| New England – I’d Bet on Perfection |
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Anyone who watched Sunday’s Patriots-Colts game had to walk away from the TV extremely impressed by the Colts defense. They pressured Brady, stopped the run and had two interceptions. Under normal circumstances, this Colts team could be the best team the league has seen in the past 10 years, but these are not normal circumstances. Despite how great the Colts are and how well they played, the Patriots still came out on top. Like most people, we know that the Patriots are a great team, so we summoned the AccuScore super-computer to find out what the odds are on this team being “perfect.” Based on AccuScore simulations for the rest of the season the Patriots have a 54% probability of finishing a perfect 16-0! The link below not only lets you see our projections for the Patriots finish, but allows you to see the AccuScore Win Total Forecast for all the teams in the NFL We took put each remaining game on the Patriots schedule under the microscope and realized there not a single instance where they aren’t thoroughly dominant in simulations. Here is what we found:
However, if you add up the losing percentages for each game you end up getting a little over 46% which is the team’s overall chances of losing 1 game. We don’t see that happening. Odds are we are witnessing something that has not been done before, which would make this season perfect. Trackback(0)
Comments (3)
Al
said:
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STI, the word "add" means "combine" in this context. In fact if you actually add the losing percentages 17 3 3 16 7 5 8 you get 59%, which is different enough from 46% that it's clear the 46% figure in the article was computed by multiplication. Poor choice of words by the writer, but when people who seem to know what they are doing make such an elementary error you should double check you are interpreting things properly. |
STI
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Since you're looking for the odds of the Patriots winning all seven games, you multiply the odds of them winning each one together (92% x 95% x ...). [I'm making the assumption that a win one week does not affect the probability of a win the next week, although that's not perfectly true.] That number, as I said before, works out to about ~54%. Thus, the odds of the Patriots losing at least one game is 100% minus 54%, or about 46%. |
STI
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Using your logic: On flip 1 of one fair coin, I have a 50% chance of getting heads On flip 2 of a second fair coin, I have a 50% chance of getting heads On flip 3 of a third fair coin, I have a 50% chance of getting heads Therefore, I have a 150% chance of getting at least one coin come up heads. Clearly, that doesn't work. The correct way to calculate the probability is to multiply the numbers together. Thankfully, it works out nearly the same--depending on the exact numbers you're using, somewhere between 52% and 56%--but you just can't add probabilities the way you did and end up with a correct answer. |
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