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Monday, February 22, 2010
Olympic Hockey data
From the never-rested Hawerchuk, I agree that the historical perspective that is being given out is ridiculous. Canada v USA has for more history than what you see in the Olympics. And, I found the good v bad data interesting. The top-7 teams score an average of 4.8 goals and allow 1.3 goals. Since hockey scoring follows the Poisson distribution pretty closely, we can figure out the chance that a good team should beat a bad team. I get 89.6% wins, 6.1% ties, and 4.3% losses. I figure that the better team will win 79% of the ties (4.8 divided by 4.8+1.3), so a final win% of 94.4%. (The tie-breaker only works if you play sudden death. If it’s a 5 minute OT, followed by shootout, then the chance of winning the ties will go down somewhat.)
So, the Vegas odds should be around 17:1 that a bad team beats a good team. What are they actually showing?
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