November 19, 2007

Week 11 NFL Against the Spread Recap

I was the only one to have a losing week this week, so maybe we are getting somewhat better at this. At least Magic 8 continues to roll on. Jeremy now leads by 2 games over J-Red and 2.5 over Brien. Russell is still within a prayer, at 5 back.

RECAP

Brien (3-2-0) - ARI, MIN, SD, TB, TEN
Jeremy (3-1-1) - ARI, CLE, KC, SD, STL
J-Red (2-3-0) - DET, JAX, NO, PIT, TB
Russell (2-2-1) - CLE, DET, OAK, STL, TB
Magic 8 (4-0-1) - ARI, BAL, JAX, KC, STL


STANDINGS

Magic 8 (32-17-6 for .636)
Jeremy (27-22-6 for .545)
J-Red (26-26-3 for .500)
Brien (26-27-2 for .491)
Russell (24-29-2 for .454)

5 Responses:

Jeremy said...

Again, I will loan out my Magic 8 Ball for the princely sum of $500 for anybody going to Vegas. Or we can work out a staking plan where you'll stake me 1/3 of your winnings for providing you the Holy Grail of NFL picks. Seriously... a .645 winning percentage is about as good as it gets in the gambling industry.

J-Red said...

I've heard 60% is the gold standard for picking every game. I think some "experts" might boast up to 70% for picking "select" games.

Russell said...

It's certainly bordering on highly improbable, for something that should be 50-50 on each pick. I will provide a statistical analysis if it hasn't returned to the neighborhood of .500 by the end of the year.

J-Red said...

Still 30 games left to pick, so the aberration could correct itself...like the Redskins.

Brien said...

Come on Russell, you can't throw out a math challenge like that and expect people on this blog not to follow up on it!

It's been a little while since I've done statistics, but from what I get, there's only a 2.21% chance of the Magic 8 ball doing better than 31 successes in 49 tries (ignoring pushes, which is probably not precise). The Excel function I used was:
=1-BINOMDIST(31,49,0.5,TRUE)

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