Music Tuesdays - Lights Out, Words Gone by Bombay Bicycle Club

Very chill song... great band name, too.

FIWK the NFL: Week 12

That picture looks familiar. Maybe it's because I used the same exact picture seven weeks ago. but it's such a great picture for the Chargers vs. Broncos matchup. I mean, I guess I could have gone with Ryan Mathews. Or any of the photos from the game. But I really like this standard photo of the line of scrimmage with the offensive lineman facing the defensive linemen. And when I get a chance to use it, I jump at the opportunity. Last week I was 10-4 SU, 7-5-2 ATS and 4-2-1 in games I chose to put $ on. You know what, that doesn't suck. So let's keep the not sucking going on.

Music Tuesdays - Party on Fifth Ave by Mac Miller

FIWK the NFL: Week 11

Last week didn't go that well for me. I mean my picks weren't that great, but the real killer was the Chargers losing to the Raiders. I guess our 4th-8th linemen aren't that great. And our 1st-3rd were injured. As for my picks, I think I blindly followed my statistical analysis just a little bit too much. As I pointed out, I actually picked the Bengals to beat the Steelers outright, even though I knew this looked fishy due to their respective strength of schedules. So, this week, I'm relying heavily on the Pythagorean winning percentage compared to the spread historical winning percentage, but in a few cases, I am going to interject just a little bit of common sense.

Music Tuesdays - The Sound of Winter by Bush

In the spirit of musical compromise that Aaron gifted me last week, I would like to present this new Bush song. I was really surprised to hear Bush with a new single on the radio. Big fan.

What the F*WK? "Android Fragmentation"

According to Nielsen, Google's Android OS runs 43% of America's Smartphones - that's a lot, and sounds like Google should be flying high considering they've only been around for a few years. Not so fast my friends. Android is open source & free, meaning any OEM can leverage it to create the next great Android device. This is great for Google. This has resulted in a tremendously fragmented ecosystem that, according to app developers, presents a significant problem (see chart below).

Michael DeGusta presents this another way: it's also incredibly troubling for the end consumer. Little-to-no high-end devices run on the latest version of Android; how frustrating is it for a consumer to spend $200 on a device that's outdated 3-weeks later?

Image via Phandroid.

FIWK the NFL: Week 10

I obviously picked the Chargers this week. For everything else I'm going totally quantitative. For a while I had been trying to figure out how to relate points differential or yards/play differential into a way to attempt to pick against the spread. Bill Barnwell and Bill James provided the answer this week. Taking the Pythagorean winning % for the two opponents and Bill James' formula, you can determine how often the favorite should win. Then I used Spreadapedia to look at how often a favorite at each spread has won outright and added 3% for the home team. For example, based on the Chargers and Raiders points scored and points allowed, the Chargers should win 60.8% of the time. But 7 point favorites win 72.2% of the time. If we expect the Chargers to win 60% of the time, they should probably be favored by 3 or 3.5. So, strictly quantitatively, I would pick the Chargers to win outright and the Raiders ATS, but I never pick against the Chargers. I just can't.

Unfortunately, all of this makes for fairly boring analysis of each individual game.

Music Tuesdays - If I Die Young by The Band Perry

Don't know why I like this one. Hopefully it's a compromise for me and Royce

FIWK the NFL: Week 9

There weren't very many pictures of Chargers and Packers playing. And there are even fewer stats in this weeks picks. I made my choices mostly based on the spread and location. In general, the underdog wins ATS and loses SU more often than not. So I'll be leaning towards the underdog when I can. And for a little quiz, when picking straight up, I picked every favorite except one. If you can't figure out the underdog I picked to win outright, then shame on you.

Music Tuesdays - I've Handled Myself Wrong by Grace Woodroofe

Aaron you can skip this one - it's definitely a 'Royce special'