log the 3rd most minutes? > >Random junk like that, it wouldn't take an extreme amount of >knowledge to get it right, but it would take some, plus a >lot of luck. The bonus question would be difficult to incorporate into the Excel spreadsheet. >But what do you think of the way I did margin? You think >that works well, 1 for 6-10, 2, for 1-5, and 3 for perfect? It's doable, as your test file demonstrates, and I think it's cool. However, I like my original idea of 10 points for predicting the outcome and up to 10 additional points for how many points within the actual margin. By the end of the season, the winner will be able to declare that he knows the Billikens best. For example if two people say the Bills will beat Grambling and the Bills beat Grambling, the two people are equals. But if the Bills win by 25 points and the first person said the margin would be 26 and the second person said it would be 16 points, then the first person would wind up with 19 points and the second with 11. (Your method would have the first person with 12 points and the second with 11.) I think it would be fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SluSignGuy Posted August 20, 2003 Author Share Posted August 20, 2003 I am okay nixing the Bonus thing all together, but I think it is doable. I thought I had it okay in my last example (http://www.billikens.com/testpool/test3.xls). You just have: =IF(K3=H3,3,0) K3 and H3 can be anything, from a players name to a number. Just as long as the two are = then we are fine. Tell me if you disagree. As for the spread. I just don't like the spread being worth quite that much. How about a compromise? 5 points for 0-1, 4 for 2-3, 3 for 4-5, 2 for 6-7, 1 for 7-9, none for 10? Just my thoughts, we can do a poll (although some people can't vote in polls for some reason (I am working on that, well by working I mean I asked the script writer)). Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted August 20, 2003 Share Posted August 20, 2003 Well, if giving margin equal weight with picking the game is undesirable, then we could double the amount of point awarded for predicting the outcome. Correctly picking the game would profide 20 pts., and contestants could get as many as 10 more points for being within the margin. My formula is easier than yours, with all the "IF's" necessary for yours. My is "10-(x-y)" and yours involves five nested IF statements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SluSignGuy Posted August 20, 2003 Author Share Posted August 20, 2003 That is fine. My concern was the weight of the margin. hehe, in my programming classes I took in HS, I was the king of the Nested ifs. I used them for EVERYTHING. My programs always worked, but they were poorly coded, as in no one else could really follow them well. My brain works in wierd ways (all my math teachers say I am one of their most mind boggling students because of the way I register things). Now for those bonuses... Should we simplify it and just nix em you think? Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted August 21, 2003 Share Posted August 21, 2003 I don't think it's really necessary. If we set it up as discussed, a tie is unlikely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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