For The Math Dorks Like Myself

golfing18now

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As a follow up to the back and forth I was having with ethomasp31 on another thread, I was curious how many more wins the Gophers "should" be able to accumulate in their last ten games. It really is alarming how little respect the ESPN Basketball Power Index gives the Gophers. In their last ten games, the Gophers are only favored in one.

Game 1 At Purdue -- 6.9% chance to win
Game 2 Wisconsin -- 29.2% chance to win
Game 3 At Michigan State -- 4.5% chance to win
Game 4 At Nebraska -- 15.2% chance to win
Game 5 Indiana -- 56.0% chance to win
Game 6 Michigan -- 24.4% chance to win
Game 7 At Rutgers -- 41.5% chance to win
Game 8 At Northwestern -- 29.8% chance to win
Game 9 Purdue -- 26.0% to win
Game 10 At Maryland -- 13.6% to win

If I use the ESPN probabilities and extend to all the possible combinations....

Probability of 0 wins = 4.7%
Probability of 1 win = 18.4%
Probability of 2 wins = 29.9%
Probability of 3 wins = 26.6%
Probability of 4 wins = 14.3%
Probability of 5 wins = 4.9%
Probability of 6 wins = 1.1%
Probability of 7 wins = 0.1%
Probability of 8 wins = less than 0.1%
Probability of 9 wins = almost zero
Probability of 10 wins = almost zero

Either the metrics are wrong or my optimism level is wrong.
 

I think it's more that people see Rutgers, Northwestern, and a Nebraska team without one of their best players on the schedule and assume those are wins. But they don't take into account that it is hard to win on the road, and that we have lost to some not-so-good teams on the road this year. No one should assume those games are wins for us, but I think many are.
 

It’s probably about right, I think the percentages of 0 and 1 are too high.
Team is probably not good enough to go 6-4 against that schedule.
I don’t see any way they go worse than 2-6 though.

Team hasn’t lost 2 games in a row all year and now they’ll go 1-9?
Doubt it even with the schedule.

Very confident in 2-4 more wins. More likely to go 5-5 than 1-9 in my opinion.
 

Just because someone puts out scientific looking number doesn’t mean that mean anything.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

It's like getting 10 rolls of the dice and trying to see how many 1's, 2's or 3's you can roll (I'd give them a combined average of around 45-50% chance to win). Could get 7 and could get 3, but I see it landing somewhere in the 4-6 range.
 


As a follow up to the back and forth I was having with ethomasp31 on another thread, I was curious how many more wins the Gophers "should" be able to accumulate in their last ten games. It really is alarming how little respect the ESPN Basketball Power Index gives the Gophers. In their last ten games, the Gophers are only favored in one.

Game 1 At Purdue -- 6.9% chance to win
Game 2 Wisconsin -- 29.2% chance to win
Game 3 At Michigan State -- 4.5% chance to win
Game 4 At Nebraska -- 15.2% chance to win
Game 5 Indiana -- 56.0% chance to win
Game 6 Michigan -- 24.4% chance to win
Game 7 At Rutgers -- 41.5% chance to win
Game 8 At Northwestern -- 29.8% chance to win
Game 9 Purdue -- 26.0% to win
Game 10 At Maryland -- 13.6% to win

If I use the ESPN probabilities and extend to all the possible combinations....

Probability of 0 wins = 4.7%
Probability of 1 win = 18.4%
Probability of 2 wins = 29.9%
Probability of 3 wins = 26.6%
Probability of 4 wins = 14.3%
Probability of 5 wins = 4.9%
Probability of 6 wins = 1.1%
Probability of 7 wins = 0.1%
Probability of 8 wins = less than 0.1%
Probability of 9 wins = almost zero
Probability of 10 wins = almost zero

Either the metrics are wrong or my optimism level is wrong.

According to that we would have a 20% or less chance to finish 10-10 or better. I think our odds are much better than that primarily because I think that the ESPN odds in a number of those games are off. I'd say that we are 50/50 to finish 10-10 or better.
 

