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Thursday, July 28, 2011
Odds of streak and streaks
Cool article by Jesse. My response to article and readers:
1. The Vegas money line is fairly solid. Certainly, for the purposes of this article, it’s an excellent thing to use. The point here is to be fairly illustrative. You can argue for Pinnacle or Bodog or whatever, but the end-result will be reasonably close.
Those arguing against this are being very nitpicky.
2. But, you have to account for the vig! I’m not a bettor, but if I see a line that is +105 on one side, I’m going to presume it’s ALSO +105 on the other side! That makes the odds 50/50 and not 49/51. So, the author of this piece should have put a bit more effort into getting truer odds than just presuming that if he sees +105 for one team, that it means -104.8 for the other team.
This is not being nitpicky in my opinion, so the readers who pointed this out are correct.
3. As for the argument about odds the streak existing at all at any point in the season (meaning that the streak was preceded with a win, and followed by a win or end of season, and that this streak could start at any point from game 1 through to game 145, and you have 30 such teams), that is definitely valid.
It doesn’t take away from this article. It just limits the answer to what the author actually did.
4. Readers upset at the article should demand a refund immediately. What I see is the author putting an inspired thought and a decent amount of effort to produce a somewhat interesting article.
Clearly this is the kind of article that would benefit from constructive criticism.
Readers should be demanding more articles from Jesse, not less. The cynicism exhibited by some is disheartening. You need to encourage guys like Jesse, not only for him, but to potential future writers. These guys need to be cultivated, otherwise we are left with, well, whoever ESPN and Fox Sports decides is worth paying.
I suppose Fangraphs can take it as a compliment that such an article is considered by some to be below acceptable, because of the high expectations the rest of the site produces.
***
To expand on point #3: what is the chance that the average team will win two games in a row? Well, you’d say it’s 50% x 50% = 25%.
But, what is the chance that we will see some team, at some point in the season, win two games in a row? The answer is going to be 0.999999999999… (I don’t know how many 9s, but I’m sure it’s even more than I’m showing).
Similarly, the readers are right when they talk about “this one team at this one point in time” versus “some team at some point”. It may seem nuanced, but it’s not.
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