The first round was not as successful as last year. In order to match my previous success, I have to be perfect from here on in. Here are the results:
DET v NSH- Predicted DET. DET won.
SJS v CGY- Predicted SJS. SJS won.
MIN v COL- Predicted MIN. COL won.
ANA v DAL- Predicted DAL. DAL won.
MTL v BOS- Predicted MON. MON won.
PIT v OTT- Predicted PIT. PIT won.
WSH v PHI- Predicted WSH. PHI won.
NJD v NYR- Predicted NYR. NYR won.
So of all the series, I only got two wrong, one of which went to a 7th game overtime.
I've given up on predicting the number of games because I got destroyed.
Here are my second round picks.
MTL v PHI: MTL wins
PIT v NYR: NYR win
DET v COL: DET wins
SJS v DAL: SJS wins
Wish me luck!
By the way, I make no guarantees of success, so anyone foolish enough to bet their house on these predictions will be accountable for their own losses. I'm not talking about you Keith. You wouldn't do such a thing.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
Cup predictions
Last year I decided to take another run at capturing the Nerd of the Year award by constructing yet another mathematical way to predict the outcome of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Since I only follow the NHL during the playoffs, I have no intuition with regards to which teams will win. Therefore, I must rely on math and statistics. Previous years had been complete failures. Last year, however, I hit pay dirt.
There are 15 series in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Using the statistical method I devised, I correctly predicted the outcome of 13. And the initial run of my algorithm predicted an Anaheim/Ottawa final with Anaheim victorious, as actually happened.
How does it work? I first take all the teams in the NHL and find the correlation between numerous team statistics and how many wins each team earned in the regular season. Those numbers are always somewhere between 1 and -1. I then multiply each correlation by the actual value of the statistic for every team in the playoffs. For example, the correlation between the 5 on 5 goals for/goals against ratio and wins is 0.83, a strong correlation. So for each team that is in the playoffs, I multiply 0.83 by, in Detroit's case, 1.41, to arrive at a value. Once I have obtained that value for each of the 14 stats I have for each team, I add them all together to come up with a score for each team.
To predict which team will win a given series, I compare their scores from the above calculation. Detroit has a score of 43.3 this year and Nashville 36.0, so I predict Detroit will win. Simple, effective, and it requires no sporting intuition on my part, which is a good thing, because I have none.
However, I thought this year, since I had a 86.7% success rate last year, I would get a little more ballsy and try to predict in how many games each victor would defeat their opponent. Below are my predictions for the entire 15-series playoff. However, if my predictions prove less than perfect in the first round, I will adjust predictions based on which teams are competing in subsequent rounds. I will consider the accuracy of my initial prediction of the final however, including the winner of the Cup. For the sake of my success rate, I am really going for picking the teams. How many games it takes is a total crapshoot. If I get that right, I'll shat. I'll keep you up to date on my success as the playoffs progress. Here goes!
Round 1
DET v NSH: DET in 4
SJS v CGY: SJS in 5
MIN v COL: MIN in 7
ANA v DAL: DAL in 7
MTL v BOS: MTL in 6
PIT v OTT: PIT in 7
WSH v PHI: WSH in 7
NJD v NYR: NYR in 6
Round 2
DET v DAL: DET in 5
SJS v MIN: SJS in 6
MTL v NYR: NYR in 7
PIT v WSH: WSH in 7
Round 3
DET v SJS: DET in 6
NYR v WSH: NYR in 7
Round 4
DET v NYR: DET in 6
There are 15 series in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Using the statistical method I devised, I correctly predicted the outcome of 13. And the initial run of my algorithm predicted an Anaheim/Ottawa final with Anaheim victorious, as actually happened.
How does it work? I first take all the teams in the NHL and find the correlation between numerous team statistics and how many wins each team earned in the regular season. Those numbers are always somewhere between 1 and -1. I then multiply each correlation by the actual value of the statistic for every team in the playoffs. For example, the correlation between the 5 on 5 goals for/goals against ratio and wins is 0.83, a strong correlation. So for each team that is in the playoffs, I multiply 0.83 by, in Detroit's case, 1.41, to arrive at a value. Once I have obtained that value for each of the 14 stats I have for each team, I add them all together to come up with a score for each team.
