The Coin Flip Challenge is quickly going the way of the NL West. I just hope I can be the Padres and the coin can be the Giants. The winner of this thing might very well finish considerably below .500. Right now, I hold a two game lead with a scorching 43% accuracy level. I climbed into first place this week despite only picking 6 of 14 games correctly. Luckily for me, the Coin Flip only picked 4 of 14 games correctly. The good news is that I’m 15-12-1 over the last two weeks. Here is how things stand entering the fifth week of the challenge:
Jake--------25-31-2
Coin Flip--23-33-2
I’m a bit confused by the results of this challenge so far. If I’m not mistaken, the odds of picking an NFL game correctly should be about 50% with the exception of a push. There have only been two pushes in the four weeks of this challenge. So, based on the odds of picking games that are 50/50, half of the weeks should be above 50% and half should be below 50% (not counting pushes). However, out of the eight weeks of picks (four for me and four for the coin) there has been exactly one week over 50%. One out of eight! I’m confused. We have picked 50 games correctly out of 116. It just seems that my picks (and the coin) have been unreasonably bad. It seems that both of us should be experiencing a progression to the mean in the future. If that doesn’t happen, then I will denounce math as a viable discipline.
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1 comment:
Actually the line is placed to ensure that the casino takes zero risk and can safely take their cut, regardless of who wins. A casino's worst fear is too much action on one side of the line. The line doesn't need to be so good as to be right half the time, it just needs to be close enough to make the bets split around 50/50.
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