Comments on Fantasy Football Librarian: How Accurate Were They in 2006?

Hey Librarian,
I realized last night I actually...

2007-08-16T12:56:00.000-04:00

Hey Librarian,
I realized last night I actually calculated the weighting factor slightly different then I described above. Here are the scores for the method described in the post:

WR:yahoo(.6036), football guys(.5929), FF cheat sheet(0.5792), espn(0.5750), fox(0.5679), Ask the commmish(0.5465), cbs(0.5447), si(0.5387), pfs(0.5346), pigskin(0.5310)

QB:
si(.4889), commish(.4788), football guys(.4707), pfs(.4586), yahoo, (.4485), espn(.4404), cbs(.4222), fox(.3939), ffcs(.3899), pigskin(.3636)

RB:
commish(.5072), football guys(0.4947), pfs(0.4875), pigskin(.4453), yahoo(0.4417), ffcs(.4393), si(.4232), cbs(0.4066), fox(.3798), espn(.3667)

If you can arrange these posts into something coherent, you are more than welcome to do so. Good luck with your draft.

Aaron, this is awesome. Do you mind if I put into ...

2007-08-15T18:34:00.000-04:00

Aaron, this is awesome. Do you mind if I put into a post where it might have more visibility?

Quick question - WRs? Any reason you chose not to do them other than lack of time?

I had also noticed that no one ranked LT as #1 last year - stunning, isn't it? So whose to say that Frank Gore or Steven Jackson won't outscore LT this year. In fact, I've read a few things recently about LT's decline - or perhaps his return to normalcy is a better way of phrasing it. Interesting stuff.

I ran the numbers to give separate rankings for qb...

2007-08-15T15:55:00.000-04:00

I ran the numbers to give separate rankings for qb and rb. I also applied a linear weighting as mentioned above (it is more important to rank the #1 player correctly than the #10 player). Technically speaking, for each expert I took the top n players for each position, and compared them against the expert, such that
s= 1/r_max * Sigma [(r_max + 1 - r_a)/r_max * (1 - |r_a - r_p|/(r_max - 1)]
where r_max is the highest examined ranking (top 10 qbs, top 20 rbs), r_a is the actual rank based on yahoo point total for that player, and r_p is the expert's predicted rank for that player. If the expert didn't include a player ranked player with his top n players for that position, they received a score of zero for that prediction. This score is an ad hoc measurement of agreement score, since I did want to include the weighting.

For running backs, the best experts were (scores are normalized so 1.0 is perfect ranking):
1. ask the commish(.4107), 2. fantasy football cheat sheet(.4043), 3. football guys(.3786), 4. yahoo(.3655), 5. pro fantasy sports(.3720), 6.si(.3595), 7. fox(.3583), 8.cbs(.3506), 9. pigskin addiction (.3400), 10. espn(.3263)

For qbs:
1. si(.5980), 2. ask the commish(.5798), 3. yahoo(.5535), 4. espn(.5535), 5. football guys(.5434), 6. fox(.4989), 7. cbs(.4949),8. pro fantasy sports(.4829), 9. pigskin addiction (.4284), 10. ff cheat sheet(.4102)

Given one sample year, we really don't have any statistical power to say anything, but this is a start. And on a less technical note, let me just point out that none of the experts properly ranked LT #1, which was huge given the 97 point differential between him and Larry Johnson.

Any chance you or a reader has access to last year...

2007-08-11T15:09:00.000-04:00

Any chance you or a reader has access to last year's Football Outsiders' rankings? They're likely the most scientific of anything out there.

Does anyone have links to any other attempts to judge football projections? (Baseball projections is a big interest of mine.)

This is great; thanks! I'm thinking of crunching t...

2007-08-10T14:48:00.000-04:00

This is great; thanks! I'm thinking of crunching the numbers a little differently. It would be interesting to see if experts vary across positions, like does SI do a better job at ranking qbs or rbs? Which expert is the best at picking wrs? I also was planning on throwing in a term that so misrankings the best players matters most. My intuition is that it's a lot worse to pick the second best running back as the first, rather than to rank the 12th best running back as the 11th (the difference in fantasy points/game between LT and Larry Johnson last year was 20%, between Rudi Johnson and Ahman Green: 2.3%). Ultimately, it would be nice to have a weighting function that punished in direct proportion to the amount of fantasy points the misranking cost you, but I probably won't get around to that. Whatever I do get around to, I'll post here.

Corey/FFGoat, I'll try to find the Bruno Boys 2006...

2007-08-10T09:28:00.000-04:00

Corey/FFGoat, I'll try to find the Bruno Boys 2006 ranking - if you already have it, send the URL my way, I'll add it to the spreadsheet and let you know the outcome. In fact if anyone else has a 2006 ranking they're curious about, just send me the ranking or URL and I will put it in the spreadsheet.

I always wondered about that! Awesome post. I wond...

2007-08-10T08:15:00.000-04:00

I always wondered about that! Awesome post. I wonder where the Bruno Boys rank?