I’ll be live blogging the NCAA tournament today from the Luxor sportsbook in Las Vegas, NV.  The line to place a bet is about 100 deep right now.  I got all of my bets for today in last night.  I’m 4-9 so far through my first two days here.  Not good.

My bet’s today:

• Manhattan +16.5
• North Dakota State +4
• Syracuse -12.5
• 4 team teaser: Syracuse -10, Harvard +7, Manhattan +21, and North Dakota State +8.

And a bunch of silly long shot parlays.

Cheers.

I was just driving home from work, and I heard a guy named Adam Meyer on the radio (shame on you WEEI for letting this guy on the radio).  He was offering a discount deal on his picks for the NCAA tournament through his website RealMoneySports.com.  Guys like this are ALWAYS a scam.  If he really was that great at picking games, he sure as hell wouldn’t be telling you about them.  He’d be swimming in a pool filled with hundred dollar bills.  It is possible that he really is surrounded by Benjamins, but it’s not because he’s picking consistent winners.  It’s because vulnerable people fall for this too-good-to-be-true scam and fork over their hard earned cash.

Anyway, Mr. Meyer was on the radio touting his discount picks for the NCAA tournament.  So, how much does Mr . Meyer want for these 6 weeks of picks?  He claims that his top clients pay $250,000 per year.  (A QUARTER MILLION DOLLARS!)  That’s a ton of money.  But since Adam is such a generous guy, he’s going to give you a sweet deal.  I like sweet deals, so I called the number and spoke with a guy named Ken, and he told me that for only 750 I could get three weeks of picks.  Which led to this conversation:

Me: “7 dollars and fifty cents.”

Ken: “No. Are you kidding?”

Me: “Are you kidding?

When I then asked why someone would do this and if he had any records of his picks he got angry and hung up.

So in conclusion: SCAM SCAM SCAM SCAM SCAM

Please don’t give this guy any money.  Unless you hate money.

Cheers.

I recently received the following email advertising the “outstanding event Obesity-2014”:

It is quite an honor to be so “highly regarded in Medicine field” and be invited to such a conference.  However, there are several problems here.  For instance, I don’t work with obesity at all.  I have published a paper about nutrition as a second author providing statistical support.  That’s it.  So sadly, I suspect that I am not actually “highly regarded in Medicine field”, and I am just being spammed to try to get me to attend this conference.  So what I am wondering is, does this work?  Is there anyone out there who is going to be swayed by this grammatically weak spam invitation trying to stroke their ego?  The answer must be yes, or else they wouldn’t do it, right?

Well, I’m sorry yo the organizers, but I will not be attending Obesity-2014.  I’d ask them to  stop spamming me, but I get way too much joy out of these terrible form letters.  

Cheers,

Greg

Updated 3-10-2014 at 9:19pm
Note: These aren’t necessarily projections of what I think WILL happen, these are projections of what I think SHOULD happen.

Last 4 in: Georgetown, Stanford, Minnesota, Florida State

First 4 out: Missouri, West Virginia, Dayton, Arkansas

I saw this “infographic” as few days ago and saved it as a draft in my blog.  The source of this graphic was a Newsweek article entitled “Two Numbers: It Pays (A Little More) to Flip Burgers Down Under”.  The article itself was fairly interesting, but this “infographic” is terrible.  Basically, this image consists of two numbers, and then some graphical components that have nothing to do with those numbers.  The size of the people isn’t related to the numbers, nor is the number of people.  So then I thought, well the number of people must represent the number of countries represented.  There is one person on the left corresponding to one country (USA).  But there are 8 people on the left, and that average consists of ten countries.  So this makes no sense either.  And the only other bit of information that we get from the group of people on the right is that three of the top ten countries based on minimum wage are Australia, France, and Ireland (I think those are the correct flags?)  The image and graphical components of this do nothing to aid in understanding of the numbers, and I this have to give it a failing grade as an infographic.  You might as well just put this data in a table, and stick an unrelated image next to it and call it an infographic.  

You can’t just throw numbers on an image and call it an infographic.  See my “infographic” below.

Cheers.

No one enjoys biostatistics

-Slate

I cite myself as refutation of your silly claim.

Cheers.