University of Pennsylvania, not to be confused with my alma mater California University
of Pennsylvania, economist Justin Wolfers wrote a paper in which he used “forensic
economics” to find alleged patterns of cheating in college basketball.
Wolfers...
More
University of Pennsylvania, not to be confused with my alma mater California University
of Pennsylvania, economist Justin Wolfers wrote a paper in which he used “forensic
economics” to find alleged patterns of cheating in college basketball.
Wolfers asserts that point shaving is occurring in about five percent of games that involve
large pointspreads.
If only the good professor read any of our sports gaming articles such as
“It is Good to Pick Bad” he wouldn’t have come up with such preposterous conclusions,
knowing there is a very logical reason large underdogs cover more than 50 percent of the
time.
To the surprise of no sharp sports handicapper, Mr.
Wolfers found that big underdogs cover
a disproportionate percentage of close spread outcomes.
Wolfers’ statistical “big dog” is a
team getting 12 or more points.
As the NY Times puts it “There is a strange dearth of
games in which 12-point favorites win by, say, 13 or 16 points.
And there are a lot of
games tha
Less
