Comments on: Never Tell Me The Odds http://www.nerdsonsports.com/2007/10/23/never-tell-me-the-odds/ Where nerds are talking about sports! Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:21:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: candid http://www.nerdsonsports.com/2007/10/23/never-tell-me-the-odds/#comment-671 candid Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:46:47 +0000 http://www.NerdsOnSports.com/2007/10/23/never-tell-me-the-odds/#comment-671 I know (in the sense of "it better be the case that") you are not assuming <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_independence" rel="nofollow">independence</a>, so hopefully what you mean is P( Patriots over Colts | Patriots over Redskins ) = .5 P( Patriots over Bills | Patriots over Colts, Patriots over 'skins ) = .999996 and so on, otherwise your math doesn't work. If it's not obvious that independence is plainly unreasonable, imagine the Patriots lose their next 8 games. I think you'll grant that if this happened, you'd revise the 85% vs the Giants. I know (in the sense of “it better be the case that”) you are not assuming independence, so hopefully what you mean is

P( Patriots over Colts | Patriots over Redskins ) = .5
P( Patriots over Bills | Patriots over Colts, Patriots over ’skins ) = .999996
and so on, otherwise your math doesn’t work.

If it’s not obvious that independence is plainly unreasonable, imagine the Patriots lose their next 8 games. I think you’ll grant that if this happened, you’d revise the 85% vs the Giants.

]]>