Randomness and more... Topic

FYI, I have scheduled a developer chat for Tuesday (3/14) at 9pm EST to discuss statistics and game results produced by the HD engine. Here is the link for the developer chat:
If you can't be on between 9 and 10pm EST Tuesday, you can post any questions you may have now for them to be answered tomorrow night.
Before you do, I wanted to post some background. Many of the boxscores we receive for review and many of the posts in the forums refer to outcomes being "too random" or certain game result statistics being "impossible".
First we need to look at the averages produced by the engine relative the NCAA DI averages for some key statistical categories:
DI fg%: 44.0%
HD DI fg%: 45.1%
HD DII fg%: 44.1%
HD DIII fg%: 44.4%
DI fg3%: 34.8%
HD DI fg3%: 36.1%*
HD DII fg3%: 36.9%*
HD DIII fg3%: 37.5%*
DI ft%: 69.4%
HD DI ft%: 69.9%
HD DII ft%: 71.2%
HD DIII ft%: 70.2%
DI fouls/gm: 19.1
HD DI fouls/gm: 19.3
HD DII fouls/gm: 19.4
HD DIII fouls/gm: 19.2
DI turnovers/gm: 14.6
HD DI turnovers/gm: 14.2
HD DII turnovers/gm: 14.4
HD DIII turnovers/gm: 14.6
DI steals/gm: 7.2
HD DI steals/gm: 6.7
HD DII steals/gm: 6.9
HD DIII steals/gm: 7.2
Knowing the averages is great, but that doesn't really address how variable the engine is. If a team shoots 10% one game and then 78% the next game, their average would be 44%. Standard deviation is the way to measure how variable the game to game results are.
DI fg% SD: 7.17
HD DI fg% SD: 7.26
HD DII fg% SD: 7.23
HD DIII fg% SD: 7.13
What does this mean? This means that the average NCAA DI team will shoot between 36.83% and 51.17% 68% of the time. 95% of the time they will shoot between 29.66% and 58.34% and 99% of the time they will shoot between 22.49% and 65.51%. In other words, only 2 out of every 3 games in real life will the average DI team shoot between 37% and 51% - a third of their games will produce a result above 51% or below 37%.
This also means that HD teams follow suit with regards to how much and how frequently any given game's statistics deviate from a team's average.
Here are the other standard deviation numbers:
DI fg3%: 11.99
HD DI fg3%: 12.68
HD DII fg3%: 13.00
HD DIII fg3%: 12.86
DI ft%: 11.27
HD DI ft%: 10.62
HD DII ft%: 10.45
HD DIII ft%: 10.86
DI fouls/gm: 4.25
HD DI fouls/gm: 4.05
HD DII fouls/gm: 4.27
HD DIII fouls/gm: 4.42
DI turnovers/gm: 3.79
HD DI turnovers/gm: 3.94
HD DII turnovers/gm: 3.99
HD DIII turnovers/gm: 4.03
DI steals/gm: 2.78
HD DI steals/gm: 2.78
HD DII steals/gm: 2.85
HD DIII steals/gm: 2.89
* In testing with balanced defensive positioning, the HD produces an average 3pt FG% of 34.5%. The common tendency for teams to sag in HD is the cause of the significantly higher percentage.
3/13/2006 11:14 AM
Randomness and more... Topic

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