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I have a list of teams in a local soccer league, ranked from 1 to 10, where the top (1st) ranked team has the most wins (and hence "points").

I'm trying to create a "power" list, so that if the 10th ranked team wins against the 1st ranked team, the game is more important that if the 1st ranked team wins against the 10th ranked team.

Part of this formula involves calculating the opponent strength. For this I was using this formula:

opponent strength multiplier = ([Number of Teams] - [Ranking Position]) / 100

I was wondering if anyone had another (better) method to create a multiplier to compare teams? My final "power" calculation has a number of other factors, including points scored, importance of match, etc.

Sam
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    Are you familiar with the Elo system? – whuber Jul 04 '12 at 18:36
  • Excellent tip. I will look into this a little more. – Sam Jul 04 '12 at 18:58
  • An Elo rating comes with a prediction of the probability that a team with one rating will defeat a team with another rating (ties can be handled, too). This says not only that if A is a favorite over B, and B is a favorite over C, then A is a favorite over C, but it also quantifies this. If A is a 3:1 favorite over B, and B is a 3:1 favorite over C, then C is only supposed to get 1 point in 11 against A. Remarkably, Elo ratings work reasonably well for a wide variety of games, even though it is easy to see imperfections. – Douglas Zare Jul 04 '12 at 19:30
  • The Elo comment led me to a link at the bottom of the article, which led me to this fantastic explanation of the positives and negatives of Elo, Microsoft's solution and everything in between. Definitely worth a read: http://www.moserware.com/2010/03/computing-your-skill.html – Sam Jul 04 '12 at 23:00

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