What in the heck is Pythagorean Win Percentage and why should I care?

 It is a mouthful, isn't it?  Pythagorean Win Percentage

Sounds like something right out of Algebra class, right? And math is boring, right?

No, baby.  Math is important because it helps us manage our lives and can even be used to predict our future and that is what Pythagorean Winning Percentage can do.  Predict your basketball future.

Let's start by making this easier for both you and me.  Let's call the Pythagorean Winning Percentage "PWP".   PWP is a lot easier to pronounce than that math thing.

So what is it anyway?  Remember we talked about defense and scoring differential in the last two blogs? Well, PWP is an estimate of your team's winning percentage based on scoring differential.  

The definition of PWP is the average points scored for a team raised to some power divided by the sum of the average points scored for a team raised to the same power plus the average points scored against your team raised to the same power.

Whew!  So that's a mouthful and it ain't easy to do on your four-function calculator.  You can click on this link and enter your team's average points for and average points against and use a power factor of 6.4.  

Why 6.4, you ask?  Well, the NBA uses a factor of 13.4 and several other statisticians have used a factor of 13.9 and 16.5.  I found that PWP with a power factor of 6.4 actually predicted Missouri HS basketball team records more consistently with the lower power factor. 

Here's the same table of 150 plus Missouri boys basketball teams sorted by actual winning percentage and I have highlighted winning percentage and PWP.

Who had the best winning percentages last year?  Well, Plattsbury and Nixa both had excellent winning percentages of nearly 97%.  Unfortunately for Plattsbury, they lost their only game to Principia in the State Class two semi-final but bounced back to take home a third-place trophy.  Nixa also lost just one game to Kickapoo in the district class six final.  Staley, state class six champ and #1 rated team in the state, was close behind with only two losses to Vashon in OT and nationally ranked Calvary Christian Academy in the Bass Pro Shop holiday tournament.  The PWP for Plattsburg and Staley were darn close to their actual winning percentage while Nixa won some really close games and won more often than the PWP would predict. They finished off close games.



So how do the actual winning percentage and PWP correlate?  About 92% of the winning percentage is explained by PWP.  Here's the correlation plot:


Now some might still say, "So What!".   The season is over, and we know what our record was, why do we need a complex calculation to tell us how we did?
 
Well, what if we used the PWP formula early in the season?  Could we predict the season record by early results?  Or what if we used the historical PWP to predict the team's future record?  Hmm

I will tell you more in the next blog.

RT if you like the analysis.  



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