Jerry Palm has always been a fan of basketball, but his expertise is in math and computer science.

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That's why he was delighted when he discovered the two worlds collided at a place called the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), which is a power ranking based on a team's schedule strength. The NCAA men's and women's basketball selection committees use RPI to evaluate potential at-large teams for the NCAA tournaments in March.

"I guess I am one of those guys who puts the geek, in the phrase 'sports geek,' " said Palm, who about a decade ago turned his hobby of calculating and reporting the RPI into a full-time job. Palm runs CollegeRPI.Com, a Web site that tracks the RPI power ratings each day.

"The numbers fascinate me and the formula is not that difficult to figure out, although they tweak it every so often. I'm not surprised at all by the interest people have in the RPI because the NCAA tournament is probably the most popular sports event outside of the Super Bowl. People want to know where their teams stand and they want to know why their team may or may not make it in [the NCAA tournament]."

The RPI has been used by the NCAA since 1981. There are three parts to the formula. A team's winning percentage against Division I schools is 25 percent of the RPI, its opponents' record is 50 percent of the rating and the winning percentage of the opponents' opponents is 25 percent. This year extra credit for road wins is part of the mix.

"You look at a team like Pitt and they've been ranked in the top 20 [in the writers' and coaches' polls] all year," said Palm, who is based in Schererville in northwest Indiana. "But their RPI has been much lower [currently 37th] because they play a fairly weak non-conference schedule and most of those games are at home.

"The Big East schedule helps increase that in the end but the road-weighting is mostly to benefit those mid-major schools who always have to travel to bigger schools to play."

A good example of how powerful the new road element is to the formula came last week when Pitt beat Syracuse at the Carrier Dome. The Panthers went into the game No. 53 in the RPI but jumped 19 spots to 34th with the victory. Not only was Syracuse a highly ranked opponent, the Panthers received credit in the RPI for 1.4 wins because it was a road game.

Pitt's RPI is .5817; Kansas has the top RPI ranking at .6763.

Palm said his obsession with the RPI began in the late 1980s when Purdue was on the bubble and trying to make a case for an NCAA tournament bid. Palm, who was a student at Purdue at the time, had never heard of the RPI but wanted to learn more.

Through some research he was able to obtain the formula the NCAA used to calculate the RPI and began to calculate it for himself. In the early 1990s, he began sharing the information with others and by 1993 he had created what has grown into his Web site.

"The Web was in its infancy at the time and I began by sharing the info on news groups via e-mail and message boards," Palm said. "Then one day Dave Jones from the Harrisburg Patriot-News saw it, called to ask about it and shared it with some other writers and they shared it with others and on and on and next thing you know I became the RPI guy.

"Then in March of 1992 I was laid off from my job as a computer programmer at a bank and decided to turn the site into a subscription service and see if I could make a living at it."

Palm's Web site has grown to the point where he offers free content -- the weekly RPI ratings -- and a premium service with several thousand subscribers. The premium content includes the RPI power rankings updated daily, a historical analysis of the RPI and a number of other features.

One reason Palm and a few others like him are such invaluable resources is because the NCAA tournament committee does not make its RPI rankings public. The formula, however, is public. Palm's numbers are used by a number of people, ranging from coaches to members of the media.

While the RPI is thrown around by commentators and fans, Palm is quick to point out that it is not the most important factor in determining a team's at-large worthiness. It is simply one of many tools used by the committee in determining who gets in.

More often than not, according to Palm, the RPI is used to explain why a team was left out. Still, there are general guidelines that have held up over the years.

Since Palm began tracking the RPI 12 years ago, every team with an RPI ranking of 30 or better has made the tournament and only a handful between 30 and 40 have been left out. The highest ranked team to have missed the tournament in that time was Oklahoma in 1994, which had an RPI ranking of 33.

Conversely, teams rated 60 or lower have little chance of getting an at-large bid. Palm said only six such teams have made it in 11 years. The lowest ranked team to receive an at-large bid is New Mexico, which received a bid in 1999 despite an RPI ranking of 74.

"In all these years, New Mexico is the only team I have no explanation for," Palm said, "I have no idea why they got in.

"The most important thing people need to remember is that your RPI doesn't get you in or out, but the things it reflects -- who you play and how well you play -- that's what counts."