I attending every single JSM for 8 straight years from 2010 – 2017 (Vancouver, Miami, San Diego, Montreal, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Baltimore).  Unfortunately, I missed last year in Vancouver due to the birth of my second child, but I suppose it was worth it (Benji just turned 1!).  This year I return to JSM in…

So I was screwing around with the nflscrapr package by Ron Yurko and Maksim Horowitz, probably doing something useless and unproductive.  In their tutorial on the github, I came across this image: And for some reason, I thought that would look really cool rotated 90 degrees.  So after a few hours of playing around with win probabilities…

I want to start with this plot: This plot shows all the 1 and 2 seeds and their odds of making it to each round relative to Duke.  I think the most interesting parts of this plot are where they cross.  So for instance, Gonzaga is more likely to make the Final 4 than Virginia,…

Well, just like last year, I’m predicting that Loyola Chicago won’t make the Final Four.  But I’ll probably be wrong again somehow…….. Anyway, here are some thoughts about the NCAA tournament from a guy who hasn’t paid attention all year until last week. Here is how I CURRENTLY rank the tournament teams.  This is based…

Pick: Patriots 27-26 Spread: Rams +2.5 Total: Under 56.5  

Unrelated to this post: What time does the Super Bowl start?  5:30pm Central. Moving on, below is a 2d histogram of frequencies of the last digits of the final score of ever NFL game from 1920 through last year’s Super Bowl. If I only use games from 2000 through the 2018 Super Bowl the 2d…

Here are my picks for the NFL playoffs.  Also, Ravens-Chargers shouldn’t be a first round game. Wildcard Round Texans over Colts, 26-22 Chargers over Ravens, 22-21 Cowboys over Seahawks, 21-20 Bears over Eagles, 27-18 Divisional Round Chiefs over Chargers, 28-25 Patriots over Texans, 24-21 Saints over Cowboys, 30-18 Rams over Bears, 29-22 Conference Championships Chiefs…

The Ringer published an article today entitled “The NFL’s Analytics Revolution Has Arrived” by Kevin Clark.  The first section of the article is a relatively interesting overview of the state of advanced analytics in the NFL.  But then everything goes down hill.  And where does it start to go down hill?  Right here: “It is…

In my original post I fixed a few parts of the code (the white bishop was missing…derp) and I made the border lines thicker.  I’ve also found that these look way better when only using the first 40-50 moves or so.  Beyond that they get really boring.  So here are all 12 games and the…