Reign of Terrier
August 29th, 2018, 01:47 PM
So I've been doing some bull****ting on this data set with FCS teams in the playoffs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_I_FCS_playoff_appearances_by _team
I figured "hey, I bet this works kind of like a Praeto distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution)" and sure enough it does.
For those of you who don't know, a Praeto Distribution is what's commonly referred to as the "80-20 rule." I'm not a mathematician so I'm not going to explain it perfectly to their liking, but it's a useful shorthand for understanding how somethings are sometimes distributed throughout a dataset: 20% of criminals commit 80% of the crime, 20% of the population has 80% of the wealth, 20% of the tasks you do account for 80% of the outcomes in your career, and so on. These patterns emerge naturally in different parts of nature.
In the FCS we see something like a Praeto distribution when it comes to playoff appearances, playoff wins, and total playoff games, even with recent FBS departures. It's applicable to both the set of teams that have made the playoffs in some capacity and to the entire FCS in general. So, let me explain:
As of now, the FCS has 125 teams. The 25 teams with the most appearances account for 309 of the 466 playoff appearances of the entire FCS. That's about 66% or 2/3 (praeto principles aren't always perfect). When it comes to the data set of about 82 teams that have made the playoffs in some capacity, the top 20% of that distribution (16 teams) accounted for 50% of the appearances.
It gets more convincing when you look at the wins. The top 16 playoff-winning teams account for 279 of 391 (71%) of the wins in FCS, while the top 25 teams account for 342 of 391 (about 85%)
As for the total games, the top 25 teams playing in the most playoff games account for 610 of the 827 games played in the playoffs. That's about 74%.
So yeah, this information doesn't really change much, but it's a cool way of looking at FCS programs and figuring out who's an "elite" program. Because we all know NDSU is the King, but for the rest of us it's hard to compare notes
I figured "hey, I bet this works kind of like a Praeto distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution)" and sure enough it does.
For those of you who don't know, a Praeto Distribution is what's commonly referred to as the "80-20 rule." I'm not a mathematician so I'm not going to explain it perfectly to their liking, but it's a useful shorthand for understanding how somethings are sometimes distributed throughout a dataset: 20% of criminals commit 80% of the crime, 20% of the population has 80% of the wealth, 20% of the tasks you do account for 80% of the outcomes in your career, and so on. These patterns emerge naturally in different parts of nature.
In the FCS we see something like a Praeto distribution when it comes to playoff appearances, playoff wins, and total playoff games, even with recent FBS departures. It's applicable to both the set of teams that have made the playoffs in some capacity and to the entire FCS in general. So, let me explain:
As of now, the FCS has 125 teams. The 25 teams with the most appearances account for 309 of the 466 playoff appearances of the entire FCS. That's about 66% or 2/3 (praeto principles aren't always perfect). When it comes to the data set of about 82 teams that have made the playoffs in some capacity, the top 20% of that distribution (16 teams) accounted for 50% of the appearances.
It gets more convincing when you look at the wins. The top 16 playoff-winning teams account for 279 of 391 (71%) of the wins in FCS, while the top 25 teams account for 342 of 391 (about 85%)
As for the total games, the top 25 teams playing in the most playoff games account for 610 of the 827 games played in the playoffs. That's about 74%.
So yeah, this information doesn't really change much, but it's a cool way of looking at FCS programs and figuring out who's an "elite" program. Because we all know NDSU is the King, but for the rest of us it's hard to compare notes