Speak With Data

Earlier this week (prior to the start of the World Series) I posted the Grid O' Sadness, showing the relative odds of the Cubs, Bears, Indians, and Browns winning the most of their remaining games. Since then, the Indians have won two games, the Cubs one, and my promise to explain my methodology struggled to happen. Since Purdue is currently struggling against Penn State, I decided to get my mind off those struggles by explaining the methodology. First though, an update to the Grid O' Sadness (again, I apologize): So, that's looking up for the Indians. The model I created to simulate the remainder of the season is based on two statistical tools: the Pythagorean expectation (1), which I used in my discussion of the NFL preseason , and log5 (2). Both were developed by Bill James to analyze teams in baseball. The Pythagorean expectation uses the points (I'm saying points instead of runs to use the same term across multiple sports) scored and points allowed by a...

It was jokingly asked on Mike & Mike  this morning who would win the most remaining games: the Cubs, the Indians, the Bears, or the Browns, poking fun at the state of football in Chicago and Cleveland. To answer that, behold the Grid O' Sadness, a.k.a. the Grid of Thank Goodness I'm Not From Cleveland or Chicago. A full explanation of methodology is coming later; I am just finishing this up and wanted to get it out before the first World Series game gets too far underway. Known to the states of Ohio and Illinois to cause sadness.