Need help calculating odds

[261252]

Dominic Mirabella won $1 million through a sports betting app by going 81-0 against the spread in regular season and playoff games


http://www.msn.com/en-ca/sports/nfl/...ion/ar-AAmFIDU

If the odds are fifty/fifty for one game with the spread then

two games in a row are 1/2 *1/2 or 1 in four

3 games in a row are 1/2*1/2*1/2 or 1 in 8

so the odds for 81 games are 1 in (2 multiplied by 2 done 81 times) or 2 to the exponent 81


I asked google to calculate 2 to the exponent 81 and they came back with 2.4178516e+24.

I think that means 24 numbers come after the decimal place or 1 in 2,417,851,600,000,000,000,000,000


there are 12 zeroes in a trillion so the first 13 numbers are 2.4 trillion leaving 000,000,000,000 or another trillion??

so the odds are 1 in 2.4 trillion times a trillion ???????? No fucking way he did that so either the storey is BS or I am wrong in my calculations


there are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe we can observe ( there are more in the unobservable universe because their light has not reached us) with 100 million stars in each galaxy for comparison

 

[Smooth60]

Your calculations are correct given the premise.
But each game is not a 50-50 proposition.

 

[fuji]

Here's another way to think about these things:

Start with twenty thousand people in a stadium and let each guess heads or tails. Flip a coin. The losers leave the venue. Let the remaining people guess again and flip. Again ask the losers to leave.

After fifteen straight coin tosses you will have a handful of people left who guessed right every time.

Are they experts at coin toss guessing?

And again, like Smooth said, the odds weren't fifty fifty. On many bets no doubt Dominic was picking the clear favorite. But also getting lucky too.

With enough players SOMEBODY had to win.

 

[Cassini]

I'm pretty sure that spread betting doesn't work that way. The odds of winning by betting 81-0 against the spread are much higher than what you are calculating.

 

[Occasionally]

I'm pretty good with numbers, but I never understood the short and long term effect of odds.

One on hand, flipping a coin is a 50/50 guess. That assumes you make the call right there as your first guess.

But if you had already made 99 flips at that time and the previous guess was the 100th guess, the outcome is supposed to even out. So if the 99 results were let's say 53 heads and 46 tails, the expected outcome 2 minutes ago when you first started flipping coins would say it's heavily favoured to tails to balance it out over time.

So which is it? 50/50 right then or there? Or do you use 2 minutes ago thinking where it should be 50/50 over time and it seems due to hit tails more often in the short term?

 

[fuji]

I'm pretty good with numbers, but I never understood the short and long term effect of odds.

One on hand, flipping a coin is a 50/50 guess. That assumes you make the call right there as your first guess.

But if you had already made 99 flips at that time and the previous guess was the 100th guess, the outcome is supposed to even out. So if the 99 results were let's say 53 heads and 46 tails, the expected outcome 2 minutes ago when you first started flipping coins would say it's heavily favoured to tails to balance it out over time.

So which is it? 50/50 right then or there? Or do you use 2 minutes ago thinking where it should be 50/50 over time and it seems due to hit tails more often in the short term?

Assuming a fair coin is 50/50. Always. You don't bet that it will catch up.

 

[Smooth60]

they are less as you are betting against the spread , so the odds are higher than my calculations

I am not a math guy but I think it would less.
Here are the records for ATS for all teams this last season.

https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/trends/ats_trends/

If you bet NE in every game to cover the spread your win % would 85
If you bet Cleveland to not cover the spread in every Game your win % would be 75.
He had to pick 4 games every week. Picking the 4 teams with the best % to either cover or fail to cover the spread would reduce your overall probability odds.
The trick is knowing when Las Vegas got it wrong. The spread is an artificial number that fluctuates due to betting trends. More money bet on a team the higher the spread. The bookie wants to generate bets to offset that maing the dog a more enticing bet. You also need to take into account pushes. If you bet games that don't have the possibility of a push that effects the overall probability by a few % points.
Don't get me wrong, it is still an astounding feat to be able to do that but it isn't as impossible as it seems.

ETA It's fun to thinkthat if you bet $1000 on Cleveland every week to not cover the spread you would be up ~10k on the season.
How bad are they gonna suck next year? hmmm lol

 

[Insidious Von]

I hated Statistics in college, now it's the one discipline I use the most.