As a follow up to the back and forth I was having with ethomasp31 on another thread, I was curious how many more wins the Gophers "should" be able to accumulate in their last ten games. It really is alarming how little respect the ESPN Basketball Power Index gives the Gophers. In their last ten games, the Gophers are only favored in one.

Game 1 At Purdue -- 6.9% chance to win
Game 2 Wisconsin -- 29.2% chance to win
Game 3 At Michigan State -- 4.5% chance to win
Game 4 At Nebraska -- 15.2% chance to win
Game 5 Indiana -- 56.0% chance to win
Game 6 Michigan -- 24.4% chance to win
Game 7 At Rutgers -- 41.5% chance to win
Game 8 At Northwestern -- 29.8% chance to win
Game 9 Purdue -- 26.0% to win
Game 10 At Maryland -- 13.6% to win

If I use the ESPN probabilities and extend to all the possible combinations....

Probability of 0 wins = 4.7%
Probability of 1 win = 18.4%
Probability of 2 wins = 29.9%
Probability of 3 wins = 26.6%
Probability of 4 wins = 14.3%
Probability of 5 wins = 4.9%
Probability of 6 wins = 1.1%
Probability of 7 wins = 0.1%
Probability of 8 wins = less than 0.1%
Probability of 9 wins = almost zero
Probability of 10 wins = almost zero

Either the metrics are wrong or my optimism level is wrong.

I just saw this thread now....yes those are the numbers I used....very nice work!! I think ESPN's percentages are way too low for the Gophers. I expect them to win more than ESPN does....but they do have a difficult schedule coming down the stretch. As much as ESPN underestimates the Gophers, I think they are overestimating a few of the teams we will be playing as well.
 

I just saw this thread now....yes those are the numbers I used....very nice work!! I think ESPN's percentages are way too low for the Gophers. I expect them to win more than ESPN does....but they do have a difficult schedule coming down the stretch. As much as ESPN underestimates the Gophers, I think they are overestimating a few of the teams we will be playing as well.

If I had to put money on the games, I would probably set the odds something like this....

Game 1 At Purdue -- 20.0% chance to win
Game 2 Wisconsin -- 60.0% chance to win
Game 3 At Michigan State -- 10.0% chance to win
Game 4 At Nebraska -- 50.0% chance to win
Game 5 Indiana -- 80.0% chance to win
Game 6 Michigan -- 40.0% chance to win
Game 7 At Rutgers -- 50.0% chance to win
Game 8 At Northwestern -- 50.0% chance to win
Game 9 Purdue -- 40.0% chance to win
Game 10 At Maryland -- 20.0% chance to win

If I use those probabilities and extend to all the possible combinations....

Probability of 0 wins = 0.2%
Probability of 1 win = 2.2%
Probability of 2 wins = 9.0%
Probability of 3 wins = 20.2%
Probability of 4 wins = 27.3%
Probability of 5 wins = 23.3%
Probability of 6 wins = 12.7%
Probability of 7 wins = 4.3%
Probability of 8 wins = 0.9%
Probability of 9 wins = 0.1%
Probability of 10 wins = almost zero
Expected Win Total = 4.2

In any case, it really speaks to how difficult the road ahead looks on paper.
 
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I’m curious how our odds were for the Iowa game. Can’t imagine they were favored in that one, yet we looked to be in Iowa’s league. Along those lines, I’d love to see a model predicting our record based on our metrics compared to our actual record.

Feels like we’d be about 5-16 not 16-5.


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The team was blown out by Ohio State on the road, blown out by Illinois on the road, beaten fairly handily by a not great Boston College team on the road, barely beat Penn State at home. And the rest of their schedule is brutal.

I think they do much better than ESPN predicts here, but I'm not mad if they look to that schedule and feel the way they do. Win at Purdue or at Michigan State and suddenly everyone will be high on this team all across the board.
 

Many of the sites that are predicting out our finish have us winning 2 or maybe 3 more games.

But then you take into consideration, many of those use efficiency rankings and NET scores for forecasting, and what you find out is you are just spitting numbers into a machine that spits the same numbers back out.

