Posts

Did Alonso Have A Chance to Win Monaco?

Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin ended up making a crucial mistake as the rain started to fall, opting for a set of Medium compound tires as everyone else jumped on the Intermediates. It ended up costing him an extra pit stop just a lap later and the approximately 25-second delta along with it. Had he … Continue reading Did Alonso Have A Chance to Win Monaco?

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Why Don’t NFL Teams Pay NBA Players to Block Kicks?

Recently I listened to an episode of Freakonomics Radio where they talked about specialization in the NFL. Specifically, they were talking about how the long snapper position has become something that NFL teams specifically draft for and pay upwards of $1 million a year to have on their 53-man roster. This got me wondering: what … Continue reading Why Don’t NFL Teams Pay NBA Players to Block Kicks?

2021 Update: Third Down Conversion Rate by Distance to Go

After the 2020 season, I wrote an article about third down conversion rates after adjusting for how many yards the team had to earn on that third down. The reason for this was because too often on broadcasts a team's third down conversion rate is shown without any regard for how many yards the team … Continue reading 2021 Update: Third Down Conversion Rate by Distance to Go

StatRdays: The Easiest Model You’ll Ever Make

This year, we've been participating in the CollegeFootballData.com prediction contest, where each week you predict the actual spread of the game. You're judged on a variety of factors like your outright picks, picks against the spread, absolute and mean-squared error. Two areas that we are performing very well (1st and 2nd, respectively), are MSE and … Continue reading StatRdays: The Easiest Model You’ll Ever Make

Tuning an In-Game Win Probability Model Using xgboost

A few weeks ago, we started tweeting out the post-game win probability plots for every FBS college football game. They were a nice addition to our Saturdays, but there were some issues. Namely, we'd get a lot of plots like this: Now, to be fair, this was a back-and-forth game that ended 70-56 in favor … Continue reading Tuning an In-Game Win Probability Model Using xgboost