A simple correlation of owner rank with division difficulty indicates no systematic bias. Good owners do not get easy divisions. Bad owners do not get to hard divisions on the whole. My analysis indicates that the placing of owners within divisions is completely random.

1 - 94 88 - 1
2 - 54 80 - 2
3 - 64 67 - 3
4 - 72 53 - 4
5 - 36 66 - 5
6 - 65 33 - 6
7 - 73 43 - 7
8 - 86 64 - 8
9 - 63 55 - 9
10 - 83 88 - 10

Avg difficulty for the top 10 ranked owners is 69. Avg owner rank for the top 10 most difficult schedules is 63.7. Random or not, this doesn't seem fair. How does this not favor the top ranked owners? If even a couple of the top 10 owners had one the top 10 most difficult schedules I would agree to the fairness of the draw. I'm guessing the issue lies in the league assignments in combination with the random division alignment. I don't know how the league assignments were determined but that seems to be skewing the results of the divisional alignments to favor the top ranked owners. And please correct me if I'm wrong. I would love to believe this is a fair process as much as anyone but the alignments IMO look skewed.

You are not understanding the concept of fair vs random. By definition, random is fair because umm... it's random. If it weren't random, the you could make a fairness argument. My guess is if you had sohio4ever"s schedule, this discussion would not be happening.

I did analysis on the league alignment in a different thread and there isn't much difference in quality across leagues.

The first few years I ran this, I actually had all the divisions predetermined so that the best teams were all spread into different dvisons, so the cumulative seeds of the four teams in a division would be the same across all divisions. But a few pointed out that that alignment gave the top teams too big an advantage, thus the random alignment. Every year some folks will get lucky division draws and some will get unlucky draws.

The results look skewed however they were determined. I'd like to know the league assignment criteria before I make a final judgement though. But you can't help but wonder why the top 10 owners got such a favorable draw. Many times in statistics two or more separate random events combined together produce skewed results. I'd just like to know why this happened. Oh well luck of the draw is not sufficient when the results are this biased. If this were a NYRA race there'd be public outcry and countless investigations.

Posted by hurst47 on 8/13/2019 6:12:00 PM (view original):
1 - 94 88 - 1
2 - 54 80 - 2
3 - 64 67 - 3
4 - 72 53 - 4
5 - 36 66 - 5
6 - 65 33 - 6
7 - 73 43 - 7
8 - 86 64 - 8
9 - 63 55 - 9
10 - 83 88 - 10

Avg difficulty for the top 10 ranked owners is 69. Avg owner rank for the top 10 most difficult schedules is 63.7. Random or not, this doesn't seem fair. How does this not favor the top ranked owners? If even a couple of the top 10 owners had one the top 10 most difficult schedules I would agree to the fairness of the draw. I'm guessing the issue lies in the league assignments in combination with the random division alignment. I don't know how the league assignments were determined but that seems to be skewing the results of the divisional alignments to favor the top ranked owners. And please correct me if I'm wrong. I would love to believe this is a fair process as much as anyone but the alignments IMO look skewed.

Here's the expected division difficulty rankings for the top 10 owners if all divisions were 100% equal in strength:

Avg division strength = 48.5 for all divisions.

Division difficulty rankings:

1 - 64
2 - 64
3 - 64
4 - 63
5 - 63
6 - 63
7 - 62
8 - 62
9 - 62
10 - 61

Avg difficulty for the top 10 ranked owners would be 63.

So is it possible ozomatli's league assignments slightly skew it? Sure... but I don't think 6 spots is absurdly skewed or disproportionately favors top owners. Heck, depending on the standard deviation, it might even be a reasonable result created purely by chance.

Posted by justinlee_24 on 8/13/2019 6:42:00 PM (view original):

Posted by hurst47 on 8/13/2019 6:12:00 PM (view original):
1 - 94 88 - 1
2 - 54 80 - 2
3 - 64 67 - 3
4 - 72 53 - 4
5 - 36 66 - 5
6 - 65 33 - 6
7 - 73 43 - 7
8 - 86 64 - 8
9 - 63 55 - 9
10 - 83 88 - 10

Avg difficulty for the top 10 ranked owners is 69. Avg owner rank for the top 10 most difficult schedules is 63.7. Random or not, this doesn't seem fair. How does this not favor the top ranked owners? If even a couple of the top 10 owners had one the top 10 most difficult schedules I would agree to the fairness of the draw. I'm guessing the issue lies in the league assignments in combination with the random division alignment. I don't know how the league assignments were determined but that seems to be skewing the results of the divisional alignments to favor the top ranked owners. And please correct me if I'm wrong. I would love to believe this is a fair process as much as anyone but the alignments IMO look skewed.

Here's the expected division difficulty rankings for the top 10 owners if all divisions were 100% equal in strength:

Avg division strength = 48.5 for all divisions.

Division difficulty rankings:

1 - 64
2 - 64
3 - 64
4 - 63
5 - 63
6 - 63
7 - 62
8 - 62
9 - 62
10 - 61

Avg difficulty for the top 10 ranked owners would be 63.

So does ozomatli's league assignments slightly skew it? Sure... but I don't think 6 spots is absurdly skewed or disproportionately favors top owners. Heck, depending on the standard deviation, it might even be a reasonable result created purely by chance.

If everyone's comfortable with this process, then this is a rigged tournament designed to favor the top owners at which point for someone like me it's a waste of time and money to even try to compete. Go take your algorithms and shove'm you know where.