 

[frankcastle]

I'm pretty good with numbers, but I never understood the short and long term effect of odds.

One on hand, flipping a coin is a 50/50 guess. That assumes you make the call right there as your first guess.

But if you had already made 99 flips at that time and the previous guess was the 100th guess, the outcome is supposed to even out. So if the 99 results were let's say 53 heads and 46 tails, the expected outcome 2 minutes ago when you first started flipping coins would say it's heavily favoured to tails to balance it out over time.

So which is it? 50/50 right then or there? Or do you use 2 minutes ago thinking where it should be 50/50 over time and it seems due to hit tails more often in the short term?

every time you flip the coin it is an independent event so. one the 100th flip my odds of heads or tails for just that one coin is 50 50.

that is why if you play the lottery weekly or kust once in your life. your one ticket has the same chance of winning as someone who plays weekly.

 

[261252]

My first thought is I am reading the scientific notation wrong so I asked calculator to do 2 to the power of 20 and it gives 2 answers :

1,048,576 and 1.048576e+6 so it would appear the " e " means move decimal place to the right by the number that follows and replace "." with ","

so my original interpretation of the scientific notation stands unless I am corrected



1,000 thousand
1,000,000 million
1,000,000,000 billion
1,000,000,000,000 trillion
1,000,000,000,000,000 quadrillion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 quintillion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 sextillion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 septillion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 octillion

so the odds of beating spread 81 times in a row are over 2 septillion

 

[frankcastle]

beating the spread varies. but the point is being perfect like that is really hard and rare. maybe it happens more often but remember a game like craps favours the hiuse 51 to 49 in the long run. it doesnt take much of an advantage to rake in a lot of money.

also remember there is a sliding scale for payouts so that makes a difference too. a team that wins a lot pyas out less.

 

[261252]

Here's another way to think about these things:

Start with twenty thousand people in a stadium and let each guess heads or tails. Flip a coin. The losers leave the venue. Let the remaining people guess again and flip. Again ask the losers to leave.

After fifteen straight coin tosses you will have a handful of people left who guessed right every time.

Are they experts at coin toss guessing?

And again, like Smooth said, the odds weren't fifty fifty. On many bets no doubt Dominic was picking the clear favorite. But also getting lucky too.

With enough players SOMEBODY had to win.

The stadium would need to hold 2 septillion people for 81 correct guesses so you need build one big fucking stadium


That is how charlatans pretend to be experts in stock market predictions. They tell x people a stock will rise and y people it will fall. This prediction leaves either x or y with correct prediction. . You do the same thing again with those who you told correctly and so on and so on. After a few times you are left with only a few suckers told correctly each time but some of them now believe you will always be correct then you scam them. Works like a charm. Even stock brokers fall for it.


If you are white, good looking, tall, act confident with big smile then scam works best.


In other words look like and act this guy. Look at that smile. Charlatans know people trust people who smile. Who goes around with a smile like that? That smile has charlatan written all over it. He even is clean shaven with short hair to appeal to broadest audience

 

[Smooth60]

Here ya go.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/widgets/view.jsp?id=d821210668c6cc5a02db1069cc52464f

 

[261252]

Here ya go.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/widgets/view.jsp?id=d821210668c6cc5a02db1069cc52464f

Probability of 81 heads in a row is 1 / 2.482 * 10 to the exponent 24 ( or 1.0e+24)


which means


1 chance in 1 septillion * 2.482 which confirms my original calculation , which means it is impossible so either it never happened or I am thinking stupidly


My guess is the story is a hoax and Dominic Mirabella is having a good and well deserved laugh at the expense of the Detroit News

 

[Smooth60]

Probability of 81 heads in a row is 1 / 2.482 * 10 to the exponent 24 ( or 1.0e+24)


which means


1 chance in 1 septillion * 2.482 which confirms my original calculation , which means it is impossible so either it never happened or I am thinking stupidly


My guess is the story is a hoax and Dominic Mirabella is having a good and well deserved laugh at the expense of the Detroit News

I already told you that your original calculations were correct GIVEN the premise that all games were 50/50 proposition. But they are not 50-50.
NE covered the spread this season at a 85% clip. You need to take that into account in your math. You are not.

