Stats in the Wild

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  • NFL Picks – Week 7

    Total (weeks 1-6) – SU: 73-32-1 (68.9%)  ATS: 53-51-2 (50.9%, -3.1 Units)  O/U: 59-46-1 (56.1%, +8.4 Units)

    Week 1 – SU: 9-7-0 ATS: 8-8-0 O/U: 13-3-0

    Week 2 – SU: 10-6-0 ATS: 10-6-0 O/U: 10-6-0

    Week 3 – SU: 12-4-0 ATS: 9-6-1  O/U: 8-8-0

    Week 4 – SU: 7-6-0 ATS: 5-7-1  O/U: 5-8-0

    Week 5 – SU: 14-2-0 ATS: 6-9-0  O/U: 9-6-0

    Week 6 – SU: 11-3-1 ATS: 8-7-0  O/U: 6-9-1

    Week 7 – SU: 11-4-0 ATS: 7-8-0  O/U: 8-7-0

    NY Jets at New England

    Prediction: Patriots 27-19 (72.7%)

    Pick: Jets +10 (54.4%)

    Total: Over 45.5

    Atlanta at Baltimore

    Prediction: Ravens 24-21 (57.4%)

    Pick: Falcons +7 (62.3%)

    Total: Under 49.5

    Minnesota at Buffalo

    Prediction: Bills 23-20 (58.4%)

    Pick: Vikings +5.5 (57.15%)

    Total: Over 42.5

    Miami at Chicago

    Prediction: Bears 24-20 (62.2%)

    Pick: Bears -4 (51.0%)

    Total: Under 49

    NY Giants at Dallas

    Prediction: Cowboys 24-21 (58.4%)

    Pick: Giants +6.5 (60.0%)

    Total: Under 48.5

    San Francisco at Denver

    Prediction: Broncos 24-21(58.8%)

    Pick: 49ers +6.5 (59.5%)

    Total: Under 51.5

    New Orleans at Detroit

    Prediction: Lions 25-24 (50.3%)

    Pick: Saints +3  (58.17%)

    Total: Over 48.5

    Carolina at Green Bay

    Prediction: Packers 26-22 (61.2%)

    Pick: Panthers +7 (58.5%)

    Total: Under 49

    Cincinnati at Indianapolis

    Prediction: Colts 24-23 (51.6%)

    Pick: Bengals +3.5 (58.3%)

    Total: Under 49.5

    Cleveland at Jacksonville

    Prediction: Browns 22-20 (56.4%)

    Pick: Jaguars +6 (72.3%)

    Total:  Under 45

    Arizona at Oakland

    Prediction: Cardinals 22-20 (54.0%)

    Pick: Raiders +4 (57.4%)

    Total: Under 44

    Kansas City at San Diego

    Prediction: Chargers 24-20 (59.4%)

    Pick: Chiefs +4 (51.9%)

    Total: Under 45.5

    Seattle at St. Louis

    Prediction: Seahawks 23-19 (61.0%)

    Pick: Rams +7 (58.8%)

    Total: Under 43.5

    Tennessee at Washington

    Prediction: Washington Football Team 24-21 (59.4%)

    Pick: Titans +6 (57.6%)

    Total:  Under 46.5

    Houston at Pittsburgh

    Prediction: Steelers 23-21 (55.8%)

    Pick: Texans +3.5 (54.11%)

    Total: Under 45

  • NCAA Top 25 – 10/13/2014

    2014 NCAA Football Standings

    Updated October 12, 2014

     
    Teams records
    1 MISS STATE 6-0
    2 OLE MISS 6-0
    3 AUBURN 5-1
    4 OKLAHOMA 5-1
    5 GEORGIA 5-1
    6 ALABAMA 5-1
    7 FLORIDA STATE 6-0
    8 OREGON 5-1
    9 TEXAS A&M 5-2
    10 TCU 4-1
    11 NOTRE DAME 6-0
    12 BAYLOR 6-0
    13 UCLA 4-2
    14 LOUISVILLE 5-2
    15 KANSAS STATE 4-1
    16 OKLAHOMA STATE 5-1
    17 ARIZONA 5-1
    18 STANFORD 4-2
    19 UTAH 4-1
    20 TENNESSEE 3-3
    21 NEBRASKA 5-1
    22 USC 4-2
    23 WASHINGTON 5-1
    24 LSU 5-2
    25 ARKANSAS 3-3

