'05 Girls FBR Rankings - 9-19-13

BWG-

Haven't paid much attention to FBR before, and I am sure you have outlined it, but can you say again how you break tiers?

Is tier 1 the top 4, then tier 2 the next 5? How does it move over time (tier 1 may be 7 teams next time)??

dadof3 wrote:BWG-

Haven't paid much attention to FBR before, and I am sure you have outlined it, but can you say again how you break tiers?

Is tier 1 the top 4, then tier 2 the next 5?  How does it move over time (tier 1 may be 7 teams next time)??

Seems BW is unavailable so I will save him a few keystrokes.

This is the text from one of his 02 posts from way back.  Hope this helps:

http://www.txsoccer.net/t9817-spring-2012-02-fbr-2-18-12?highlight=Tiers

BWGophers wrote:Yes. cWL is the W/L record against teams within the same tier.

To help re-educate folks, FBR stands for FootballRankulator, which is the name of the SW program that we use. FBR was created and is sold to rank college football teams. We have just corrupted it to our noble efforts to create the best 10 yr old soccer ranking system in the world.

cWL actually means "conference" W/L record. The "conference" feature in the SW allows you to apply different weighting or strength factors to difference conference (i.e. You can give the SEC a stronger weight than the Mounatin West, etc.).

The Ranking Tiers are set up in FBR as different "conferences". I switched to calling them tiers midway through the '01's because people kept confusing "conferences" with the different "division" of various leagues.

Placement in the tiers based solely off of game performance and will not necessarily follow league/division assignments.

Using the tiers in FBR allows us to apply a sliding weight scale to help get every teams' Stength of Schedule correct. It's what helps FBR do a reasonably good job of ranking teams with very good W/L record against weaker competition relative to teams with poor W/L record playing against tough competition.

Thanks for the info...that makes some sense of it, and I appreciate your help (and the link). I will read a little more on it. I do want to start by saying that I am impressed with the amount (and accuracy) of the data. Considering that EVERY sporting event (especially and 8 yr old's soccer game) is unpredictable, I am impressed by the relative stability and reliability of the lists.

Loosely, the tiers are similar teams against similar competition.

I guess my real question is how do you determine where it breaks from a higher tier to a lower tier? I can easily see the difference between the #1 and #25 team and they deserve different tiers, but I am not sure how teams how to determine if the #25 team is in tier 3 or 4 or whatever...unless you are using that data to create data (which is self-fulfilling). Honestly, it is the same thing in the BCS and any other ranked sport, I just wonder where the lines are drawn on this data.

dadof3 wrote:Thanks for the info...that makes some sense of it, and I appreciate your help (and the link).  I will read a little more on it.  I do want to start by saying that I am impressed with the amount (and accuracy) of the data.  Considering that EVERY sporting event (especially and 8 yr old's soccer game) is unpredictable, I am impressed by the relative stability and reliability of the lists.

Loosely, the tiers are similar teams against similar competition.

I guess my real question is how do you determine where it breaks from a higher tier to a lower tier?  I can easily see the difference between the #1 and #25 team and they deserve different tiers, but I am not sure how teams how to determine if the #25 team is in tier 3 or 4 or whatever...unless you are using that data to create data (which is self-fulfilling).  Honestly, it is the same thing in the BCS and any other ranked sport, I just wonder where the lines are drawn on this data.

I sent you a PM with the full description of FBR. Here is the information specific to ranking tiers:

Placement in the ranking tiers is based solely on actual game performance and is reviewed and adjusted where necessary on a frequent basis. The "general" rule governing tier placement is an "80/20" rule. A team should get a Win or Draw in >80% of their games against teams from a lower ranking tier, a Win or Draw in somewhere between 20-80% of their games against teams within their ranking tier, and a Win or Draw in <20% of their games against teams from a higher ranking tier. The net result is that you should get grouping of teams of relatively similar strength in each tier. A weighting factor is then assigned to each tier.


By design, the ranking tiers are completely independent of league and/or division within a league. HOWEVER, you will find that the strongest leagues/divisions will have a higher % of teams in the higher tiers, while weaker leagues/division will have a higher % of teams in lower tiers. However it is not unheard of, nor uncommon for a league to have teams from 2 or 3 different ranking tiers within the same division. It really is based solely on actual game performance.

The ranking tiers are also completely independent of the actual FBR ranking. It is logical that the rankings will generally be stratified by the ranking tiers, but it is possible, and common, to have some degree of overlap in the rankings between teams from different tiers.

The important thing to keep in mind is that what ranking tier a team is assigned to, has far less impact on a teams actual FBR ranking, than what ranking tier a team's opponents are assigned to. That is what drives the Strength of Schedule portion of the FBR ranking formula.

As it stands with this week's '05 rankings, I currently have 5 ranking tiers. I am expecting that as the fall season progresses and I get more game data, I will end up making another split somewhere along the lines and will end up with 6 tiers.

Tier 1 is currently made up of the top 7 teams in this week's rankings
Tier 2 is currently made up of teams 7-14 in this weeks rankings.
Tier 3 is mainly teams from 15-30 with some overlap with Tier 4.
Tier 4 is mainly teams from 30-50 with some overlap with Tier 3 and Tier 5
Tier 5 is mainly the teams ranked >45 that have 0 wins.

Hope that helps.

bwgophers wrote:
Hope that helps.

It does and thank you.

dadof3 wrote:

bwgophers wrote:
Hope that helps.

It does and thank you.

It helps but I wouldn't put DT South in Tier 1.