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small updates
I redid the archives a bit. Rather than being accessed from a separate page, they’re always accessible from the sidebar. Might as well use all that real estate on the right hand side, right?
I also noticed that my attempt at spam-blocking had been unsuccessful the other day. As a temporary fix, I had all comments from the offending entry (thanks, entry #457!) deleted every time the page was loaded. Now I think (hope, at least…) I’ve found a permanent fix.
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retroactive blogging
So when I first moved to Idaho three years ago, I took my sweet time getting here and explored our great country a little bit. I took a few pictures, attempted to write witty captions for each, and posted them on this server, but not within the main blog. That has now changed. Check out the archive to see them.
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friedcheese.org college football poll - week 3
Washington moves up big time with its win over USC, which in turn bumps LSU to the top spot. Previous ranking is the second set of parentheses.
1 - LSU (5.90625) (2)
2 - Alabama (5.46875) (4)
3 - Boise St. (4.9375) (1)
4 - Washington (4.8125) (24)
5 - Miami (FL) (4.5625) (NR)
6 - Michigan (4.5) (4)
7 - Auburn (4) (8)
8 - Virginia Tech (3.9375) (NR)
9 - North Carolina (3.9296875) (17)
10 - Oregon (3.875) (19)
11 - Connecticut (3.859375) (19)
12 - Penn St. (3.75) (8)
13 - California (3.625) (NR)
13 - Southern California (3.625) (2)
15 - Kansas (3.5) (NR)
15 - Clemson (3.5) (24)
15 - UCLA (3.5) (4)
15 - Oklahoma St. (3.5) (19)
15 - Texas (3.5) (8)
20 - Cincinnati (3.484375) (NR)
21 - Minnesota (3.25) (8)
21 - Ohio St. (3.25) (24)
21 - Pittsburgh (3.25) (24)
21 - Florida (3.25) (NR)
21 - Iowa (3.25) (NR)Here’s this week’s directed graph. At least after a cursory glance, it appears to already be connected – after week 3! Exciting!
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features
So I had about 300 megs worth of spam comments. They’re gone now. There’s now a little math problem you have to do to prove your humanity if you wish to comment.
I think I’m going to redesign the CSS soon. Something purplish for my ‘Cats? And tags. I’m still living in like 2002 with my lack of tags on blog entries. No clouds, though. Them things are fugly.
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the friedcheese.org college football poll
So I’m an aspiring mathematician who likes college football. Coming up with some mathematical way of ranking teams naturally is an area of interest for me. Over the past few weeks, I’ve come up with a few different ranking systems, and have played with using Perl and the NCAA’s great statistics site to generate a Top 25 ranking system.
Today, I came up with a ranking system that I’m pretty satisfied with. It all boils down to graph theory.
In a graph, you have two things: “vertices” and “edges”. Edges connect two vertices. A special kind of graph is a “directed graph”, where each edge has a direction. The edges are often called “arcs” instead when this happens.
Well, directed graphs and sports go together very well. Let’s let each team in Division I-A be a vertex, and for each game that’s played, add an arc pointing from the winning team to the losing team.
For most pairs of teams, you can find some path from one to the other. For example, in 2008, Idaho beat New Mexico State, who beat Louisiana Tech, who beat Mississippi State, who beat Vanderbilt, who beat Mississippi, who beat the national champion Florida Gators.
Note that not every pair gives us a path like this. For example, last year, Washington State’s only victory against a Div. I-A opponent was Washington, who didn’t beat anyone. So there’s no path from the Cougars to the Gators.
So here’s how my ranking works. For every team, we look at the shortest path from this team to each other team in the country. The length of this path determines how much to add to the team’s “win total”. If the path has length 1, i.e., the first team beat the second team in an actual game, then add 1 to the win total. If the first team beat a team who beat the second team, add 1/2. If they beat a team who beat a team who beat the second team, add 1/4, etc. (I got this idea from the coefficient of relationship I learned about in undergraduate anthropology.)
So, in our example from above, Idaho gets 1/32 added to their win total for their “win” over Florida.
Now for the polls themselves! The win total is in parentheses.
2008 Final Poll
1 - Florida (49.8125)
2 - Texas (45.96875)
3 - Oklahoma (45.15625)
4 - Utah (44.3125)
5 - Pittsburgh (42.484375)
6 - Southern California (42.1796875)
7 - Virginia Tech (41.546875)
8 - Georgia (41.28125)
9 - Alabama (40.875)
10 - Boston College (40.09375)
11 - Wake Forest (39.53125)
12 - Boise St. (39.296875)
13 - Maryland (39.28125)
14 - Nebraska (38.890625)
15 - California (38.859375)
16 - Cincinnati (38.6484375)
17 - Missouri (38.4921875)
18 - Texas Tech (38.375)
19 - Vanderbilt (38.3125)
20 - Oregon St. (38.1796875)
21 - Mississippi (37.90625)
22 - North Carolina (37.484375)
23 - Florida St. (37.296875)
24 - Iowa (37.15625)
25 - Penn St. (36.9296875)Now for this year’s poll. Note that, at this point, there’s more than 25 teams, as eleven of them tied for #24. Ties should decrease in the coming weeks.
