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Who said message boards were a waste of time? Sometimes they provide you with just the answer you're looking for. Here is what I was looking for: I wanted to be able to go through UT's schedule, assign a likelihood of winning to each individual game -- for example, I'm 99% sure we'll beat Chattanooga, and slightly less sure that we'll beat Alabama -- and then, with these numbers in hand, find a way to figure out the corresponding percentages for achieving certain win totals (i.e., given my numbers, what are the chances that we win 7 games? 8 games? etc.)
I knew this could be done, but I didn't know how to do it. And like a previous instance when I wanted to know how to do some sports-related numbers crunching, I wasn't bashful about asking, and it turned that out somebody over at 8thmaxim.com did know how to do it, and the end result is that we now have a fancy schmancy online calculator to do the heavy lifting for us. WooHoo! Let's make like cool kids and play with our calculators. Here is your assignment:
1) Go through the 2014 football schedule and assign a likelihood of winning to each game.1
2) Click on THIS LINK. Type in 12 (for 12 regular season games). Hit enter.
3) Type your percentages from step 1 into the boxes (e.g., for 50%, type .50). Hit enter.
4) Copy and paste your results into the comments.
5) ???
6) Profit!
Vol Miscellany
- Josh Richardson is the unquestioned leader of next year's squeaky Vols.
- Coach Tyndall's best recruiting job was getting Robert Hubbs back in the fold.
- It's weird that UT's athletic department is strapped for cash considering the ridiculous amounts of revenue coming in.
- Michael Palardy signs with the Oakland Raiders. California knows how to Palardy. Yes they do.
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1. If you don't think in terms of probabilities, then just predict a final score for each game, and use the below table for your probabilities.↩
Margin Of Victory | % |
3 | .57 |
7 | .72 |
10 | .78 |
14 | .84 |
17 | .87 |
21 | .91 |
28 | .95 |