Please check out this book from one of the co-authors of "Who Will Win?" and this blog.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
FanGraphs: Baseball & WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
Here's a nice "calculator" put out by the folks over at FanGraphs. You can fiddle around and adjust the time period or position. Great stuff!
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Congrats to Giants; Quant Facts
Congratulations to both the New England Patriots and the New York Giants for a great season. Big games, and indeed, championships -- often come down to just a few key plays. Athletes and teams that focus on:
- fundamentals,
- minimizing errors (while still performing at a high level)
and also have:
- confidence, which is often related to
- experience, and
- leadership --
often "win the big game."
Eli Manning's Giants came away with Super Bowl XLVI because they executed just a touch better than the Patriots. This drops our "quant fact" predictions to 26-17 in published predictions for our book's blog.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Super Bowl Info & Stats (2012)
Our "Who Will Win" analysis -- and our official "quant fact" predictions -- point to the Patriots. Here's a link to our analysis published by the New York Times:
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/keeping-score-championship-factors-for-giants-and-patriots/
We put together some stats two years ago -- and these numbers are still interesting. Please check it out.
http://whowillwinthebiggame.blogspot.com/2010/02/super-bowl-quant-facts.html
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/keeping-score-championship-factors-for-giants-and-patriots/
We put together some stats two years ago -- and these numbers are still interesting. Please check it out.
http://whowillwinthebiggame.blogspot.com/2010/02/super-bowl-quant-facts.html
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Who Will Win Super Bowl XLVI? (2012: Giants vs. Patriots)
With an eye toward quantitative analysis that attempts to identify factors that are as independent from one another as possible, five key statistical factors were identified. These statistics are related to principles of sports psychology like experience, leadership, error control, confidence and consistency. With the Giants’ surge late in the season and during the playoffs, we also looked at momentum.
...
... how do we account for the Giants’ momentum? We studied teams that reached the Super Bowl with less impressive regular-season records. Since 1990, when the N.F.L. went to its current playoff format, teams with 11 wins or fewer during the regular season have gone 4-7 in the Super Bowl. This includes Green Bay’s win last year and the Giants’ championship from four years ago; both teams had a 10-6 record during the regular season.
___
Long-story short: our championship factors point to New England. We'll highlight additional Super Bowl stats by Sunday morning.
Read more here:
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/keeping-score-championship-factors-for-giants-and-patriots/#more-98635
...
... how do we account for the Giants’ momentum? We studied teams that reached the Super Bowl with less impressive regular-season records. Since 1990, when the N.F.L. went to its current playoff format, teams with 11 wins or fewer during the regular season have gone 4-7 in the Super Bowl. This includes Green Bay’s win last year and the Giants’ championship from four years ago; both teams had a 10-6 record during the regular season.
___
Long-story short: our championship factors point to New England. We'll highlight additional Super Bowl stats by Sunday morning.
Read more here:
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/keeping-score-championship-factors-for-giants-and-patriots/#more-98635
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Super Bowl Square Pools (Feb 2012)
The New York Times published our popular article on Square Pools in their Super Bowl Sunday spread two years ago. If you are in a square pool, the probabilities are interesting. To use the charts, find your numbers for each quarter on the grid -- and remember that Indy was favored two years ago (New England is favored this year).
Read more here:
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/how-to-spot-a-winner-in-a-squares-pool/
To see how various combinations of numbers have fared, based on every quarter of the past 43 Super Bowls, we computed the probability for each square to win at the end of each quarter. To inform our calculations, we also took into account which team was favored to win.
Read more here:
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/how-to-spot-a-winner-in-a-squares-pool/
We'll have our "quant fact" predictions for the Super Bowl out either Friday or Saturday.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)