 

[261252]

I already told you that your original calculations were correct GIVEN the premise that all games were 50/50 proposition. But they are not 50-50.
NE covered the spread this season at a 85% clip. You need to take that into account in your math. You are not.

I do not see your point. That is in retrospect. Some teams will beat the spread greater than 50/50 chance and some will not. The odds every team is going to beat the odds at a 50% rate over the course of a season are astronomical. Not sure how you would figure that out.

Which teams will beat spread is not predictable so what does NE have to do with it?

 

[Smooth60]

I do not see your point. That is in retrospect. Some teams will beat the spread greater than 50/50 chance and some will not. The odds every team is going to beat the odds at a 50% rate over the course of a season are astronomical. Not sure how you would figure that out.

Which teams will beat spread is not predictable so what does NE have to do with it?

I am not quite explaining it properly I guess.

You are saying that the Decision on the Outcome of an Event has 2 Possible outcomes. And that Event is repeated 81 times. Your event is a coin flip, 2 possible results, with a fair coin, is 50-50. The probability that your Decision on the outcome over 81 trials is your big number you calculated. That is all true.

BUT, a Football game (Event) is not a coin flip, there are 2 teams contributing to the Outcome of the Event. While your Decision still only has 2 possibilities (forgetting ties or pushes), win /lose or was my Decision right/wrong, the Event is subject to extraneous variables that make the Outcome/Result of each game/Event More or Less Probable. Depending on your luck or skill in determining the effects these variables have on the Outcome and hence your decision, gives you an edge making the Win/Lose-Right/Wrong decision either more or less likely to be correct.

And this is what I am trying to point out and said in my first post.

 

[261252]

I am not quite explaining it properly I guess.

You are saying that the Decision on the Outcome of an Event has 2 Possible outcomes. And that Event is repeated 81 times. Your event is a coin flip, 2 possible results, with a fair coin, is 50-50. The probability that your Decision on the outcome over 81 trials is your big number you calculated. That is all true.

BUT, a Football game (Event) is not a coin flip, there are 2 teams contributing to the Outcome of the Event. While your Decision still only has 2 possibilities (forgetting ties or pushes), win /lose or was my Decision right/wrong, the Event is subject to extraneous variables that make the Outcome/Result of each game/Event More or Less Probable. Depending on your luck or skill in determining the effects these variables have on the Outcome and hence your decision, gives you an edge making the Win/Lose-Right/Wrong decision either more or less likely to be correct.

And this is what I am trying to point out and said in my first post.

Understood. The spread makes the odds of any team winning very close to 50/50, but not exactly 50/50, and this guy was betting the spread. I use the coin flip for simplicity sake.

The odds of this story happening are over a septillion which means it cannot happen so story is a hoax and The Detroit News fell for it .

Of course things do happen that have an extremely low chance of occurring and probability laws predicts odd events will occur but never, ever 2 septillion to one . Never, never , never. Cannot happen. Not enough time in the universe for that to happen . If this happened then that means there are over 2 septillion universes in the multi-verse and this is the one universe it happened in. I just made that shit up but I think you get my point

 

[Smooth60]

Understood. The spread makes the odds of any team winning very close to 50/50, but not exactly 50/50, and this guy was betting the spread. I use the coin flip for simplicity sake. The odds of this story happening are over a septillion which means it cannot happen so story is a hoax and The Detroit News fell for it .

Of course things do happen that have an extremely low chance of occurring and probability laws predicts odd events will occur but never, ever 2 septillion to one . Never, never , never. Cannot happen

LOL
You are contradicting yourself.
This guy accomplished the feat the one time in Septillion that it could happen.
The law of probability dictates that if you flip a coin 1 Trillion times it will be heads 50% of the time. BUT, that does not mean that the first 500 Billion times can't be heads.

 

[261252]

BUT, that does not mean that the first 500 Billion times can't be heads.

Yes it does. The odds are too great against it happening. I am done arguing this point



"Some detractors after the win was announced weighed in on Mirabella’s success, saying it wasn’t possible he made the picks and that the app was a scam.“

It’s crazy what’s been said out there,” said Mirabella, “but I just kind of shrug and have to chuckle at it."

I guess they read my OP.

Scam


http://www.theoaklandpress.com/gene...m-in-winnings-after-undefeated-fantasy-season