{"id":226,"date":"2008-01-26T13:26:14","date_gmt":"2008-01-26T17:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=218"},"modified":"2008-01-26T13:26:14","modified_gmt":"2008-01-26T17:26:14","slug":"simulation-and-the-nhl-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/01\/26\/simulation-and-the-nhl-playoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"Simulation and the NHL playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing up in Winnipeg, Canada (city motto: “At least it is a dry cold”), I had a short and rather forgettable hockey career (though getting a shutout as a goalie at 12 years old remains one of my favorite memories). I have been greatly outdone by my nephew Mathieu, who actually looks like he knows what he is doing when facing a shot. Since then, I follow hockey mainly through my local team, the Pittsburgh Penguins. I have been lucky to see a number of amazing players on the Penguins: Lemieux, Jagr, and “Sid the Kid” Crosby<\/a> perhaps best of all. I keep hoping to provide the schedule for the NHL, which I think is the only thing that would impress my buddies back in Winnipeg.<\/p>\n

Armann Ingolfsson of the University of Alberta has appeared in an article in the Toronto Sun<\/em><\/a> on using simulation to predict who will make the playoffs this year. You can read a more detailed description of what he does in an article published in the INFORMS Transactions on Education<\/em><\/a> in 2004. The main idea is to use simulation to generate 500 possible continuations of the regular season and to determine how often every team makes the playoffs. A critical feature of this is the ability to assign probabilities of wins for every game.<\/p>\n

I am very happy to see that the Penguins currently have a 92% chance of making the playoffs. But the system doesn’t take into account that Crosby has a “high ankle sprain” keeping him out for two months.\u00a0 That might knock off a percentage point or two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up in Winnipeg, Canada (city motto: “At least it is a dry cold”), I had a short and rather forgettable hockey career (though getting a shutout as a goalie at 12 years old remains one of my favorite memories). I have been greatly outdone by my nephew Mathieu, who actually looks like he knows … Continue reading “Simulation and the NHL playoffs”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-or-in-the-press","category-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}