Secure Authorization Leads to a Road Less Traveled

Posted by Gabriel Blatstein on February 16, 2020

I just recently graduated from Flatiron’s data science bootcamp program and wanted to start a project to keep my skills sharp. I decided to combine two of my favorite passions: python/modeling and sports. I have done some research to figure out what sport is the easiest to predict to start with. Then once I perfect the first sports model, I will move on to try and predict the harder sports. The sports I am choosing from are both professional and collegiate level.

College Soccer, College Football, College Basketball, MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL, Professional Soccer

Through some reasearch I have found the following points to be extremely useful in deciding which sport to start with:

  1. Picking a sport with only two outcomes will be much easier to predict than a sport with three outcomes, 50% chance vs. a 33% chance. We obviously would like the 50%.
    • Sports with 50% chance: MLB, NBA, College Basketball, College Football
    • Sports with 33% chance: NHL, NFL, College Soccer, Professional Soccer

  2. The type of sport should be taken into account. So what does this mean? Is the sport a team or individual sport? What is the team make up, is there a density of talent? The less moving parts and or players on the pitch, ice, field, or floor is usually more statistically in favor of predicting the outcome.

  3. General professional gambler standpoint seems to be pointing to the NFL as being the easiest at predicting and has the least amount of abnormal events slash under dogs winning.

  4. Final point seems to be that there really is not one sport that is the easiest to predict and or bet on. The number one advice I have seen is to bet on the sport you are the most passionate about.

Sport Selection:

With all of the research and points taken into consideration, I am down to college basketball and college football. Both of these sports can not end in ties and are my two favorite sports by far. I believe just from my own sports knowledge that college basketball can be very unpredictable, but I would like to model this sport. As this sport is in season currently, and I figure I will want to model every sport eventually so why not start with college b-ball. March Madness after all is right around the corner.