23.7% chance to win the East, 10% to win it all

[Craiger]

Disagree. The expected result sure, but not necessarily the actual result.
For arguments sake, definitions of Odds:


and Definition of Probability:


Probabilities don't say something WILL happen. They say something SHOULD happen.
Big distinction in my books.

Semantics.


And yes they don't say something will happen, they are how likely something is occur. Which is the point.

'Testing it' shouldn't change the probabilities (ignoring the complexities of the paradox here). It just gave you one of (or a seris of) the possible results.

[MACK11]

I came here for basketball talk not another Stats class

[KeonClark]

I came here for basketball talk not another Stats class

LOL! You're ignoring the complexities of the paradox didn't you read the other guy?

[Craiger]

LOL! You're ignoring the complexities of the paradox didn't you read the other guy?

sorry, my mistake. I didn't realize you guys were forced to read this thread.

I'll account for that in the future.

[DanH]

Semantics.


And yes they don't say something will happen, they are how likely something is occur. Which is the point.

'Testing it' shouldn't change the probabilities (ignoring the complexities of the paradox here). It just gave you one of (or a seris of) the possible results.

What you are missing here, is he doesn't start with odds for each team to make the playoffs, win games, etc. He starts with a simple net rating projection. Then looks at each of the 1230 games determining the odds of one team beating the other for each game based on those net ratings. Then he runs a random number generator to determine if the better team wins. Most often it does. But there will be a great many games where the underdog wins. There appear to also be other random factors thrown in, but on the whole they should average out so long as they are applied equally to all the teams at some point.

Anyway, he applies that strategy to each of the 1230 games, getting a win-loss record for each team. He does the same for the playoff matchups, and runs the lottery, but that's all an extension of the same thing. He then does all of that again. It yields different results due to the random decision of which team wins each game (not truly random, probabilistic). He does this 5000 times (he being the computer program I guess). Then at the end you have the best case, worst case, and average record for each team, the number of times they made the playoffs, the number of times they won the championship, the lotto, etc. That's where his odds come from.

He has no "odds" to start with - only the odds a team with a particular net rating will beat a team with another net rating in one game. He has to run the simulation to be able to project that to the odds you are talking about, the odds a team makes the playoffs, etc.