[icelancer]

As someone who has written 10k+ loc on simulators, markov chaining, and done tons of analysis on baseball projections... I don't know where to start.

I honestly don't. (You are very, very far off the correct methodology.)

But maybe this is a good place, I guess.

http://www.oakton.edu/user/4/pboisver/AABaseballMath.html

I am not trying to be a jerk. But ask yourself: If it were that trivial, why wouldn't it be a snap to crush online sportsbetting?

[thret]

http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/dollars/post/_/id/2935/meet...

Just a random article. I've met him through poker. He had a radio show for a while, and he stated that if you have a 2% edge over a bookie, you can easily make a million dollars a year. Anyone who thinks they have an edge and isn't also very wealthy is simply mistaken.

[icelancer]

2% is enormous and can't last for very long, of course.

[wjnc]

Why (as a European, but my dad is big a DET-fan) do you guys estimate WPE from high level variables?

Baseball is basicly a lineup versus lineup sport, right? Or in terms of the link: Q per team is variable between matches. An additional modelling level should estimate Q per team per match, before estimating Qx - Qy.

Without Cabrera, DET has a harder time winning. Same for the big bearded guy.

As a sidenote: some guy posts his code (+) and gets upvoted (+). He's not aiming to change the world, or to become a 100-million firm. He wants feedback and to improve his approach. We can give him that without the "aararrrgh, but Terrence Tao is much smarter than you"? Otherwise, just don't upvote :)

[gfunk911]

Agreed. The post isn't clear at all what his goal is, and the methodology makes no sense

[jinfiesto]

Yeah. My first thoughts were that the methodology is extremely questionable. I know it's arguable that successive games aren't necessarily independent trials, but analyzing a game in terms of streaks, is so incredibly "un-mathematical" I don't know where to start. To top it off, there's no reasoning about why it might be the case that "streak" analysis might give insight into the why of things.

[zsch]

Thank you for the article. Believe me, I am very much aware that this is elementary. I hoped to – but apologize that I didn't – make it clear that making predictions requires incorporating many many factors. It was a fun script for me to code, and I was excited to see it work the night I wrote it. But I also understand that this will need more testing and to be based off of far more information to be anywhere close to accurate.

[glitch273]

Yup, and his analysis does not take the strength of the team into account (Vegas calls this the spread). It like betting the Miami Heat with Lebron will win a high percentage of games, well of course, everyone can make that bet.

[the_cat_kittles]

Thank you- I also built several baseball sims and this article is just insultingly ignorant! Maybe thats a little extreme, but that was my reaction.

[zsch]

I'm sorry it came off that way. I am very aware that the script in its current form does not come remotely close to doing justice given all of the data thats out there and necessary to incorporate. I meant to make it clear in the article that this script is completely elementary – it was a fun thing to code, but nothing remotely resemblant of what it takes to predict sports with accuracy.