Monday, February 13, 2012

By the numbers

World Series odds have been posted. The Giants come in at 16-to-1, the eighth best of thirty teams. The Phillies are number one (6/1), followed by the Angels and Yankees (13/2), Tigers (8/1), Rangers (9/1), Red Sox (12/1), and Marlins (15/1).

Let's see, statistics has always been a weak spot for me, so I think that "16-to-1" means that if they played 17 games then the Giants would win 16 of them! Awesome! What a great team. Wait--what's that? Oh, it means that if there were 16 teams in the league then the Giants would be one of them. Hmm, that doesn't sound very good. I know, they are betting odds, so that must mean that if I bet a dollar on the Giants that I'll win sixteen bucks!! Now we're talking. Time to scrounge up some cash! OK, OK, I'm doing a wikipedia search and it says that if they played the season 1,000 times the Giants would be the champs 160 times. Better get cracking, that's a lot of World Series lawn gnomes I'll have to buy. Maybe I can use my winnings!

Tell me, O My Brothers, what does "16-to-1" mean to you?

--M.C.

7 comments:

Ron said...

Oh, Mark ... you had better return some of those lawn gnomes. We would only win 62.5 times in 1,000 playings of the season.

What does it mean to me? Not much:

- First, it means that a lot of people from the East Coast bet & have skewed the results. The Yankees & Boston have done nothing to improve themselves in the off-season, are admittedly still strong, but are mis-represented in this betting.

- Second, it's all a bunch of hooey. How did the 2010 Giants & the 2011 Cardinals do in the pre-season betting odds? Probably not very well.

- Third, I suppose that the only comfort that I take is that we are the 3rd highest NL team. On the other hand, maybe that's because Bay Area people bet disproportionately, too.

Russian River said...

Bet shmet........Why gamble your hard earned cash to support gansters and mafiosos living a Vegas lifestyle. It's all lost wages I say!

Spend you money on good cigars and great whiskey. Now that's living! Light one up and pour a snifter, and I'd happily join you.

16 what? Together, we're GIANT. Opening day baby......coming soon!

Brother Bob said...

Only once I bet on baseball. That time in Vegas with Jon when I won $1200 on a machine almost immediately so we blew half of that on lap dances, went to the driving range, and I put $100 on The Giants straight up. We tried to follow the game over dinner. It turned out to one of the most exciting come-from-behind wins of the year for us, so I was thrilled to collect about $190.

M.C. O'Connor said...

What, wikipedia isn't reliable?

Or did I just hastily skim the wrong entry?

Hmm, let's see, divide, carry the one . . . (hey, how do you use a percent key?), oh shit, I think I have a Reverse Polish Notation calculator!, OK, OK, take a deep breath, convert the fraction . . .

. . . and it equals a 1000!

That's it. Got it. If they played the season a 1000 times the Giants would win EVERY FUCKING TIME!!!! I KNEW my math was a little off!!!!

GO GIANTS!!!!

JC Parsons said...

Hmmm...16-1 sounds like a good won loss record for Tim...and Matt...and MadBum!!! I hope it is OK not to have a 20 game winner in the bunch.

nomisnala said...

I think this is California, although the betting may be done in Nevada, but in California you can replace the booze and cigars with some of that medically available stuff that Timmy is smoking.

campanari said...

What 16-1 means in this context is that the gamblers think the Giants are tied with Miami as the top team in the NL except the Phillies. If so, they should make the playoffs by winning their division. Once we come down to a short series, best of 5 or best of 7, we know from 2010 that all bets are off.

For gambling purposes, the actual odds are crucial. For predicting the standings at the end of the season in a 3-division league, the odds in context means that supposedly smart money thinks we will be in the playoffs.