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…
(Warning: Math Heavy) The NFL has an adage: “Any given Sunday.” This phrase typically means that during any week, for any given match-up between two teams, either team has a relatively high probability of winning the game. This translates into parity within the league. Typically we should see teams win between 6 and 10 games…
As Week 11 has wrapped up in the NFL, two teams still remain undefeated (New England Patriots, Carolina Panthers) and a couple divisions have entered into gridlock for first place (AFC South, NFC East). Currently, the playoffs have shaped up to be the following: AFC Playoffs #1 Seed: New England Patriots (10-0; East Leader) #2 Seed: Cincinnati…
Three weeks ago, the Houston Astros (73-60) sat relatively comfortably atop the American League West with a three game lead over the Texas Rangers (69-62) and a 6.5 game lead over the Los Angeles Angels (66-66). Over the course of three weeks, the Rangers wrangled the division lead in a convincing series over the Astros.…
As the season comes to a conclusion, we will continue to produce probabilities for each MLB making the playoffs. With 10-12 games remaining for each team, the need for urgency arises and teams outside the playoff picture need to start posting near perfect records (Rockies of 2007); or teams inside the playoff picture need to…
In our recent post, Predicting MLB Playoff Probabilities, we addressed a simple method for estimating the probabilities for each MLB team using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo using historical results from earlier in the season. We introduced the notion of continuity correction to help adjust for small sample sizes and a simple random number generator to…
ESPN recently updated their Hunt For October page and introduced probabilities for teams making the playoffs. While ESPN does not give a detailed analysis on how they obtain these simulations, we can instead create our own method. To do this, let’s take a simple approach: use past results of games and a little statistical machinery to build…
Squared Statistics: Understanding Basketball Analytics 