To predict which team will win a given series, I compare their scores from the above calculation. Detroit has a score of 43.3 this year and Nashville 36.0, so I predict Detroit will win. Simple, effective, and it requires no sporting intuition on my part, which is a good thing, because I have none.
However, I thought this year, since I had a 86.7% success rate last year, I would get a little more ballsy and try to predict in how many games each victor would defeat their opponent. Below are my predictions for the entire 15-series playoff. However, if my predictions prove less than perfect in the first round, I will adjust predictions based on which teams are competing in subsequent rounds. I will consider the accuracy of my initial prediction of the final however, including the winner of the Cup. For the sake of my success rate, I am really going for picking the teams. How many games it takes is a total crapshoot. If I get that right, I'll shat. I'll keep you up to date on my success as the playoffs progress. Here goes!
Round 1
DET v NSH: DET in 4
SJS v CGY: SJS in 5
MIN v COL: MIN in 7
ANA v DAL: DAL in 7
MTL v BOS: MTL in 6
PIT v OTT: PIT in 7
WSH v PHI: WSH in 7
NJD v NYR: NYR in 6
Round 2
DET v DAL: DET in 5
SJS v MIN: SJS in 6
MTL v NYR: NYR in 7
PIT v WSH: WSH in 7
Round 3
DET v SJS: DET in 6
NYR v WSH: NYR in 7
Round 4
DET v NYR: DET in 6
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Exhibit B
I present to you Exhibit B in Pharmadaddy v. Mother Nature. As I mentioned earlier, we woke up on the morning of April 1 to a disgusting display of natural cruelty. Of course, once I got home the snow stopped. However, I still could not get into my driveway. Thankfully my wonderful neighbor with whom I share a driveway has a snowblower and so reduced my workload immensely. I still spent two hours shoveling though. Not my idea of a good time. What follows is a set of photos showing the ginormous mound of snow next to my driveway that has accumulated throughout this incessant winter. Warning: These pictures are not for the faint of heart. Viewer discretion is advised.
Experience exshmerience
Although I am not American and so in no way have a say in who gets elected as the next president of the United States, I'm still free to comment on it. So let me just say that Hillary Clinton recently did a great disservice to all of us who still think, maybe naively so, that there must be some honest, hardworking politicians left. If you haven't seen the video yet, feel free to watch it below. Essentially, Clinton was caught in a blatant lie when recalling a story from her trip to Bosnia while she was First Lady. The story was so obviously fabricated it disgusts me. And the response by her aide could be considered hilarious if it were not so concerning coming from the campaign team of a woman who could become the next PUSA. The whole thing could be considered the greatest fabrication of her campaign, except then one would not be considering her incessant assertion that her years of experience in office make her a better choice than Obama. Just goes to show that no amount of experience can undo a propensity toward blatant dishonesty in the pursuit of power and glory.
April Fools
Mother Nature gave us the finger today and unfortunately it was not an April Fools joke. Below you will see video evidence of the weather in Timmins today, April 1. That's right. April 1, a day that is supposed to fall in the spring season. A day that is supposed to symbolize the coming of new life, the arrival of warmer weather, etc. etc. Not in Timmins though. No, here in Timmins you get to spend 30 minutes digging your car out on April 1. Did I mention it's April 1? And people ask me why I'm so excited that I only have 107 days, 1 hour, and 12 minutes left until I leave this place. And I promise you, this post itself is no April Fools joke.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Give 'em the boot
Due to the pure genius of a law professor at the University of Ottawa, Michael Geist, you can now get rid of some of those pesky telemarketers. Mr. Geist got sick of waiting for the politicians to finalize the do-not-call legislation on the table in Ottawa so decided to setup ioptout.ca. You see, even when the legislation is complete, numerous organizations will be exempt from it. This website allows you to prevent these exempted organizations from contacting you in the future. All you do is register with the website, provide some basic information like e-mail address and phone number, and then create your own personal do-not-call list. The website then sends a request to the organizations on your behalf that they no longer contact you. And apparently, by law, if you request that they no longer contact you, they must abide by your wishes. Every time a new organization is added to the lists, the site will e-mail you to review the organization and choose if you would like to block them. Or you can ask it to automatically block all new organizations. Genius. No more phone calls from CIBC asking if I would like another credit card.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Retire in peace
I am a self-professed personal finance nerd. The majority of blogs I read have personal finance as their focal point. I read books about personal finance for fun. I subscribe to MoneySense magazine and do retirement calculations and financial spreadsheets for shits and giggles. I could not be happier that I have been vindicated for my unending commitment to this part of my life. Allow me to explain.
