Hello everyone! I just recently migrated from the old board, and I have to say I like the ambiance here much better. I'm definitely looking forward to another season where I can cheer on my Dukes! and I have a new proposition for my fellow JMU/other CAA friends.

Last winter, I created a website hosting the "FCS Playoff Challenge" that allowed FCS fans to fill out a "March Madness" bracket for the 2012 FCS playoffs (congrats again to JMU Harpoo, last year's champion!). Although the inspiration was last-second, I got a great response from all of you with over 60 people submitting a bracket (over Thanksgiving, no less). Given the popularity, I decided to throw together a new beta effort titled "CAA Pick 'Em Challenge". The website I created can be found here: http://caachallenge.site40.net (I apologize for the shady-looking URL. Just like last year, I hosted my website on a crappy free domain server. Having to deal with their partially-generated URLs is the price I pay for it, I suppose). Everyone is welcome to participate, whether you’re a JMU fan, frequent poster, lurker, etc.

The concept is simple and is very similar to another popular thread that frequently airs on this board. Each week, everyone will have the opportunity to predict the winner of each CAA game (defined as a game that includes at least one CAA team). Each correct prediction is worth 1 point. Each incorrect prediction is worth 0 points. The person with the most correct predictions at the end of the season wins the challenge. This website is not meant to compete with the other CAA Prediction Thread. Please participate in both!

In addition to predicting each contest's winner, I invite you to use the "Confidence" sliders to indicate your confidence in your selections. That is, the confidence that you submit for each game reflects the probability that you think you've selected the correct winner. For this year, the confidence measurement is merely informative and does not impact your score. However, I may elect to use aggregate confidence scores to break any ties. For example, a participant who displays an aggregate confidence of 80% across all predicted matches and an 80% aggregate win percentage will be deemed to have outperformed another participant who displays a 70% aggregate confidence and an 80% aggregate win percentage because the first person displayed a better overall grasp on his/her predictive ability.

Now for the question I've been asked a dozen times in the past 48 hours: "But [Lyric], why do you allow users to enter a confidence value of less than 50%??" I allow this because I'm simply recognizing the fact that a participant may sometimes choose an underdog, perhaps for nostalgic reasons. A <50% confidence value allows the user to make the selection while acknowledging the improbability of the outcome. I mean, if you REALLY want to take W&M over WVU.....

The website is still under construction, but according to my initial testing, it should be ready to support your predictions. If I get enough interest, I will continue to build the site (rather than simply post the leaderboard on the CSN boards). Website links I hope to create in the near future are "Password Reset", "Insights", and the "Leaderboard". If all goes well, I plan to run plenty of analysis on the user data to obtain some interesting insights. For example: Are users generally overconfident, accurate, or under-confident? Do user predictions get better throughout the season? Do prediction dynamics differ for ranked and unranked teams? Do users display bias for their favorite teams? Are any particular teams habitually underrated or overrated (could be useful info for that next FCS Playoff Challenge...). I will publish any/all obtained insights on the website so that everyone can enjoy the output of this social experiment. If this website works out this season, I may attempt to expand it to support every FCS matchup next year.

Thanks again to all of you for your interest, both past and present. It makes the website building a lot of fun!

I forgot to collect my winnings from last year. Is the check in the mail?

(08-28-2013 06:04 AM)Hart Foundation Wrote:  I forgot to collect my winnings from last year. Is the check in the mail?

Didn't fame bring fortune :-D?

Entered. Thanks for putting together.

Thanks to everyone who has signed up so far! I'd love to have even more of you join the contest. Signing up to play is very fast and painless, and predictions are set up so that they can be entered quickly.

For those who have signed up, did you have any trouble seeing the confidence slider bars? I rendered them in HTML5, and I'm still trying to get a grasp for how widely supported it is. I've noticed large support improvements in just the past few months, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone encountered any problems.