2009 Week 2 Poll
1 - Boise St. (2.875)
2 - LSU (2.75)
2 - Southern California (2.75)
4 - Missouri (2.5)
4 - Alabama (2.5)
4 - UCLA (2.5)
4 - Michigan (2.5)
8 - BYU (2)
8 - Minnesota (2)
8 - Utah (2)
8 - Penn St. (2)
8 - Nebraska (2)
8 - Texas (2)
8 - Tulsa (2)
8 - Wisconsin (2)
8 - Auburn (2)
17 - North Carolina (1.875)
17 - Houston (1.875)
19 - Oregon (1.75)
19 - Connecticut (1.75)
19 - Georgia Tech (1.75)
19 - Oklahoma St. (1.75)
19 - Baylor (1.75)
24 - Clemson (1.5)
24 - Wake Forest (1.5)
24 - Washington (1.5)
24 - Duke (1.5)
24 - Ohio St. (1.5)
24 - Arizona (1.5)
24 - Pittsburgh (1.5)
24 - Ohio (1.5)
24 - SMU (1.5)
24 - Purdue (1.5)
24 - Georgia (1.5)Here’s a look at what this week’s directed graph looks like. Eventually they’ll start to get illegible, but it’s very clear right now.
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coming soon... gardening blog
Subject line says it all.
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race day
Wow, it’s been over a month since I’ve added an entry. I guess it makes sense, as over the last month I haven’t really done much in the way of running. As the semester got a few weeks older, I found myself more and more bogged down in schoolwork with less time to run without sacrificing sleep. For a while, I found myself doubting my ability to actually finish a 26.2 mile race without some serious walking. So about a week ago I had the bright idea of switching my registration to the half-marathon, which was also occurring on the same day. That day was today. It was a great race. I started off faster than I expected, and to my surprise, I kept on going at about the same pace throughout, finishing in 1:57:43. I reached a sort of informal goal I’d had of breaking two hours. Realistically, I hadn’t expected it considering the lack of running I’d done in the last few weeks. It was a beautiful race through a gorgeous city, and it’s definitely helped to restore some of my lost motivation. For the future, I’m planning on running a couple 5-milers and 5Ks while I’m back in Ohio for the holidays, and shooting to finally take the 26.2 plunge either this spring in the Coeur d’Alene Marathon or next fall, location TBA based on which Ph.D. program I end up in.
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lucky 13
So I regressed a little into last week’s laziness, skipping my Thursday 5-miler and my Saturday 8-miler. I blame the start of college football season for yesterday’s absence. I can’t rightfully go out and run when there’s Big Ten games to be watched, right? Anyway, today was a planned thirteen miler, although it was probably more like 13.5 or 14 since I missed a turn around mile 8. Whoops. I started out a little too quick, which wasn’t helped when I noticed there were two guys running behind me a few miles in. I sped up, out of a combination of competitiveness (can’t let them catch me!) and introversion (can’t let them talk to me!). Of course, ten minutes later, when I finally realized they had taken a different turn than I had, I found myself face to face with possibly the steepest, not to mention longest, hill I’ve encountered this summer. That made me regret my quick starting pace. But, what goes up must come down, and the downhill set the mood for the second half of the run, which was surprisingly smooth and relaxing. Overall, not bad for my first long run in two weeks.
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let's pretend that week didn't happen...
So I didn’t run last week. At all. I wasn’t injured or anything. It was the first week of classes, and I guess I was just adjusting to the new schedule of having to actually be on campus for more than a couple hours each day. It’s a shame because it was the “peak” week of the last cycle of weeks, the current week being a stepback week. I hope that doesn’t come back to bite me too much. So far so good this week, at least. This morning was a 5-miler, which I did at a pretty quick pace - my fastest 5 miles thus far this year. It’s fun seeing more runners out now that more people are back in town. I actually saw a couple guys running the other direction through the sheep farm!
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rain, rain, go away
After a summer of dry, sunny days in which to run, the Palouse greeted my first 17-miler this morning with a steady, miserable downpour. Bleh. At least it kept me cool, I guess. Today’s run took me from Moscow to Pullman and back again, mostly along the Bill Chipman Trail, which previously I had only used for my “Washington-and-back” 3-milers. I think I started out the first few miles a tad fast - some pushed 9-minute pace - as the last few were tortoise speed. I was incredibly tired towards the end. I think the only thing keeping me from stopping to walk was the fact that doing so would have required even more time spent in the rain.
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