Author Archives: admin

NFL Picks- Week 17 of 2014

Leave a reply

Overall against the spread: 63-52
Week 16: 11-4
Week 15: 7-9
Week 14: 6-9
Week 13: 10-6
Week 12: 8-6
Week 11: 9-5
Week 10: 6-7
Week 9: 6-6

1-2 in games highlighted last week. 11-13 overall.

Here are my week 16 predictions, with the current line in parentheses:

Carolina Panthers at Atlanta Falcons (-3.0): Predicting 21.2-26.6. Bet on the Atlanta Falcons.
Cleveland Browns at Baltimore Ravens (-13.5): Predicting 16.7-25.1. Bet on the Cleveland Browns.
Detroit Lions at Green Bay Packers (-7.5): Predicting 18.6-25.4. Bet on the Detroit Lions.
Jacksonville Jaguars at Houston Texans (-9.5): Predicting 14.4-25.7. Bet on the Houston Texans.
San Diego Chargers at Kansas City Chiefs (-1.0): Predicting 18.7-23.9. Bet on the Kansas City Chiefs.
New York Jets at Miami Dolphins (-6.5): Predicting 17.3-26.5. Bet on the Miami Dolphins.
Chicago Bears at Minnesota Vikings (-6.5): Predicting 19.8-26.8. Bet on the Minnesota Vikings.
Buffalo Bills at New England Patriots (-5.0): Predicting 18.7-26.8. Bet on the New England Patriots.
Philadelphia Eagles at New York Giants (-2.5): Predicting 26.1-26.6. Bet on the Philadelphia Eagles.
Cincinnati Bengals at Pittsburgh Steelers (-3.5): Predicting 22.1-26.1. Bet on the Pittsburgh Steelers.
New Orleans Saints at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (+4.0): Predicting 23.9-23.2. Bet on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Indianapolis Colts at Tennessee Titans (+6.5): Predicting 27.6-21.0. Bet on the Indianapolis Colts.
Dallas Cowboys at Washington Redskins (+3.5): Predicting 26.4-21.6. Bet on the Dallas Cowboys.
St Louis Rams at Seattle Seahawks (-11.5): Predicting 16.4-25.4. Bet on the St Louis Rams.
Oakland Raiders at Denver Broncos (-14.0): Predicting 17.9-31.4. Bet on the Oakland Raiders.
Arizona Cardinals at San Francisco 49ers (-7.0): Predicting 18.3-19.3. Bet on the Arizona Cardinals.

Each week I’ll show all the predictions, as above, and I’ll pick three games that I feel most confident about, as I look at my model and think about what I’ve seen watching football. Here are the 3 teams I would actually bet on ATS (against the spread):
Falcons, Dolphins, Raiders

Book Review- Who Moved My Cheese?

Leave a reply

Who Moved My Cheese?
by Dr. Spencer Johnson, 1998

who moved my cheese

A short silly parable to teach you to change and adapt with new circumstances. Don’t be like Hem, the little person who can’t get over the fact that his prosperity seemed to dissipate overnight when his Cheese disappeared. Instead, adapt to good and bad circumstances to make yourself flexible and resilient. Find new Cheese.

When I joined Booz Allen Hamilton in 2011, I went to a multi-day orientation. On the first day, we were asked what adjective best described each of us as we started our new job. There were 8ish options, including proficient, responsive, and conscientious. I chose “adaptable”, because, frankly, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do in my job and I just had a lot of general intelligence-based skills. I was 24. The older new employees scoffed at my stupid answer. Being adaptable served me well, though, as I learned a ton of new skills, led projects in areas in which I was previously ignorant, and responded well to setbacks. Point is: this book wasn’t really written for me, I already knew its message. I don’t want to give it a bad review for that reason, but I didn’t get a whole lot out of it. I listened to it on CD on the same trip I listened to Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan.

Forecasting Attendance at Baseball Games

Leave a reply

Here is a pdf of my most recent school project: Predicting Day-to-Day Variability in Baseball Attendance to Support Staffing

It details how I used 30 years of attendance data at MLB games to determine what is important in predicting attendance. A lot of businesses surrounding stadiums rely upon accurate forecasts of attendance in order to staff their business appropriately. If the effect of short-term factors (weather, recent performance) dominate, schedulers would do well to wait until the last minute to put out a staff schedule. However, it seems that long-term factors (date/time of game, opponent, performance in past seasons) dominates the attendance regression, giving schedulers the ability to put out schedules well in advance of gameday. A missing short-term regressor in my paper is pitching matchup. If star starting pitchers really bring more fans to the game, that might increase the importance of the short-term factors.

Two Links Tuesday- December 23, 2014

Leave a reply

The Conventional Wisdom on Oil is Always Wrong: Interesting piece about oil in the 2000’s. The U.S. is on track to pass Saudi Arabia in crude oil production.

Cherry Picking Probably Won’t Work in the NBA: But teams should definitely try it occasionally. I’d like to see a team that loses the ball and has a player down on the offensive end leave that player on offense as a cherry-picker instead of trying to catch up to the 5 on 4 break. I feel like there is more value in that than in being back late on defense, especially in the fast-moving NBA.

Code Monkey Monday- Transferring a MySQL Database with MySQL Workbench

Leave a reply

I have a desktop work computer and a home laptop. For a recent project, I needed access to the same MySQL database from both computers, as I worked on the project at both locations. The database was hosted locally on my work computer. One option would be to VPN to my work computer, but that wasn’t an attractive option for various reasons. I decided that I wanted the database hosted on both computers locally.