In the last issue of aforementioned magazine, there was an excellent article on why we should not spend so much time worrying about whether we will have enough money for retirement. It adds some common sense and facts into an issue too often dominated by fear and marketing tactics employed by the financial services industry. Unfortunately the article did not walk readers through example calculations to map out their retirement more concretely. Leave it to Chris at Canadian Dream to pick up the slack.
He wrote a series of five genius posts that I now consider essential reading (along with the above mentioned article, Personal Finance for Canadians for Dummies, and The Wealthy Barber). Chris takes you through a series of calculations you can easily do to arrive at an estimate of what you should need to live on in retirement. He then helps you determine whether your current savings plan will give you enough to provide what you need. Believe me when I tell you that you will be pleasantly surprised by how little you'll need, and how much of that will come from CPP and OAS.
When I plugged my own projections in, given the financial plan we have mapped out, which for now is completely feasible, we will have more than enough to live comfortably in retirement, even if returns on the stock market are a measly 4-5% over the next 65 years.
This is a far cry from the fear mongers at Fidelity who warned recently that the majority of Canadians will not be adequately prepared for retirement. The announcement helped them draw awareness to their Snapshot Calculator, which will inevitably tell you you're screwed and to hurry on into your financial advisor to purchase as many Fidelity mutual funds as possible. For example, they tell me I need $3.5 million at retirement to live only a modest retirement (60% of pre-tax pre-retirement income). Yet over at investored.ca, I'll be living the high life if I reach $3.5 million (which I do not plan to). Even at paltry interest rates of 4%, I would have to draw $200 000 a year from my retirement fund to drain it over 30 years. Bah.
Do yourself a favor and listen to those with no vested interest in you saving more money for retirement.
In the last issue of aforementioned magazine, there was an excellent article on why we should not spend so much time worrying about whether we will have enough money for retirement. It adds some common sense and facts into an issue too often dominated by fear and marketing tactics employed by the financial services industry. Unfortunately the article did not walk readers through example calculations to map out their retirement more concretely. Leave it to Chris at Canadian Dream to pick up the slack.
He wrote a series of five genius posts that I now consider essential reading (along with the above mentioned article, Personal Finance for Canadians for Dummies, and The Wealthy Barber). Chris takes you through a series of calculations you can easily do to arrive at an estimate of what you should need to live on in retirement. He then helps you determine whether your current savings plan will give you enough to provide what you need. Believe me when I tell you that you will be pleasantly surprised by how little you'll need, and how much of that will come from CPP and OAS.
When I plugged my own projections in, given the financial plan we have mapped out, which for now is completely feasible, we will have more than enough to live comfortably in retirement, even if returns on the stock market are a measly 4-5% over the next 65 years.
This is a far cry from the fear mongers at Fidelity who warned recently that the majority of Canadians will not be adequately prepared for retirement. The announcement helped them draw awareness to their Snapshot Calculator, which will inevitably tell you you're screwed and to hurry on into your financial advisor to purchase as many Fidelity mutual funds as possible. For example, they tell me I need $3.5 million at retirement to live only a modest retirement (60% of pre-tax pre-retirement income). Yet over at investored.ca, I'll be living the high life if I reach $3.5 million (which I do not plan to). Even at paltry interest rates of 4%, I would have to draw $200 000 a year from my retirement fund to drain it over 30 years. Bah.
Do yourself a favor and listen to those with no vested interest in you saving more money for retirement.
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