So far we have 20 people signed up to participate in the challenge, which is a good, healthy number for the first 24 hours. I'd love to get to at least 30 people today. Don't forget that CAA football kicks off tonight at 7pm! Thanks again to everyone who has signed up and submitted their predictions so far!

(08-29-2013 08:57 AM)Lyric Wrote:  So far we have 20 people signed up to participate in the challenge, which is a good, healthy number for the first 24 hours. I'd love to get to at least 30 people today. Don't forget that CAA football kicks off tonight at 7pm! Thanks again to everyone who has signed up and submitted their predictions so far!

Will you be cutting off predictions each week as the first games begin? In this week's case, tonight.

(08-29-2013 09:30 AM)Potomac Wrote:  Will you be cutting off predictions each week as the first games begin? In this week's case, tonight.

I ran an NFL pool for a number of years and when they started the regular Thursday games it wrecked havoc with people getting their picks in on time. What I did was let people still submit after the game, but they were forced to take a loss on those.

(08-29-2013 09:30 AM)Potomac Wrote:  

(08-29-2013 08:57 AM)Lyric Wrote:  So far we have 20 people signed up to participate in the challenge, which is a good, healthy number for the first 24 hours. I'd love to get to at least 30 people today. Don't forget that CAA football kicks off tonight at 7pm! Thanks again to everyone who has signed up and submitted their predictions so far!

Will you be cutting off predictions each week as the first games begin? In this week's case, tonight.

Good question. Each match is stored in the database with its individual date and start time. When the prediction screen is loaded, only the week's matches that haven't begun yet are made available for predicting. That means that all matches can be predicted up until tonight's individual kickoff times. After tonight's games have started, late-arrivers will still be able to predict Saturday's matchups after tonight.

I wanted to let you all know that the leaderboard is now implemented on the website. You can see the rankings as well as each user's aggregate stats. You can also view individual user's predictions. The leaderboard will be updated again sometime tonight to reflect today's games. Again, the website is http://caachallenge.site40.net

For those of you who haven't signed up yet, there's still time! Only 3 games have been played so far, and given Towson's upset of Uconn, most people didn't get that game right.

Enjoy!

The tiebreaker algorithm was incorrectly implemented. I've corrected the problem.

At the moment can't get the link to work. 2 different devices getting a:
"Parent proxy is not responding"

(09-06-2013 10:19 AM)BDKJMU Wrote:  At the moment can't get the link to work. 2 different devices getting a:
"Parent proxy is not responding"

Sorry for the technical problems. I've noticed that the site i host on goes down every now and then. If I continue to make these websites, I may want invest in a more reliable alternative. It looks like the site is back up at the time of this posting, at least!

And for everyone else, don't forget to submit your picks before tomorrow's games begin!

Last chance to make your predictions! If you've been locked out because you've forgotten your password, PM me and I will reset your password for you (I'll either make up one for you or I will use a new password that you suggest if you don't mind me knowing what it is). I'll be checking to see if anyone needs any help on and off up until right before 1PM, and then I likely won't be able to get to it for the rest of the day.

Bump

Jumping in now. Two weeks behind, but I ain't skerred...

Anyone else having trouble with the site? Tried on multiple devices/browsers.

(09-12-2013 06:31 PM)madizoned-level2004 Wrote:  Anyone else having trouble with the site? Tried on multiple devices/browsers.

I'm sorry to hear it's not working correctly. Is it simply not loading? What devices are you using?

EDIT: I just tried going to the site now, myself, and the server appears to be cutting in and out. I apologize for that. I'm using a free web hosting site, so I'm stuck with their occasional crashes. In my experience, if you try waiting an hour or so, usually the problems are resolved on their end.

Is there a reason I haven't been able to get the site to load yesterday or today? Is it just me or are others having this problem? I had a similar problem during week one and didn't put in any picks until week 2.

This site sucks. When I couldn't make picks on Thur for week 2 I said the hell with it.