To move a MySQL database to another computer,
1. Open MySQL Workbench on the computer currently hosting the database.
2. Goto Server -> Data Export in the menu
3. Select the database you want to copy, and select a destination in the “Export to Self-Contained File” field.
4. Click Start Export
5. Once done exporting, transfer the dump file to the other computer
6. Open MySQL Workbench on the second computer
7. Goto Server -> Data Import in the menu
8. Select “Import from Self-Contained File” and the dump file just transferred.
9. Click Start Import.

You should be good to go. Copying multiple databases or giant databases might be trickier, but this works in most cases.

Good day for basketball

Leave a reply

UNC (ranked #24) over-powered OSU (#12) inside to win 82-74. Indiana held Butler (#23) to poor shooting inside and outside and won 82-73.

And Kentucky (#1) held UCLA to 7 points in the first half in route to an 83-42 blowout. Smothering defense.

Big wins for all three of my favorite teams, even if the losers were my 4th, 7th, and 9th favorite teams.

uk ucla

Betting on Underdogs

Leave a reply

This week the lines-makers seem to have gone a little too far for almost every NFL game. My model picks the underdog in each matchup (against the spread, obviously), except the Titans-Jags game. Surprisingly, it picks the favorite, the Jaguars, in that game (and they covered).

According to oddsshark.com, underdogs are 110-111-4 against the spread this season. So it seems unlikely that the line-makers are consistently off. Perhaps my model is over-regulated and holding predicted scores too close to the mean score. I will do more analysis, but know that this is a model that would win almost 53% of its bets over the past 30 years if it bet on every game.

Book Review- Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan

Leave a reply

Superman Versus The Ku Klux Klan
by Rick Bowers, 2012

superman versus the kkk

You’ll learn some fun facts about Superman and some terrifying facts about the KKK in this book. Take, for instance, the fact that two Jewish boys from the Cleveland suburbs created Superman, and the artist was 5’2″ and 112 pounds. Or the way that Superman was kept from overpowering the Germans and ending World War II: Clark Kent took his physical to join the Army and accidentally used his X-ray vision to read the eye chart in the next room over; the Army labeled him practically blind and therefore 4F, unfit for military service. (Captain America to the rescue?) The book chronicles the early days of Superman and the three revivals of the bigoted hate group the Ku Klux Klan. Following initial success in comic books and radio programs, a run of Superman radio episodes was broadcast in 1946 in which Superman takes on the KKK. He exposes their tactics and secrets to the young audience of the program, in the hope that they will grow up without such hate in their mind and hearts.

The book is a fast read or listen. I think it was a good book to listen to on tape, about 3 hours long.

NFL Picks- Week 16 of 2014

Leave a reply

Overall: 52-48
Week 15: 7-9
Week 14: 6-9
Week 13: 10-6
Week 12: 8-6
Week 11: 9-5
Week 10: 6-7
Week 9: 6-6

1-2 in games highlighted last week. 10-11 overall.

Here are my week 16 predictions, with the current line in parentheses:

Tennessee Titans at Jacksonville Jaguars (-3.0): Predicting 19.3-22.8. Bet on the Jacksonville Jaguars.
San Diego Chargers at San Francisco 49ers (-2.0): Predicting 18.9-20.5. Bet on the San Diego Chargers.
Philadelphia Eagles at Washington Redskins (+7.5): Predicting 27.4-23.1. Bet on the Washington Redskins.
Cleveland Browns at Carolina Panthers (-4.0): Predicting 20.1-22.1. Bet on the Cleveland Browns.
Detroit Lions at Chicago Bears (+7.5): Predicting 23.1-20.1. Bet on the Chicago Bears.
Baltimore Ravens at Houston Texans (+5.5): Predicting 21.5-22.2. Bet on the Houston Texans.
Minnesota Vikings at Miami Dolphins (-7.5): Predicting 18.3-24.0. Bet on the Minnesota Vikings.
Atlanta Falcons at New Orleans Saints (-7.0): Predicting 24.7-28.1. Bet on the Atlanta Falcons.
New England Patriots at New York Jets (+11.5): Predicting 28.1-19.0. Bet on the New York Jets.
Kansas City Chiefs at Pittsburgh Steelers (-3.0): Predicting 22.8-24.7. Bet on the Kansas City Chiefs.
Green Bay Packers at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (+11.5): Predicting 28.0-21.6. Bet on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
New York Giants at St Louis Rams (-5.0): Predicting 20.1-24.5. Bet on the New York Giants.
Indianapolis Colts at Dallas Cowboys (-2.5): Predicting 26.0-26.6. Bet on the Indianapolis Colts.
Buffalo Bills at Oakland Raiders (+5.5): Predicting 23.4-18.0. Bet on the Oakland Raiders.
Seattle Seahawks at Arizona Cardinals (+9.5): Predicting 18.9-19.6. Bet on the Arizona Cardinals.
Denver Broncos at Cincinnati Bengals (+3.5): Predicting 24.2-23.0. Bet on the Cincinnati Bengals.

Each week I’ll show all the predictions, as above, and I’ll pick three games that I feel most confident about, as I look at my model and think about what I’ve seen watching football. Here are the 3 teams I would actually bet on ATS (against the spread):
Cardinals, Buccaneers, Texans