My two cents worth

4:01 PM   I just posted the predictive portion of the 2003 NCAA Prediction Tracker Awards.
The big winner this year was Edward Kambour

11:04 AM   I got a winter workout this morning. I shoveled the snow from my sidewalks. Then I realized that I could still catch the train to work. So I was walking quickly to the train stop and when I was about a block away I saw the train coming. So I ran the rest of the way and just made it in time.
I normally drive to work but on days with bad weather I take the train. Either way takes about the same amount of time. This morning it was snowing and the forcast was for more snow. So on days like this I would rather not risk driving.

9:27 AM   It's a frigid day in Chicago. The high temperture is supposed to be about 7 degrees.

But things are really heating up at work. I think in 7 plus years I have never been more busy than I am right now. So I don't have time for much other stuff at the moment.

1:16 PM   There is a story about a study from my group in this week's Newsweek. On the picture, from left to rigth, the person in a black sweater that is cut off is my boss, our lead statistician, the man to her right is the director of our research center and to the right of him is the doctor that wrote the paper. In the background behind those three is George. George heads the data management group.

4:46 PM   I wrote up the prediction tracker awards for the ncaa full season today. But I have not posted it. I may wait until I write up the whole thing. One thing I can say is a fellow classmate of mine, Edward Kambour, dominates this year, in what was a very poor year for computer systems.

Who is the mole??

11:50 AM   Last weekend was one of the best football weekends ever. Four NFL playoff games, all went down to the wire, one game went into overtime and another went into double overtime.

What's the deal with Nebraska hiring Bill Callahan as coach? He had only been a head coach for two seasons and the results in year two were completely disasterous. He says he will take the NFL passing style offense to Lincoln. I always liked Nebraska because they ran the option.

The powers that be are looking at options but have still not come to any decisions on how to modify the BCS. The coaches voted against adding an additional game after the bowls. I agree with that. A one game playoff after the bowls is not the answer. In most cases the #1 team would have just beaten the #2 team. Should it then have to beat the #3 team to win the national championship. That is just stupid.

11:24 AM   I have made some major updates to the basketball pages. There are now three more systems that are making daily NCAA basketball predictions. And I have put up the first day of NBA predictions. I look forward to working with the NBA, with it's nice schedule it will give me a chance to play with basketball models. But since I am just starting collecting the data now I will wait until I get a lot of games first. I was a little surprised to see the first day with only about 6 or 7 ratings the computer average was very close to the line.

4:24 PM   By the way, The PerformanZ Ratings National Champion is USC.
So my ratings end up matching the pollsters. It appears most rank LSU #1

4:20 PM   There are a lot of comments about the BCS coming out now, in this one , Mike tranghese, coordinator of the BCS says

"Computers don't calculate when you lose a game," Tranghese said. "The polls are a reflection of your performance from week to week. We should have thought of that. We made a mistake, and we should be criticized."

The computers only do what they are told to do, they can give more weight to later games but this was the way they wanted it. And I believe it is correct. The season is not the most recent game it is the entire season. They did not make a mistake like Tranghese claims.

Tranghese also goes on to say he is in favor of removing the computers from the BCS. Unfortunately, that is what I expecting to see. Maybe the reason the BCS is in so much trouble is the guy that is coordinating it doesn't seem to have a clue about what the BCS is supposed to do.

My guess is we will end up seeing something like the basketball committeee. The BCS will only be used to guide the comittee in choosing the teams rather than being used to decide the top two teams. I think that is fair enough, as long as the committee can remain unbiased.

4:08 PM   It looks as if the webserver that hosts my main site has been hacked into. The page that you see did not come from me. Hopefully it will be resolved quickly.
Hmm. Looks like it just went back to normal. Well, anyway, hopefully nobody saw what was put in it's place.

For the bowls my picks went 3-2 and I was 0-3 in the last week of NFL.
Results- NCAA: 46-40-1, NFL 21-22-3