HoF Voting. Quant Style.

I don’t want to get into an argument about the use of intangibles or subjective achievements (penalties as well) for use in HoF voting. This is just going to be a simple explanation and presentation of a mathematical approach to judging deservedness. Its not necessarily how I would vote exactly, but I think its a more a honest method then most.

1. The first cut.

Due to time constraints (aka lazy constraints) I only considered players with 5 top 16s or more. The cut is somewhat arbitrary, but it left me with 25 considerations and it seems like below that number you would have to rely on subjective arguments anyways (e.g. Pikula and Herberholz’s of the world).

Once I did this, I did all analysis WITHOUT names attached, to remove as much bias (during the methodology creation) as possible.

2. The meat of the method.

I created 5 super categories. Each one has multiple components. Then I gave a weight to each of these categories. This creates an overall score for each player and the top 5 scores were reported. I like this methodology since it can tell you where a player has a deficit or strength. If you disagree with my weights it simple enough to see how the rankings change based on your own personal preferences. For example, Lauren Lee doesn’t think consistency should matter whereas my friend Sam seemed to think it much more important.

Below I list the 5 categories, the weight assigned to each, an example of a subcomponent and some discussion of players who excel or fail in the category. Finally I might add some color commentary.

Note some weights changed since I posted on facebook based on discussions with people I respect.

Longevity (10%):  

How long was the player at a high level of magic. The simplest subcomponent is # of PTs played.

Top 3 (always in order)
Ikeda, Yasooka, Stark

Bottom 3 (no order unless mentioned)

Krempels, Justice, Soh/Kaji.

This is one the places where Justice gets really punished. If you put little weight on Longevity, I think its hard to argue that he shouldn’t get in.

Consistency (15%):

Was the person consistent at the highest level of play. PT Median Finish is here. Note this is somewhat independent of how long the player played.

Top 3)
LSV, Efro, Osyp/Mori

Bottom 3)

Jurkovic, Tiago Chan, Geoffrey Siron

I am not sure that consistency should be that important. If someone was bad early on in their PT career, but became dominant I could fully imagine they belong in the HoF.

Best in World (25%):

Could we consider the player amongst the best in the world during some extended period of time. I think its hard to argue that someone is among the best of all time if you can’t even provide evidence that they were the best during their time. 3 YR Median is one of the subcomponents.

Top 3)
LSV (Get used to this), Saito, Wafo-Tapa

Bottom 3)
Reitzl (Booooo), Ikeda (first good argument for why he shouldn’t be in), Jurkovic

Place in History (25%): How unusual is their resume? Do they have something that really stands out, makes you say “Wow that would be hard to do”. How many standard deviations above the mean are their stats.

Top 3)
LSV, Saito, Yasooka (15 Gp Top 8s, 16^th on Money List, insanely high pro points)

Bottom 3)

Krempels (no idea who he is for good reason?),  Tiago Chan, Justice (0 GP Top 8s, almost no pro points).

Again this tries to quantify place in history, I know lots of people would argue Justice should be higher but I need a data point and I don’t have one.

Skill (25%): This is probably the most controversial category, I think even if you had low skill and had results from the above categories you might deserve to be in. %Top 16s is an example of skill.

Top 3)
Justice, LSV (now I wanna see a Justice/LSV grudge match), Efro

Bottom 3)

Tiago Chan, Ikeda, Fabiano

4^th was a tie between Johns/Kaji.

The Final Top 10 (with scores and lower is better):

1. LSV (1.65)
2. Saito (6.4)
3. Yasooka (7.55)
4. Efro (7.85)
5. Osyp (8.1)
6. Gary (8.1)
7. Stark (8.45)
8. Wafo-Tapa (8.85)
9. Mori (8.9)
10.  Johns (9.05)

What do the top 10 have to do make a move into top 5:

Gary – literally anything to break the tie with Osyp.

Stark – Scores worst in Skill (low Median) and BiW (low 3 Year Median), which I am sure many would disagree with. Honestly just weighting those two areas slightly lower and hes in.

Wafo-Tapa – Consistency and Longevity were is two weakest areas and the ban definitely didn’t help that.

Mori – Skill and BiW need improvement.

Johns – Longevity is far and away his worst score. Hard Time to start PTQing IMO.

Justice – If you put 0 weight on Longevity/Place in History, Justice becomes a slam dunk candidate (2^nd to LSV, with Saito falling to 8^th in this case).