Couple of minor points

Couple of minor points
by SixShutouts66 (2018-06-03 17:45:21)

In reply to: Oh, those ubiquitous ratings! posted by BabaGhanouj

1. As a nit, I think you should exclude foreign players from the calculation (Vadeeva and Gulich) and slide up the American and Canadian-born players so that you're comparing apples to apples (North American players as ranked in HS and as selected in the WNBA draft among US/Canadian players).

2. Without looking at the raw rankings, it seemed that the top 6 ranked HS players performed up to expectation. (your 3 or 4 sigma cases that were clearly better. The next set of players were closer together and more difficult to separate). It would be interesting to see if this occurred regularly.

3. It might be interesting to look at ranked players who didn't live up to expectations and speculate why that happened (too high an initial ranking, twiners who were affected by college game, failure to develop, etc.)

Ah, point # 1 is brilliant (if minor). Never thought of it.

I think I understand point #2. Am I right in stating the proposition as perhaps, as players are rated farther from the top, the differentiation is more difficult and thus the ratings may be less accurate? Sounds reasonable. I agree it could be developed by more testing.

Point #3, I agree would be an interesting exercise. I would guess injury would be a big factor along with ones you mention. But that is untested.

Correct

If you consider the standard bell-shaped curve, there are fewer people at the extremes and they stand out more. As you move to the next levels, there are more people and it's much harder to differentiate. As examples. it's easier to name a first-team All America squad than the fourth team; or draftniks agree on the top 5 NFL draftees and disagree on the next 20 because there's not as much to pick between them.