Computer Beats the Experts at Picking Baseball Playoff Winners
A new web site claims that its computer simulation has successfully predicted the outcome of the first round of the baseball playoffs, besting 25 out of 26 baseball experts.
Boston, MA (PRWEB) October 12, 2005 -- Two Red Sox fans have started a web site -- http://www.coolstandings.com -- that aims to project playoff winners in baseball, football, and basketball by simulating the remaining games in a season.
After one round of the baseball playoffs, their simulation has beaten all but one expert from ESPN, Sports Illustrated, CBS SportsLine, and Fox Sports. Steve Phillips from ESPN.com was the only human from a panel of 26 experts to pick not only the correct 4 advancing teams but to come closer in predicting the length of each series than coolstandings.com.
Phillips could not be reached for comment.
Co-founders Greg Agami and Sean Walsh launched coolstandings.com in August, projecting every baseball team's chances of making the playoffs and updating these projections daily. The computer simulation uses simple team statistics such as runs scored and runs against to predict individual game results, then simulates the rest of the season millions of times to determine the probability that each team has of making the playoffs. For the playoffs, the site projects each series winner and the length of each series.
While the site failed to forecast the Cleveland September collapse during the regular season, coolstandings.com did project a division title for Atlanta and a wild card berth for Houston, even while both teams were struggling early in the season and 5 games back of their respective leaders.
Agami and Walsh, both originally from the Boston area, have since expanded their site to report football projections, and are also planning to support basketball later this year. But right now the baseball playoffs are front and center.
"We've already sent out our congratulations to Mr. Phillips for the first round," admits Agami, "but we feel pretty confident about how the simulation will do the remainder of the playoffs!"
To see the latest predictions and find out more about how the simulation works, visit http://www.coolstandings.com.
About coolstandings.com:
Coolstandings.com, Inc. presents professional sports standings and other statistics in cool ways, calculating the chance of each team making the playoffs - updated daily - by simulating the remainder of the season millions of times. The site has been featured by Rob Neyer of ESPN Insider and in a recent issue of ESPN the Magazine.
For more information, please visit http://www.coolstandings.com.
Contact:
Greg Agami
coolstandings.com, Inc.
866-829-4553
http://www.coolstandings.com
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