As the major conferences kick off their conference tournaments today, we take a look at the current state of the NCAA Brackets. Currently, eleven teams are already in the NCAA tournament due to smaller conferences completing their respective championship games. This means roughly 150 teams are already eliminated from earning an NCAA Tournament berth. With roughly 200…
A couple years ago, an article by Bill James on ‘How Safe a College Basketball Lead’ is given a point differential between two NCAA basketball teams was published. This article identified a method for estimating the number of seconds a lead is safe. The algorithm is given as follows: Take the differential and subtract three points. If…
With week 14 of the NFL kicking off on Thursday with a tight Kansas City Chiefs 21-13 victory over the Oakland Raiders, the playoff landscape immediately changed with Oakland falling out of the West Division lead into the top wild card spot. Before the Sunday games, the current NFL standings are: We then perform the…
Only a few days delayed due to an impromptu trip to Ottawa and a swing through Sacramento to catch the Kings upend the Minnesota Timberwolves 106-103 last night, my pre-season predictions are finally available for your viewing pleasure. In this edition, we take a look at the rosters on opening day and compute their expected…
With the playoffs starting tomorrow, we take a look at the probabilities of each team winning the world series. But first, let’s take a look at the postseason: The playoffs begin tomorrow with the Baltimore Orioles (89-73) traveling to the Toronto Blue Jays (89-73) with a one game playoff in the Wild Card “series.” The…
Recently overheard in an airport, “I am a really smart kid. I scored a 27 on my ACT, which is near perfect. But my grades were pretty bad, because I didn’t apply myself well enough. Think of me as an A student who got C’s.” It’s the common thing I heard as a faculty member…
In our fifth to last installment of making the playoffs, we begin to shift gears and take serious looks at the races for the MLB playoffs over the final month of the season. As of the morning of August 28th, each team has approximately 33 games remaining. Technically, the Twins, Braves, Brewers, and Reds have been effectively…
In this edition, we will merely post the current standings on the morning of August 28th and give the probabilities of making the playoffs. This weekend, we will start measuring teams’ chances of making the playoffs and progressively dissect elimination probabilities. For this week, we start by taking a look at the Minnesota Twins, Atlanta Braves,…
Another week closer to playoffs baseball and we witnessed a few surges in the standings; both good and bad. After picking up a series win on the road in San Francisco, the Baltimore Orioles came back home to find themselves in a rocky 1-4 run against the Boston Red Sox and Houston Astros; all teams…
With the Major League Baseball season creeping towards its finale on Sunday, October 2, there are a total of 684 remaining games over the next seven weeks. Currently most teams have played 116 games, leading to approximately 46 remaining games. Fortunately, this means no teams are currently eliminated from the playoffs (while the Braves are…
Squared Statistics: Understanding Basketball Analytics 