55th ranked... they'll lose to 45th ranked because 45th ranked is better than 55th ranked.

Just do that a couple times. It's all driven off past metrics with the assumption trendlines will continue as history laid out.
 

Whenever you multiple probabilities together, the result is usually a much lower probability than you think. That's why parlay bets don't work out usually.
 

Whenever you multiple probabilities together, the result is usually a much lower probability than you think. That's why parlay bets don't work out usually.

I’d like to see the odds before last night of Iowa before they throttled Michigan.
 



I’d like to see the odds before last night of Iowa before they throttled Michigan.

The "problem" is that the single datapoint doesn't prove or disprove what someone thought the odds should have been, before the game. Were the odds wrong, or was it just an outlier sample?
 

The "problem" is that the single datapoint doesn't prove or disprove what someone thought the odds should have been, before the game. Were the odds wrong, or was it just an outlier sample?
I hear you, my point is that the games still have to be played and the wonders on how the games unfold is why we keep coming back for more:)
 

I hear you, my point is that the games still have to be played and the wonders on how the games unfold is why we keep coming back for more:)

Absolutely.

I was just trying to say the following: to a lot of people, it makes intuitive sense that if you play three games in a row, and each has a 50-50 chance of winning, then you should have a 50-50 chance of winning all three games. But mathematically, that is not correct. The odds of winning those three games are actually 12.5%. Which is far lower than you would think, given the odds of winning each game.

The true reality is that no two games in the same season are perfectly independent, and there are an uncountable number of variables that can have a significant effect on the outcome.
 

I don't think most people would say: We can beat anybody and we can lose to anybody about Michigan State, for instance. And sometimes that statement would be delusional optimism about many teams but I do think the Gophers can beat anyone on their schedule. It's just that game by game if we lose to Illinois or whoever, it's not a shock for me...we can certainly lose to anybody imo. I think that's why it's tough for non-partial analysts to tout the Gophers. What/who can we count on? We thought you could say...Murphy achieving a double double...but he had a game with one rebound. I'd have lost that bet. And all the rest of our players are a mystery from game to game. Even Matz has had super hero moments but he also might not even play and on and on trying to forecast the production we might receive on any given night from these guys.
 

I don't think most people would say: We can beat anybody and we can lose to anybody about Michigan State, for instance. And sometimes that statement would be delusional optimism about many teams but I do think the Gophers can beat anyone on their schedule. It's just that game by game if we lose to Illinois or whoever, it's not a shock for me...we can certainly lose to anybody imo. I think that's why it's tough for non-partial analysts to tout the Gophers. What/who can we count on? We thought you could say...Murphy achieving a double double...but he had a game with one rebound. I'd have lost that bet. And all the rest of our players are a mystery from game to game. Even Matz has had super hero moments but he also might not even play and on and on trying to forecast the production we might receive on any given night from these guys.

Mich. St. just went down to Indiana. Maybe it depends on the day.
 


The ESPN metrics still hate us.

Game 1 Lost
Game 2 Wisconsin -- 26.7% chance to win
Game 3 At Michigan State -- 4.9% chance to win
Game 4 At Nebraska -- 15.9% chance to win
Game 5 Indiana -- 52.6% chance to win
Game 6 Michigan -- 25.8% chance to win
Game 7 At Rutgers -- 42.3% chance to win
Game 8 At Northwestern -- 31.4% chance to win
Game 9 Purdue -- 25.8% to win
Game 10 At Maryland -- 13.8% to win

If I use the ESPN probabilities and extend to all the possible combinations....

Probability of 0 wins = 5.2%
Probability of 1 win = 19.6%
Probability of 2 wins = 30.6%
Probability of 3 wins = 26.0%
Probability of 4 wins = 13.3%
Probability of 5 wins = 4.2%
Probability of 6 wins = 0.8%
Probability of 7 wins = 0.1%
Probability of 8 wins = less than 0.1%
Probability of 9 wins = almost zero

Expected number of wins = 2.4
 




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