Sagarin Ratings
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Jeff Sagarin (born 1948) is an American sports
statistic A statistic (singular) or sample statistic is any quantity computed from values in a sample which is considered for a statistical purpose. Statistical purposes include estimating a population parameter, describing a sample, or evaluating a hypot ...
ian known for his development of a method for ranking and rating sports teams in a variety of sports. His Sagarin Ratings have been a regular feature in the ''
USA Today ''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...
'' sports section from 1985 to 2023, have been used by the
NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...
Tournament Selection Committee to help determine the participants in the
NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, branded as March Madness, or The Big Dance, is a single-elimination tournament played in the United States to determine the men's college basketball national champion of the Division I level ...
tournament since 1984, and were part of the
college football College football is gridiron football that is played by teams of amateur Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. It was through collegiate competition that gridiron football American football in the United States, firs ...
Bowl Championship Series The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was a college football post-season selection system that created four or five bowl game match-ups involving eight or ten of the top ranked teams in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of America ...
throughout its history from 1998 to 2014.


Background

Sagarin attended
New Rochelle High School New Rochelle High School (NRHS), a public secondary school in New Rochelle, New York, is part of the City School District of New Rochelle and is the city's sole public high school. Its buildings were designed by the noted architectural firm ...
, earned a
Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...
in
mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
in 1970 and an M.B.A. from
Indiana University School of Business The Kelley School of Business (KSB) is an undergraduate and graduate business school for Indiana University Bloomington and Indiana University Indianapolis. As of 2022, approximately 13,538 full-time undergraduate and graduate students are enr ...
in 1983. He grew up outside
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
in
Westchester County Westchester County is a county located in the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of New York, bordering the Long Island Sound and the Byram River to its east and the Hudson River on its west. The county is the seventh most populous cou ...
in
New Rochelle, New York New Rochelle ( ; in ) is a Political subdivisions of New York State#City, city in Westchester County, New York, Westchester County, New York (state), New York, United States. It is a suburb of New York City, located approximately from Midtow ...
. In 1977 he moved to
Bloomington, Indiana Bloomington is a city in Monroe County, Indiana, United States, and its county seat. The population was 79,168 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is the List of municipalities in Indiana, seventh-most populous city in Indiana and ...
. In 1986 he created the computer game ''
Hoops Hoop or Hoops may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Hoops'' (TV series), an American animated series Characters Hoops, a pink cat from Hallmark Media's Hoops & Yoyo Music * Hoops (band), an American indie pop ban ...
'' with
Wayne L. Winston Wayne Leslie Winston (born February 14, 1950, in New Jersey) is an American academic who serves as Professor Emeritus of Decision and Information Systems at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. Education Winston has a master's d ...
.


Method

Sagarin, like the developers of many other
sports rating system A sports rating system is a system that analyzes the results of sports competitions to provide ratings for each team or player. Common systems include polls of expert voters, crowdsourcing non-expert voters, betting markets, and computer systems. ...
s, does not divulge the exact methods behind his system. He offers two rating systems, each of which gives each team a certain number of points. One system, "Elo chess," is presumably based on the
Elo rating system The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess or esports. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American chess master and physics professor. The Elo system wa ...
used internationally to rank chess players. This system uses only wins and losses with no reference to the victory margin. The other system, "Predictor," takes victory margin into account. For that system the difference in two teams' rating scores is meant to predict the margin of victory for the stronger team at a neutral venue. For both systems teams gain higher ratings within the Sagarin system by winning games against stronger opponents, factoring in such things as home-venue advantage. For the Predictor system, margin of victory (or defeat) factors in also, but a
law of diminishing returns In economics, diminishing returns means the decrease in marginal (incremental) output of a production process as the amount of a single factor of production is incrementally increased, holding all other factors of production equal (''ceteris ...
is applied. Therefore, a
football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...
team that wins a game by a margin of 7–6 is rewarded less than a team that defeats the same opponent under the same circumstances 21–7, but a team that wins a game by a margin of 35–0 receives similar ratings to a team that defeats the same opponent 70–0. This characteristic has the effect of recognizing "comfortable" victories, while limiting the reward for running up the score. At the beginning of a season, when only a few games have been played, a
Bayesian network A Bayesian network (also known as a Bayes network, Bayes net, belief network, or decision network) is a probabilistic graphical model that represents a set of variables and their conditional dependencies via a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Whi ...
weighted by starting rankings is used as long as there are whole groups of teams that have not played one another, but once the
graph Graph may refer to: Mathematics *Graph (discrete mathematics), a structure made of vertices and edges **Graph theory, the study of such graphs and their properties *Graph (topology), a topological space resembling a graph in the sense of discret ...
is well-connected, the weights are no longer needed. Sagarin claims that from that point, the rankings are unbiased.


Justification

Sagarin's ratings are particularly relevant in the world of
American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...
college
football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...
and
basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appro ...
, where, with hundreds of teams in
NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest division of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athlet ...
competition, there is no way a team can play against more than a small fraction of its competitors. Therefore, in determining the participants in championship games and tournaments, it is necessary to distinguish between teams that have compiled impressive win–loss records against strong competition and teams that have defeated weaker opponents. In addition, sports rating systems are generally of great interest to
gambler Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three ele ...
s. Gamblers use Sagarin's ratings as a source of "Power Ratings," traditionally used as a way to determine the spread between two teams.


Winval

Along with his former
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
classmate Wayne L. Winston, a professor of decision sciences at
Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...
, , Sagarin advised the
Dallas Mavericks The Dallas Mavericks (often referred to as the Mavs) are an American professional basketball team based in Dallas. The Mavericks compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Southwest Division (NBA), Southwest Divisi ...
about which lineups to use during games and which free agents to sign using a system called Winval.(2004, April 13). Numbers game. The Washington Times
/ref> Winval is modeled after hockey's
plus–minus Plus–minus, ±, +/−, or variants may refer to: * Plus–minus sign (±), a mathematical symbol which can mean either plus (+) or minus (−), or can indicate the uncertainty of a measurement or statistic * Plus–minus (sports), a sport ...
system.


References


External links


Article
from
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
about why he believes Indiana should be in the
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Sagarin Ratings
via USA Today
Jeff's Sports Ratings
Jeff Sagarin's personal page {{DEFAULTSORT:Sagarin, Jeff Living people American statisticians Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Scientists from New Rochelle, New York College football championships Mathematicians from New York (state) Kelley School of Business alumni 1948 births New Rochelle High School alumni