Posted by hurst47 on 8/13/2019 6:44:00 PM (view original):

Posted by justinlee_24 on 8/13/2019 6:42:00 PM (view original):

Posted by hurst47 on 8/13/2019 6:12:00 PM (view original):
1 - 94 88 - 1
2 - 54 80 - 2
3 - 64 67 - 3
4 - 72 53 - 4
5 - 36 66 - 5
6 - 65 33 - 6
7 - 73 43 - 7
8 - 86 64 - 8
9 - 63 55 - 9
10 - 83 88 - 10

Avg difficulty for the top 10 ranked owners is 69. Avg owner rank for the top 10 most difficult schedules is 63.7. Random or not, this doesn't seem fair. How does this not favor the top ranked owners? If even a couple of the top 10 owners had one the top 10 most difficult schedules I would agree to the fairness of the draw. I'm guessing the issue lies in the league assignments in combination with the random division alignment. I don't know how the league assignments were determined but that seems to be skewing the results of the divisional alignments to favor the top ranked owners. And please correct me if I'm wrong. I would love to believe this is a fair process as much as anyone but the alignments IMO look skewed.

Here's the expected division difficulty rankings for the top 10 owners if all divisions were 100% equal in strength:

Avg division strength = 48.5 for all divisions.

Division difficulty rankings:

1 - 64
2 - 64
3 - 64
4 - 63
5 - 63
6 - 63
7 - 62
8 - 62
9 - 62
10 - 61

Avg difficulty for the top 10 ranked owners would be 63.

So does ozomatli's league assignments slightly skew it? Sure... but I don't think 6 spots is absurdly skewed or disproportionately favors top owners. Heck, depending on the standard deviation, it might even be a reasonable result created purely by chance.

If everyone's comfortable with this process, then this is a rigged tournament designed to favor the top owners at which point for someone like me it's a waste of time and money to even try to compete. Go take your algorithms and shove'm you know where.

Just so we're clear here, you would have no problem at all if the average difficulty for the top 10 ranked owners was 63 instead of 69? (Which would happen if all divisions were somehow 100% equal) Are you really insinuating that a 6 spot difference, which could potentially be due to just chance, makes it undeniably rigged in favor of top owners?

League___	Owners___	SumRank___	AvgRank
-----------	-----------	---------------	---------------
1-A	24	1157	48.2
1-B	24	1179	49.1
1-C	24	1163	48.5
1-D	24	1157	48.2
-----------	-----------	---------------	---------------
2-A	24	1165	48.5
2-B	24	1155	48.1
2-C	24	1159	48.3
2-D	24	1177	49.0
-----------	-----------	---------------	---------------
3-A	24	1174	48.9
3-B	24	1188	49.5
3-C	24	1144	47.7
3-D	24	1150	47.9
-----------	-----------	---------------	---------------
4-A	24	1168	48.7
4-B	24	1158	48.3
4-C	24	1173	48.9
4-D	24	1157	48.2
-----------	-----------	---------------	---------------
5-A	24	1156	48.2
5-B	24	1162	48.4
5-C	24	1163	48.5
5-D	24	1175	49.0
-----------	-----------	---------------	---------------
6-A	24	1162	48.4
6-B	24	1183	49.3
6-C	24	1150	47.9
6-D	24	1161	48.4

hurst47, the difference in average rank of owners by league is minimal (the only reason it isn't perfect is due to commissioner assignments). Therefore, it did not bias the randomly generated divisions, so the results are truly luck.

Again, last year the 3rd ranked owner received the most difficult divisional pairings. The 8th ranked owner was also in the top 10. It's just random, just like any other league on WIS.

That's the final word... those look like balanced divisions to me.

I'm ranked 15th and I have the 26th most difficult schedule. I'm feeling left out of the (perceived) schedule advantage for top ranked owners.... I did a quick glance and I think it is the 2nd worst draw when you consider owner ranking in correlation to difficulty of schedule.
I will admit that it is it is fairly disheartening, especially when I see the ease of the schedule for some of the past winners and favorites.
I'm certainly not claiming it was rigged or anything of that nature, but coming from my view, it's hard to see it as exactly a 'fair' process to all 96 owners involved.

Posted by ozomatli on 8/13/2019 6:59:00 PM (view original):
hurst47, the difference in average rank of owners by league is minimal (the only reason it isn't perfect is due to commissioner assignments). Therefore, it did not bias the randomly generated divisions, so the results are truly luck.

Again, last year the 3rd ranked owner received the most difficult divisional pairings. The 8th ranked owner was also in the top 10. It's just random, just like any other league on WIS.

Well it didn't happen this year. I'd even argue that aligning by owner rating like is done in some regular leagues would make the tournament more interesting. Put all the top ranked owners together and low ranked owners together. Those of us who enjoy the Sim but don't put in all the study required to be an expert would appreciate something like that.

Posted by milest on 8/13/2019 7:08:00 PM (view original):
I'm ranked 15th and I have the 26th most difficult schedule. I'm feeling left out of the (perceived) schedule advantage for top ranked owners.... I did a quick glance and I think it is the 2nd worst draw when you consider owner ranking in correlation to difficulty of schedule.
I will admit that it is it is fairly disheartening, especially when I see the ease of the schedule for some of the past winners and favorites.
I'm certainly not claiming it was rigged or anything of that nature, but coming from my view, it's hard to see it as exactly a 'fair' process to all 96 owners involved.

The only way to fix that would be to forcibly make every division have the same 48.5 average and have ozomatli manually determine everyone's division and conference in every league. That would be the only way to remove people getting lucky or unlucky draws.