Quote:
Originally Posted by Thad House
However, the top teams are not usually the ones where 5 points makes a difference, so it most likely would not have much of an actual effect on the top.
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This is the key point (pun intended) in the discussion
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The small difference in points for teams at the top and bottom of the distribution make little impact on progression through the season. For example, in New England last year every team with a record of better than 10-2-0 at either of their scored events ranked in the top 10 teams going into the District Championship.
However running the 2015 rank-based points model on 2014 New England results shows that there would have been only 1 change to the teams invited to the District Championship. So it doesn't seem to make much difference in the middle of the pack either.
One small effect of the change is that teams are no longer penalized directly for disqualification or not being inspected in time for the qualifications matches. The indirect penalty of a reduction in average score may be larger.
Finally the use of the ceiling function means smaller events have a slightly higher expected points total per team, but this is minuscule in comparison to the huge seeding/playoff points advantage at smaller events.
*although I personally enjoy any work incorporating a statistical model, so props to Danny!