Custom Predictions now on Golf Predictor!

New Custom Predictions page showing sliders with random weights applied to 2013 BMW Championship

GP video tutorial on this new page

I am excited to announce the addition of a useful new 'Custom Prediction Rankings' page to Golf Predictor. As can be glimpsed in the screenshot above, this new page is similar to the existing 'Prediction Rankings' page and is available from the same 'Predictions' menu in the Member section. However, while the 'Prediction Rankings' page shows the tournament field sorted by GP Rank (as calculated by the GP prediction algorithm), this new page contains sliders which allow you to adjust the different parameter weightings and re-rank the field as you see fit. I have had the idea for this page on the back burner for some time and after a member suggested it earlier this year, I finally got around to implementing it. Some notes on this new page:

1. Simply adjust the weighting sliders as desired (subject to point two below) and press the 'Rank' button to re-rank the field.
2. The combined values of all the weighting sliders must add up to 100 or you will not be allowed to proceed. There is a colour coded 'Total' label under the sliders which shows you the running total. This 'Total' label is black when zero, green when 100 and red besides.
3. If you would prefer, you can bypass the sliders and input values directly into the text boxes underneath them. Note that you should only enter numbers between 0-100 into these boxes. There is validation on these boxes to ignore text and correct numbers that are out of this range.
4. The parameters available to adjust are season history, last five events history, course history, tournament history, last 12 similar events history, similar length course history, world ranking similar weather history and season scoring average.
5. You can not reverse engineer the GP algorithm using this page, which just uses the simple averages of the above mentioned statistics (where applicable). While the "top secret" GP algorithm is much more complicated (and therefore accurate), this page should still prove very useful.
6. Because the simple averages are used, you may find golfers who have played only one matching event ranking higher than expected. Use the pop-up text over a golfer's first name to determine whether to discard them from your analysis or not. This pop-up text will tell you how many tournaments the golfer played in each applicable category and is shown above for Tiger Woods.
7. It proved very difficult to find sliders that work on every browser. I have tested this page on the latest versions of FireFox, Chrome, Safari and Opera, I have also tested it on IE7, IE8, IE9 and IE10. I had to try a couple of different sliders before settling on the jQuery ones shown above. These proved to be the most compatible with the different browsers, but they do not look as well on IE7 (in particular) or IE8. They still work, but they are not rendered as well as in the more modern browsers. If you're still using these versions of IE, you should really upgrade to a later (and "less bad"!) version!
8. Your custom rankings are just displayed on this page and not saved. This means that if you were to click on a  link as usual (e.g. to a golfer prediction page) and return to this page via the browser's Back button, your custom rankings will be lost. Because of this, the golfer prediction links on this page open up in a new browser window. If you want to return to this page, I recommend right-clicking on any other link (e.g. the tournament page link) and opening the page in a new tab/window.
9. You can only rank the predictions for tournaments with no results in the system (i.e. the current week's event(s) before the results are inputted). This is because this new functionality is relatively computationally intensive and not to be "wasted" on old tournaments! The 'Rank' button will therefore be disabled for completed tournaments.

Just another way to make Golf Predictor even better! This new page is a terrific addition to the site and should greatly assist you in analysing the field for an event. You will no longer limited to Golf Predictor's (albeit more accurate) rankings - you can create your own using your own judgement. The screenshot above shows custom predictions for the 2013 BMW Championship (US PGA Tour FedEx Cup series) with some random weightings applied.

As this is a premium feature (and computationally intensive) which will expose golfers outside those ranked 11-25 by the GP algorithm, only subscribers can re-rank the field. Non-subscribers can access the page, but the 'Rank' button will be disabled. So, sign up today and reap the full benefits of Golf Predictor, the premium professional golf statistics site.