Saturday, October 23, 2010

The Odds of the Giants Going to the World Series


Warning Math ahead.

I was a little nervous that the series is heading back to Philadelphia. One of the things that calms me down is to look at the numbers, and in this case the numbers look decent. Not as good as before the last game but much better then I would have first thought.

The Giants chance of winning one of the next 2 games is 65.7%. That is pretty dang good. It would be very nice to get those odds in Vegas on any table game.

The Giants chances of winning tonight are not great, only about 39.4%. They figure to surrender on average about 4.45 runs per game and only score 4 runs.

If it goes to tomorrow things look a little bit better. The Giants would figure to win about 43.4% of the time. They would give up 4.3 runs and score again 4 runs a game.

Even with these relatively low odds in each game the chance that they lose both is much smaller. To figure this out you multiply the expected loss percentage together and then subtract that number from 1. That gives you 0.6057 x 0.5653 which comes out to 0.3424 (the odds of losing both games) and if you take that number and subtract it from 1 you get 0.6573 or that the Giants still have a 65.7% chance of making the World Series.

Don't fall into irrational pessimism yet. There is time for that tomorrow. Go Giants!

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1 comment:

  1. And Tomorrow never came

    Go Giants Not the most talented but the biggest hearts

    Reply