...What the fuck is an RPI and what does it stand for?


And I know I'm gonna get answers like "your not a real CBB fan if you don't know what RPI means" and shit like that. So just give me an answer and everything will be cool.

Ratings Percentage Index I believe or some shit like that.

So what does it mean? How the hell does it help?

http://www.ncaasports.com/basketball/mens/story/9183429


The official RPI is used as one of many tools to select teams to participate in the championships. Developed in 1981, the RPI provides supplemental data in the evaluation of teams for at-large selection and seeding of the championship bracket is only one of many pieces of information available to the committees. Qualitative factors such as games missed by student-athletes or coaches and a team's performance in the latter portion of the season cannot be reliably measured by a statistical model. However, such factors are among the details of each team considered by the committees. "


http://collegerpi.com/



What is the RPI?
The RPI (Rating Percentage Index) is a measure of strength of schedule and how a team does against that schedule. It does not consider things like margin of victory, only whether or not a team won and where the game was played. It is used by the NCAA as one of their factors in deciding which teams to invite to the NCAA tournament and where to seed them.
It was created in 1981 and is maintained by the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee. They have always placed a premium on schedule strength when selecting teams for the tournament, so they wanted a relatively simple way to measure that and the RPI was born. This page presents an independent duplication of those ratings.

Just how important is the RPI?
As far as getting into the tournament, it appears to be more important to bubble teams than the top powers. It is also important in the seeding process. Click here for an excerpt from an article in the Feb. 8, 1995 edition of The NCAA News where Kansas AD and former NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee Chairman Bob Frederick addresses this question.
What is the formula?
The basic formula is 25% team winning percentage (WP), 50% opponents' average winning percentage (OWP), and 25% opponents' opponents' average winning percentage (OOWP).
For the 2004-05 season, the formula was changed to give more weight to road wins vs home wins. A team's win total for RPI purposes is 1.4 * road wins + neutral site wins + 0.6 * home wins. A team's losses is calculated as 0.6 * road losses + neutral site losses + 1.4 * home losses.

For example, a team that is 4-0 at home and 2-7 on the road has a RPI record of 5.2 wins (1.4 * 2 + 0.6 * 4) and 4.2 losses (0.6 * 7). That means that even though it is 6-7, for RPI purposes, it is above .500 (5.2-4.2).

This "weighted" record is only used for the 25% of the formula that is each team's winning percentage. The regular team records are used to calculate OWP and OOWP.

As always, only games against Division I opponents count in the RPI.

Oh.......I understand.


Thanks.