The Atlanta Falcons are playing the Seattle Seahawks in the divisional round of the NFC playoffs on Sunday. Vegas has the Falcons favored by 2.5, but you get +3 for just being the home team, which essentially means Vegas has no clue what it thinks.
Thankfully for you, the curious public often interested in how the future will turn out, I do know what I think. Who knows what "algorithms" and "formulas" and "educated guesses" places like Odds Shark implement (cue my knees getting Gilloolied in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...), but chances are they all ignore the most important aspect of predicting outcomes: feelings.
I know the Falcons are going to win, because that's what my feelings tell me will happen. That's all I've got, and I couldn't be more thrilled.
It was the year a man became very famous for possessing an unshakable belief in math and basic reasoning skills. This probably says less about Nate Silver and more about the small armies of Silver skeptics, gut-driven intuitionists uninterested in parsing the differences between probability and prediction, correlation and causation. But in the weeks leading up to election night, Silver cemented his role as our all-seeing eye. His name and fine-tuned, closely guarded formulas became an instant salve anytime someone started freaking out: “Nate Silver says … ” Between his bestseller, The Signal and the Noise, and near-flawless election predictions, nobody had a better year reputation-wise than Silver.
Nate Silver explains how his use of analytics in sports influenced his study of political trends and how the use of sports analytics has changed the way the games are played.