    Full Rankings 

  • NFL Picks – Week 6

    Total (weeks 1-6) – SU: 62-28-1  ATS: 46-43-2  O/U: 51-39-1 

    Week 1 – SU: 9-7-0 ATS: 8-8-0 O/U: 13-3-0

    Week 2 – SU: 10-6-0 ATS: 10-6-0 O/U: 10-6-0

    Week 3 – SU: 12-4-0 ATS: 9-6-1  O/U: 8-8-0

    Week 4 – SU: 7-6-0 ATS: 5-7-1  O/U: 5-8-0

    Week 5 – SU: 14-2-0 ATS: 6-9-0  O/U: 9-6-0

    Week 6 – SU: 11-3-1 ATS: 8-7-0  O/U: 6-9-1

    Indianapolis at Houston

    Prediction: Texans 24-21 (59.1%)

    Pick: Texans +3 (67.2%)

    Total: Under 46

    Washington at Arizona

    Prediction: Cardinals 22-21 (53.4%)

    Pick: Washington Football Team +3.5 (56.5%)

    Total: Under 45.5

    Green Bay at Miami

    Prediction: Packers 23-22 (54.1%)

    Pick: Dolphins +3.5 (55.9%)

    Total: Under 49.5

    Chicago at Atlanta

    Prediction: Falcons 25-24 (53.0%)

    Pick: Bears +3 (55.5%)

    Total: Under 54

    New England at Buffalo

    Prediction: Patriots 25-22 (58.9%)

    Pick: Patriots -3 (50.4%)

    Total: Over 45

    Carolina at Cincinnati

    Prediction: Bengals 23-20 (56.1%) (PUSH)

    Pick: Panthers +7 (63.5%)

    Total: Under 45

    Pittsburgh at Cleveland

    Prediction: Browns 22-21 (50.0%)

    Pick: Steelers +2.5 (57.1%)

    Total: Under 47

    Detroit at Minnesota

    Prediction: Lions 23-22 (52.7%)

    Pick: Vikings +2 (53.0%)

    Total: Over 44

    Denver at NY Jets

    Prediction: Broncos 24-21 (60.5%)

    Pick: Jets +9 (64.7%)

    Total: Under 48 (PUSH)

    San Diego at Oakland

    Prediction: Chargers 23-21 (55.4%)

    Pick: Raiders +7.5 (65.6%)

    Total: Over 43.5

    Dallas at Seattle

    Prediction: Seahawks 25-20 (65.5%)

    Pick: Cowboys +8 (56.8%)

    Total: Under 47.5

    Baltimore at Tampa Bay

    Prediction: Ravens 21-20 (51.7%)

    Pick: Buccaneers +3.5 (58.2%)

    Total: Under 43.5

    Jacksonville at Tennessee

    Prediction: Titans 24-17 (69.5%)

    Pick: Titans -6 (58.2%)

    Total: Under 44

    NY Giants at Philadelphia

    Prediction: Eagles 25-21 (59.9%)

    Pick: Eagles -2.5 (52.89%)

    Total: Under 50.5

    San Francisco at St. Louis

    Prediction: 49ers 23-19 (60.9%)

    Pick: 49ers -3.5 (51.0%)

    Total: Under 44

     

  • NCAA Football Rankings – 10/7/2014

     
    Ranks Teams Records
    1 AUBURN 5-0
    2 MISS STATE 5-0
    3 OLE MISS 5-0
    4 OKLAHOMA 4-1
    5 ALABAMA 4-1
    6 UCLA 4-1
    7 TCU 4-0
    8 TEXAS A&M 5-1
    9 GEORGIA 4-1
    10 LOUISVILLE 5-1
    11 FLORIDA STATE 5-0
    12 NOTRE DAME 5-0
    13 ARIZONA 5-0
    14 BAYLOR 5-0
    15 KANSAS STATE 4-1
    16 OREGON 4-1
    17 UTAH 4-1
    18 ARKANSAS 3-2
    19 OKLAHOMA STATE 4-1
    20 NEBRASKA 5-1
    21 STANFORD 3-2
    22 USC 3-2
    23 GEORGIA TECH 5-0
    24 LSU 4-2
    25 TENNESSEE 2-3

    Full Rankings

  • NFL Picks – Week 5

    Total (weeks 1-4) –  SU: 51-25-0  ATS: 38-36-2  O/U: 45-31-0 

    Week 1 – SU: 9-7-0 ATS: 8-8-0 O/U: 13-3-0

    Week 2 – SU: 10-6-0 ATS: 10-6-0 O/U: 10-6-0

    Week 3 – SU: 12-4-0 ATS: 9-6-1  O/U: 8-8-0

    Week 4 – SU: 7-6-0 ATS: 5-7-1  O/U: 5-8-0

    Week 5 – SU: 14-2-0 ATS: 6-9-0  O/U: 9-6-0

    Minnesota at Green Bay

    Prediction: Packers 26-20 (67.5%)

