2012 MARS, Colley, Massey and ODM Ratings After Round 16

It's nice to leave the world of wagering for a couple of days and turn back to matters purely analytic.

Here then are the latest MARS Ratings:

Just five team re-rankings then, all of them in the top half of teams and only one of them, West Coast, by more than a single place. This despite an average Rating Point (RP) exchange this week of 2.8 RPs per team per game, the highest average since Round 10, and the third-highest average this season.

In total these exchanges marginally reduced the Interquartile Range, the RP difference between the teams ranked 4th and 15th, to 53.7 RPs (still high in historical terms), and also narrowed the Rating gap between the teams ranked 4th and 8th to just 8.0 RPs, the second-lowest this gap has been this season, higher only than the value of 6.8 RPs it assumed at the end of Round 8.

Hawthorn and Sydney have been the stand-out RP accumulators in recent times, netting 10 to 15 RPs each since the end of Round 10.

The Lions, Crows and Saints have been more modest squirrellers, gathering about 4 to 6 RPs each during these rounds, while the Eagles, Roos and Pies have each also tucked away a couple of RPs each.

Geelong and Fremantle have been the other net accumulators, though barely so, while the Dees have been the most marginal of donors.

The Dons, GWS, Tigers and Port have each shed between about 2 and 4 RPs, suggesting perhaps that they've attained, or are near to attaining, their rightful Rating.

Gold Coast and Carlton have been more significant donors, each shedding between 7 and 8 RPs - enough to feed a hungry, if not ravenous team, scrabbling to lift its Rating above 1,000. 

If you're looking for inordinate generosity, however, then the Dogs are the team you seek. They've given up over 16 RPs since the end of Round 10, almost enough for 1 RP for every other team in the competition. 

What's perhaps a little surprising is that all of these RP gains and losses have led to relatively little movement in MARS rankings across the period. Only Carlton, down 2 places from 7th to 9th over the period from the end of Round 10 to now, and Sydney, up two spots from 5th to 3rd, have moved by more than one rung on the MARS ladder.

Stability of rankings, it turns out, has been something of a feature of MARS Ratings this season. On average, commencing in Round 5, just 5.9 teams have changed MARS Rankings each week, and an average of only 1.4 teams have been subject to multi-rung moves.

The comparative figures for the other Systems are: 

• For Colley, 9.8 teams have changed places each week, and 4.2 have had multi-rung moves
• For ODM, 9.6 teams have changed places each week, and 4.3 have had multi-rung moves
• For Massey, 9.2 teams have changed places each week, and 4.0 have had multi-rung moves

In summary, MARS Rankings have been stickier this year than the Rankings of any other System.

Speaking of other Systems, here's the full set of rankings for the week:

Massey has re-ranked nine teams including three by two spots or more (Essendon from 7th to 5th, the Roos from 11th to 9th, and the Saints from 5th to 7th), ODM has re-ranked nine too but only one by two spots (the Roos from 12th to 10th), while Colley has re-ranked only eight teams but four of them by two spots (Carlton from 9th to 11th, the Roos from 11th to 9th, Richmond from 10th to 12th, and the Saints from 12th to 10th).

What's particularly interesting is that Colley's readiness to re-rank early and often this season, and MARS' relative reluctance to re-rank much at all have proven to be equally effective strategies in terms of predicting the winners of games. The simple expedient of selecting the team with the higher Rating would have yielded, since and including Round 5, a 72.7% success rate if pursued based on either Colley's or MARS' Ratings, but only a 71.7% success rate if ODM were used instead, and just 69.7% if Massey Ratings were used. For context, BKB tipped at 74.7% across this same period. 

Applying this strategy to this week's games will serve as an interesting further test as, in four of them, the higher Ranked team is not the same for all four Systems: 

• MARS stands alone in selecting the Cats to beat the Dons
• Colley stands alone in selecting the Pies to beat the Hawks
• Colley and ODM tip the Crows, while Massey and MARS opt for the Eagles
• ODM stands alone is selecting the Tigers to beat the Roos.