DON’T BET ON THE SUPER BOWL YET! Wait for Punxsutawney Phil’s Prediction!

DON’T BET ON THE SUPER BOWL YET! Wait for Punxsutawney Phil’s Prediction!

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Super Bowl LIV expects to be great one. So great, no one is really taking a hard stand guaranteeing a victor either way. The Chiefs are a measly 1-point favorite after Las Vegas considered how Kansas City’s offensive juggernaut compares to the well-rounded machine that is the San Francisco 49ers. But I’m guessing none of these Vegas quants took advantage of a key analysis that I want to share with you to give you a huge edge when you place your money-line bet on Sunday: the Bayesian-Marmot Conditional Probability model. 
 
Any statistician worth their salt knows that a Bayesian-Marmot model is a conditional probability of any event happening based on whether Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow or not on Groundhog Day. It’s simple Bayesian probability. Sure, you might think this game is going to be a nail biter now, but that’s because we haven’t considered what the world’s most famous rodent, Punxsutawney Phil, thinks yet. That little marmot will burst out of the ground at 7:20am EST the morning of Super Bowl LIV giving Gobler’s Knob the fate of what’s to come in South Beach. And sure, they’ll tell you he’s predicting the weather, but ole Punx has been using this occasion to pick his Super Bowl winner for years now. 
 
Let’s take a look at the entire record of Punxsutawney Phil prognostications:
Blue = long winter. Yellow = early spring. Rest were No Results

Wow. He’s been at this since 1887 making him most likely older than Dick Stockton. But the first Super Bowl played on or after February 2nd wasn’t until 2002. Since then, 14 out of the last 18 Super Bowls were played on or after Groundhog Day giving Punx a chance to predict the big game before the result was known. And it appears ole Punx has done quite well. In the four years he predicted an early spring (2007, 2011, 2013, 2019), the NFC won 3 out of the 4 Super Bowls. When predicting a long winter (2002, 2005 – 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 – 2018) the AFC won 7 out of 10 Super Bowls. Not too shabby for a rodent, but with all that time hiding underground during the season, you know he’s watching all-22 tape day in and day out. 

But wait, how exactly is this the case?

It’s pretty clear that Phil is predicting an AFC Super Bowl winner when indicating “long winter ahead” and the NFC for an “early spring”. His combined 10 out 14 record detailed above gives him a 71.4 percent accuracy in qualifying Super Bowl predictions, which is nothing to shake your tail at. And sure, the naysayers might claim that it’s all in reverse and that he’s really predicting the other way around, but I give the little marmot the benefit of the doubt. 

Here are Phil’s hit rates in table form using the Bayesian-Marmot Probability Theorem:

Punxsutawney Phil Super Bowl Prediction Accuracy

Early Spring Long Winter
AFC 25% 70%
NFC 75% 30%
As you can see, if you are rooting for the 49ers, you should be waking up early and pulling hard for Phil to predict an early spring. Unfortunately for you, in Phil’s entire prognostication career, he has predicted an early spring only 15.6 percent of the time.
As it stands now, here is the math for the current – pre-Groundhog Day odds for each team:
Chiefs: (.25 * .156) + (.7 * .844) = 62.98%
49ers: (.75 * .156) + (.3 * .844) = 37.02%

So there you have it. All the smart money is going to funnel into Vegas at 7:21am EST on February 2nd. Aaand sure, it’s not likely the IRB is going to accept this research any time in the near future out of pure spite and jealousy. Aaand sure, last year Phil predicted an NFC winner by claiming we’d have an early spring and was totally wrong. But you can’t play the recency bias game. You have to look at the entire picture.

So betters, keep that money in your pocket until Phil gives us all the sign. There’s literally a 100% chance that we have a 70% chance of winning 84% of the time and another 100% chance we have a 75% chance this will work 15% of the time. It’s basically free money. Get ready to rev those engines and ride or die with the groundhog.

-El Jefe

 

 

via Gfycat

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