Question 5.52

22. Which college football team is #1? In addition to polls of coaches and journalists, rankings from six computer programs (which have various ways to value factors such as the quality of the opponent played) determine the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) standings in major college football.

  1. At the end of the 2007 regular season, Hawaii (the only undefeated team) received these computer rankings: 12th, 8th, 14th, 10th, 8th, and 13th. The BCS formula throws out the high and low of the six computer rankings and uses the mean of the remaining four ranks. Find this mean.
  2. Why do you think the high and low values are excluded from the mean? Is your reason connected to why the median is sometimes preferred to the mean?