Guest Moses Posted July 21, 2012 Report Share Posted July 21, 2012 I was hoping that maybe someone with some knowledge of math could help me. I've been working on a database in Microsoft Excel for years now of win/loss records for wrestlers in national promotions in the television era. I have spreadsheet tabs for each television show (as well as one for PPV) for WWF/E, JCP/WCW, ECW, TNA, RoH, and AWA. I also have a tab for all the tv/ppv matches combined for each promotion, and then one tab with all the promotions combined. It's a constant work in progress, and not every show is included yet, either because I haven't gotten to them, or because, in the case of some of the older WWF/JCP/WCW/AWA shows, there's no full listing of results online. ANYWAY, here's my problem. I was originally ranking them by win percentage. But that's flawed...As an example, it would have someone like Chris Youngblood ranked near the top for WCW Saturday Night, as he's got a perfect win percentage on that show, but he only wrestled 7 times. So then I switched to ranking them just based on match count. But, as an example, it would have Barry Horowitz ranked number one for Wrestling Challenge, because he had more matches than anybody on that show, even though he only won 1 of his 85 matches. I would love to find some sort of way to combine the two, so that the man with the combined most matches AND best win percentage is at the top. But I can't figure out how to manipulate the numbers to do that. I'm sure there's some kind of formula to reach this, but I just can't figure it out, and I've tried to word such a thing in google searches different ways and can't find anything. Anyone have any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim Posted July 21, 2012 Report Share Posted July 21, 2012 im not a statistics guy but i'll think outloud for a minute. it seems there can't be any 'perfect' formula to do this because the goal of finding out the "best performing" wrestlers is something relying on subjective criteria. so there may be a couple things you could try and do, look at the results of each, and see which best suites what you're getting at. you could maybe calculate the statistics of win/match-wrestled ratio and find each wrestler's standard deviation from the mean. scale it by some way related to number of matches wrestled. maybe by raw number of matches wrestled. that way a guy like horowitz is going to have a negative deviation multiplied by a relatively large positive number, which is fitting because he had a lot of chances to up his win % but didn't. youngblood will have a high positive standard deviation but scaled by a relatively small number. take the resulting numbers and rank based on that. or maybe there is a great formula to use and this isnt a good idea, but if you want try it and see if it makes your results look more sensible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Moses Posted July 21, 2012 Report Share Posted July 21, 2012 Thanks for the input! I had to look up some of what you said because it's been too long since high school algebra, but I think I pretty much did what you said. I found the deviation of each wrestler from the mean, and then multiplied it by the amount of matches wrestled. It's a step in the right direction, definitely, as it puts the guys with the best percentage and the most matches at the top, but keeps guys like Chris Youngblood lower. But it doesn't do what I want with guys like Barry Horowitz. Using this method for Wrestling Challenge, Horowitz has the absolute worst final number and is ranked last, despite the fact that he wrestled the most matches out of anyone. I'd like to have something that gives him *some* credit in the Wrestling Challenge rankings, just for having so many matches, but not too much credit, since he didn't win. I know that if he was an NFL team, for example, he *should* be dead last, but the difference is that all NFL teams have the same number of games. I feel like because Horowitz has significantly more matches than many wrestlers who appeared on the show, he deserves to be higher. The best way I can think of explaining my mindset is, doesn't Horowitz have more claim to being the "King of Wrestling Challenge", with his 1-85 record, than a guy like Danny Davis, with a 4-11 record? Horowitz was so much more present on the show's run, and therefore represents the show so much more than Danny Davis does. But I can't figure out how to make that happen. You might be right about the subjectivity of this meaning that I can't really achieve exactly what I want. If you or anyone else have any other ideas, though, I'm still working at it! This is one of the nerdiest things I've ever done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rzombie1988 Posted July 21, 2012 Report Share Posted July 21, 2012 Just put different statistics for wrestlers who had different numbers of matches. Do the best wrestlers with 50 minimum matches, 25 minimum matches and 5 minimum matches and you are covered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim Posted July 21, 2012 Report Share Posted July 21, 2012 I know that if he was an NFL team, for example, he *should* be dead last, but the difference is that all NFL teams have the same number of games. I feel like because Horowitz has significantly more matches than many wrestlers who appeared on the show, he deserves to be higher. The best way I can think of explaining my mindset is, doesn't Horowitz have more claim to being the "King of Wrestling Challenge", with his 1-85 record, than a guy like Danny Davis, with a 4-11 record? Horowitz was so much more present on the show's run, and therefore represents the show so much more than Danny Davis does. But I can't figure out how to make that happen. You might be right about the subjectivity of this meaning that I can't really achieve exactly what I want. If you or anyone else have any other ideas, though, I'm still working at it! well, if you're trying to put together stats about who is the "best performing" wrestler on a program in the kayfabe sense, horowitz should actually be penalized for all his matches with such a small win ratio. he had more chances to win matches, but kept losing -- he clearly 'performed' poorly on the show. just like how someone with a 100% win ratio, but, say, 20 matches, should be put over youngblood because that guy also had more chances to lose, but kept winning. i guess it depends on exactly what you want your list to represent. if you're going for "best performer in kayfabe sense," which was the gist i got, horowitz should actually be especially penalized for how many matches he had, since he kept losing them. you could of course also just make a separate list for who had the most matches. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Sorrow Posted July 23, 2012 Report Share Posted July 23, 2012 I first read this topic as "Pro Wrestling and Meth". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadedWrestling Posted July 23, 2012 Report Share Posted July 23, 2012 How about some sort of points system? 5 for a win, 3 for a draw, 1 for a loss. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Log Posted July 23, 2012 Report Share Posted July 23, 2012 I first read this topic as "Pro Wrestling and Meth". Me too! Probably a lot more relevant to each other...especially when Jamie Dundee's involved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted July 24, 2012 Report Share Posted July 24, 2012 Seems like an easy fix is to do what major sports do for their stats and set minimums, so a guy who only pitched a handful of games doesn't show up in the list of ERA leaders or what have you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JNLister Posted August 6, 2012 Report Share Posted August 6, 2012 One way to do it is 2 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, minus one point for a loss. That way you need both a high win percentage and a lot of matches to come out top. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mookeighana Posted February 20, 2013 Report Share Posted February 20, 2013 Coming into this conversation many months late, but a lot of what is described might be interested with the ELO Ratings (Chess Algorithm) in Pro Wrestling work that I've been doing. Basically, when two people face off, their scores give us an indication of who "should" win, and therefore you can give more points away during either (a) major events ( when someone substantially performs better than expected. I looked at 115,000 WWF matches here: https://sites.google.com/site/chrisharringt...wf_elo_rankings And just WWF Tag Teams here: https://sites.google.com/site/chrisharringt..._tag_title_data Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Death From Above Posted February 21, 2013 Report Share Posted February 21, 2013 ELO used for wrestling is both ridiculous and utterly sublime. I love numbers so that is great. Also: Poor, poor Funaki. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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