Stats in the Wild

I got back from Vegas a few hours ago.  If you’ve never been to Vegas during the NCAA tournament, you’re going to want to do that.  There is nothing in the world like a room full of people watching a 15 point game with 90 seconds left screaming at the giant screen for the team that is winning to heave up some threes.  Absolutely incredible.  And watching an upset is even better.  The first two games I saw were Dayton and Harvard winning.  People were going crazy.  I won a few bucks, but nothing incredible.  I did cash twice in two tournaments, hit 8 out of 9 (for $0) on a parlay card, and watched my wife hit 200-1 on Sigma Derby.

But the really exciting news from the last few days is that my kaggle team (me and @statsbylopez) is in the top 10 out of 254 teams.  The complete standings are here.

Yesterday, William Cukierski posted the distributions of the predictions for the first rounds games.  I’ve highlighted in red where our first round predictions fall.  The most important ones so far are the Duke game, which we were very confident in (.93) and lost, which is a big penalty, and the Dayton game, where we had Dayton at .66 to win their game over Ohio State, which is notably different than many of the other teams.  Hopefully the Duke game doesn’t hurt us too much, and we can stay in the top ten.

Cheers.

• Ohio State over Dayton by 6
• Wisconsin over American by 15
• Pittsburgh over Colorado by 6
• Cincinnati over Harvard by 1
• Syracuse over W Michigan by 15
• Oregon over BYU by 3
• Michigan state over Delaware by 13
• UConn over St. Joseph’s by 4
• Michigan over Wofford by 16
• Oklahoma over N. Dakota State by 1
• San Diego State over New Mexico State by 7
• Duke over Mercer by 16
• Louisville over Manhattan by 13
• Texas over Arizona State by 1
• Florida over Albany by 20
• St. Louis over NC State by 5

Cheers.

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