Sunday, November 28, 2010

Quant Facts -- Prediction Update

Our "quant facts" methods picked the World Series winner (San Francisco) after a lackluster performance in the earlier playoff rounds. Some sports fans noted that we "jumped the gun" a bit because our book's research is based on actual Championship games and series -- and not necessarily "the earlier playoff rounds."

Still, it was a fun and interesting experiment -- and our results are still a solid 17-9 in published "quant fact" predictions. The predictions are based on concepts of sports psychology that we quantify based on decades worth of data across the major US sports championships. Note that these approaches often pick teams and players that are underdogs, so that the 17-9 record is significant.

Our research shows that sports psychology concepts such as:
  • leadership,
  • coaching,
  • experience,
  • minimizing errors,
  • consistency, and
  • hard work (for example, less-glitzy skills such as defense) --
win championships. Please check out our book, "Who Will Win the Big Game? A Psychological & Mathematical Approach."