    Pick: Vikings +9 (57.5%)

    Total: Under 48

    Chicago at Carolina

    Prediction: Panthers 23-22 (54.9%)

    Pick: Bears +2.5 (52.2%)

    Total: Under 46

    Houston at Dallas

    Prediction: Cowboys 24-22 (55.0%)

    Pick: Texans +6 (61.9%)

    Total: Under 47

    Arizona at Denver

    Prediction: Broncos 26-20 (67.3%)

    Pick: Cardinals +7.5 (53.5%)

    Total: Under 49

    Buffalo at Detroit

    Prediction: Lions 24-20 (62.9%)

    Pick: Bills +7 (56.7%)

    Total: Under 44.5 

    Baltimore at Indianapolis

    Prediction: Colts 23-22 (52.4%)

     Pick: Ravens +3.5 (57.6%)

    Total: Under 48 

    Pittsburgh at Jacksonville

    Prediction: Steelers 24-19 (64.7%)

    Pick: Jaguars +7 (54.9%)

    Total: Under 46.5

    Tampa Bay at New Orleans

    Prediction: Saints 27-20 (68.5%)

    Pick: Buccaneers +10 (59.2%)

    Total: Under 48.5 

    Atlanta at NY Giants

    Prediction: Giants 25-23 (54.7%)

    Pick: Falcons +4 (56.6%)

    Total: Under 50.5

    St. Louis at Philadelphia

    Prediction: Eagles 25-20 (64.0%)

    Pick: Rams +7 (55.7%)

    Total: Under 48

    NY Jets at San Diego

    Prediction: Chargers 23-19 (61.8%)

    Pick: Jets +7 (57.9%)

    Total: Under 44

    Kansas City at San Francisco

    Prediction: 49ers 24-17 (68.3%)

    Pick: 49ers -6.5 (50.5%)

    Total: Under 45

    Cleveland at Tennessee 

    Prediction: Titans 23-21 (56.8%)

    Pick: Browns +1.5 (52.5%)

    Total: Under 44

    Cincinnati at New England

    Prediction: Patriots 26-22 (61.4%)

    Pick: Patriots -2.5 (54.4%)

    Total: Over 46

    Seattle at Washington

    Prediction: Seahawks 23-21 (57.7%) 

    Pick: Redskins +7.5 (76.7%)

    Total: Under 46

     

  • My NCAA Top 25

    2014 NCAA Football Standings

    Updated September 29, 2014

     
    Teams records
    1 AUBURN 4-0
    2 ALABAMA 4-0
    3 TEXAS A&M 5-0
    4 OKLAHOMA 4-0
    5 UCLA 4-0
    6 OLE MISS 4-0
    7 MISS STATE 4-0
    8 BYU 4-0
    9 NEBRASKA 5-0
    10 OREGON 4-0
    11 TCU 3-0
    12 FLORIDA STATE 4-0
    13 NOTRE DAME 4-0
    14 LSU 4-1
    15 BAYLOR 4-0
    16 LOUISVILLE 4-1
    17 ARKANSAS 3-2
    18 KANSAS STATE 3-1
    19 STANFORD 3-1
    20 OKLAHOMA STATE 3-1
    21 ARIZONA 4-0
    22 GEORGIA 3-1
    23 UTAH 3-1
    24 CALIFORNIA 3-1
    25 WASHINGTON 4-1

    Full Rankings 

  • Language Log on “specificity” and “sensitivity”

    I can finally say that I no longer need to look these two thins up. #progress #experience

    Michael Lugo's avatarGod plays dice

    Language Log on “specificity” and “sensitivity” as (poorly chosen words for) properties of medical tests. Mark Liberman asks: why not just call them true positive rate and true negative rate. With the classic “what’s the probability that you got the disease, given that you tested positive?” problem thrown in; you’ve seen this if you ever learned Bayes’ theorem.

    View original post

  • NFL Picks – Week 4

    Total (weeks 1-3) –  SU: 39-22-0 ATS: 32-27-2  O/U: 36-25-0 

    Week 1 – SU: 10-6-0 ATS: 8-8-0 O/U: 13-3-0

    Week 2 – SU: 10-6-0 ATS: 10-6-0 O/U: 10-6-0

    Week 3 – SU: 12-4-0 ATS: 9-6-1  O/U: 8-8-0

    Week 4 – SU: 7-6-0 ATS: 5-7-1  O/U: 5-8-0

    NY Giants at Washington

    Prediction: Washington Football Team 23-21 (55.4%)

    Pick: Giants +3.5 (54.6%)

    Total: Under 46.5

    Carolina at Baltimore

    Prediction: Ravens 23-20 (56.4%)

    Pick: Panthers +3 (51.2%)

    Total: Over 41

    Green Bay at Chicago

    Prediction: Bears 23-22 (52.9%)

    Pick: Bears +1.5 (57.1%)

    Total: Under 50.5

    Buffalo at Houston

    Prediction: Texans 24-19 (63.3%)

    Pick: Texans -3 (55.0%)

    Total: Over 41.5

    Tennessee at Indianapolis

    Prediction: Colts 24-21 (57.7%)

    Pick: Titans +7.5 (63.4%)

    Total: Under 46

    Atlanta at Minnesota

    Prediction: Falcons 23-22 (53.3%)

     Pick: Vikings +3 (55.2%)

    Total: Under 47

    Detroit at NY Jets

    Prediction: Lions 22-21 (52.5%)

    Pick: Jets +2 (53.15%)

    Total: Under 45

    Miami at Oakland

    Prediction: Dolphins 21-20 (52.6%)

    Pick: Raiders +4 (58.8%)

    Total: Over 40.5

    Tampa Bay at Pittsburgh

    Prediction: Steelers 23-18 (52.9%)

    Pick: Buccaneers +7.5 (57.2%)

    Total: Under 45.5

    Jacksonville at San Diego

    Prediction: Chargers 26-17 (73.8%)

    Pick: Jaguars +13.5 (62.9%)

    Total: Under 45

    Philadelphia at San Francisco

    Prediction: 49ers 25-20 (63.3%)

    Pick: Eagles +5 (50.7%) PUSH

    Total: Under 51 

    New Orleans at Dallas

    Prediction: Saints 26-25 (51.5%)

    Pick: Cowboys +3 (57.0%)

    Total: Under 53.5

    New England at Kansas City

    Prediction: Patriots 25-21 (60.5%)

    Pick: Patriots -3.5 (50.6%)

    Total: Over 46

  • How the 538 model works

    Michael Lugo's avatarGod plays dice

    Here’s a explanation by Nate Silver of how his Senate prediction model works. 10,000 words, and denser than the typical FiveThirtyEight post, but it’s food for thought if you’ve been curious about what’s going on under the hood of FiveThirtyEight’s flagship product.

    Make sure to click through to the footnotes – lots of links to subsidiary analyses from the past that explicate some of the interesting tidbits Silver and co. have built up over time.

    View original post

  • Which sport?

    I went the the Cubs game today against the Dodgers.  I got to see Clayton Kershaw pitch (Awesome) and watch the Cubs get destroyed (Expected).  It was 14-3 going into the 9th inning and some people were joking that a touchdown would get the Cubs right back in the game.  (The Cubs “rallied” for two in the 9th to ultimately lose 14-5.)

    But, this got me thinking.  14-3 does look like a football score, but 14-5 is clearly not.  On the train back to school, I came up with this question: If all you knew about a game was the score, which sport would you guess generated that score?

    To answer this question, I scraped the scores of (almost) all of the baseball and hockey games from 2000-2014, and I found a table of all NFL scores all-time. (I haven’t exhaustively scraped every single NHL and MLB game ever because 1) I don’t think the results will change much and 2) what I did was good enough for Friday night.) I then counted how often a specific score occurred each of the three sports (I did consider basketball, but it’s not really that interesting here) and converted that count to a percentage.  Then for each score, I assigned the sport with the highest percentage of that score.  The graphic below shows the results of this.  If you click on the image, you can zoom in on it for more detail.  whichSportScores

     

    Some interesting things:

    • If the winner scores 4 or fewer goals, those games belong to hockey.
    • Additionally hockey gets 5-1, 5-2, 5-3, and 5-5.  5-0 and 5-4 are baseball scores though.
    • If the winner scores between 6 and 9 runs, those games all belong to baseball.  (With 6-6 and 7-7 ties belonging to football.
    • Every shut out where the winner scores 12 or more (12-0, 13-0, etc.) belongs to football.  Football also gets 10-0, but 11-0 belongs to baseball.
    • In fact, any game where the winner scores 11 belongs to baseball.
    • 18-8 is the lowest score combination to not be in my data set.  This means that this score has never occurred in the NFL and has (likely) not occurred in the NHL or MLB since 2000.
    • If the losing team score 10 points, the game belongs to football EXCEPT if the score is 11-10.
    • If the losing team scores 12 or more points, it’s always football.

    Cheers!