Mumme Poll

by TideFaninTN on Oct 2, 2009 2:19 PM CDT Comment 7 comments

Ordinarily, I wouldn't do this, but we're hosting the Mumme Poll over at 3sib.com and right now, Alabama has fewer voters than Penn State (and it's not even close), UT, and Florida. I'll stomach the loss to Penn State because they likely don't care, but I can't handle being behind Tennessee or Florida in anything. If you haven't signed up to vote in this, please go here and do so now. Many thanks and Roll Tide!

FanPosts are just that; posts created by the fans. They are in no way indicative of the opinions of SBN and the authors of Roll Bama Roll.

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Honestly? I’ve never understood the point of it. Usually ends up looking a lot like the any other poll’s top ten, despite the somewhat novel voting method, and I certainly haven’t seen it improve on the other polls in terms of predictive accuracy.

I'm wrong all the time.

by PeteHoliday on Oct 2, 2009 4:14 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

It’s an experiment to see how differently approval voting would result. It’s difficult to say that it doesn’t improve on them when a) there is only one result set as the poll is only a year old, and b) the notion of accuracy is purely conjecture on the part of the person offering a singular opinion on how the teams should have been ranked. The concept of predictive accuracy is meaningless for any poll, especially when considering it’s a league of 120 members who only play approximately 10% of all potential opponents. Seeing as that size of a pool mandates a poll, the point isn’t to find something that can accurately determine in week six who the best teams will be at the end of the year, but to remove as much of the bias as possible that is reflected in a fully weighted poll (hence the reference to Hal Mumme and his vote of Hawaii at number one).

by TideFaninTN on Oct 2, 2009 4:50 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

The notion of accuracy is only conjecture if it’s defined that way, and if it’s defined that way, pretty much all polls are just mental masturbation.

And, of course, the “bias” of weighting is really not bias at all, it’s just an expression of the natural bias of voting and voters which is certainly not absent in the Mumme Poll, puffery on the poll’s site notwithstanding. The Mumme Poll attempts to ameliorate the voting bias by taking tools away from the voters. Maybe it “works” for some definition of that word, but if it’s not better at something than the standard polls then it’s pretty obvious that the supposed bias in the original polls is irrelevant meaning that so, too, is the lack of that supposed bias, and all you really have is a novel way of producing the same thing.

So, yeah, it might be interesting to see something done with the data besides just compiling a top 25, but really couldn’t you just take the data from BlogPoll and strip the weighting off of the top 12 spots?

I'm wrong all the time.

by PeteHoliday on Oct 2, 2009 5:11 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Define accuracy in a college football poll.

by TideFaninTN on Oct 2, 2009 5:24 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

If I were in the business of running a poll, I would. But since I didn’t design a poll there’s no point in me defining the term.

Still don’t see why this exercise isn’t just done with blogpoll data.

I'm wrong all the time.

by PeteHoliday on Oct 3, 2009 12:08 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

You’re in the business of criticizing a poll for not being more accurate but you lack the ability to define exactly what accuracy in a poll would be?
I could use the blogpoll data which would involve re-entering a hundred or more top 12s every week, or I could set up the Mumme Poll which opens the voting to a significantly larger base of voters, collects a more diverse amount of data, and aggregates the data with little room for my personal error.

by TideFaninTN on Oct 3, 2009 7:35 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

I signed up

Why not? I get to participate instead of just engaging in the typical gnashing of teeth, with the typical whining, and the typical posturing. Will it affect the outcome? Probably not, but fortunately, I don’t care. Thanks for setting it up TFiT.

"That rug really tied the room together."

by pantsfucious on Oct 5, 2009 12:21 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs