Thanks to Sharon Cobb and Jackson Miller, here is the hat-trick that must happen next Sunday if the Tennessee Titans are going to make it into the playoffs. Again, all four must occur:

1. Titans must beat Patriots
2. Steelers must beat Bengals
3. 49ers must beat Broncos
4. Chiefs must beat Jaguars

So what are the odds of all four of those happening? After consulting with the 16-year-old (who is playing a videogame while helping me figure this out), we’ve decided the “coin-tossing formula” is applicable — and it’s also they type of analogy Charlie Epps on the TV show Numb3rs would use to explain to the audience a concept like probability theory. “Each time you flip a coin, the odds are one-in-two that you’ll get heads. Therefore, the odds of flipping four heads in a row is 6.25% (.50 x .50 x .50 x .50 = .0625).

But unlike coin tossing, there is an industry that predicts the specific odds one of the teams will win — i.e., the odds of the coin landing heads or tails. By using the coin-tossing formula, and plugging in consensus match-up book-making (prediction) data provided by Covers.com, here’s our best-guess of what the chances are of the Sunday hat-trick happening: 3.4%.

Background:

New England (11-4) @ Tennessee (8-7) | current consensus odds of a Titans win: 41.9%

Pittsburgh (7-8) @ Cincinnati (8-7) | current consensus odds of a Pittsburgh win: 35.6%

Jacksonville (8-7) @ Kansas City (8-7) | current consensus odds of a KC win: 57.5%

San Francisco (6-9) @ Denver (9-6) | current consensus odds of a KC win: 40% (however, the covers.com site currently has it backwards)

If the coin-tossing odds formula is applicable (on the TV show, Numb3rs, the first analogy-theory is often incorrect) and the bookmakers’ consensus odds are correct, the chances of the Titans getting into the playoffs is 3.4% (.419 x .356 x .575 x .400 = .034)

As a Titans fan, let me remind you: It could happen.

Technorati Tags: nashville, nfl, titans

Clay Shirky says reporters are stupid when it comes to statistics about Second Life. It won’t come as a surprise to any who reads this blog that I agree. However, I’m not ready to write-off Second Life just because of their hyped numbers. I’d prefer to write them off because their business model and practices remind me of an early AOL or Compuserve when you could only send email to other subscribers of your walled-off service. I’ve learned not to write-off things I don’t understand (I say this as I am sitting next to the 16 year old who is deep into playing a videogame I can neither understand or play), but my forays into Second Life have led me to dread the learning curve of something new — and that’s not usually the way I feel about learning the ways of new forms of online community.

Writing in today’s LA Times, former Harvard President and Clinton Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers explains the perception gap between the future being predicted by financial markets vs. the future being anticipated by the “commentariat.” While financial markets are pricing in an expectation of tranquility as far as the eye can see, headline and opinion writers (and I might add, bloggers on both the right and left of the political spectrum) constantly make it seem like the world — and the U.S. economy — is going to hell in a handcart.

Quote:

“…it is fair for those who look to markets to point out that the easy path for the commentariat is to foretell disaster. If disaster occurs, it was foretold. If it does not, credit can be given for timely warning…Equally, those who take comfort from the markets’ comfort should bear in mind that the markets hardly ever predict serious disruption. Historically, the moments of greatest complacency have been the moments of greatest danger.”

(via: Rich Karlgaard)

Technorati Tags: economy

Just in time for inspiring you to do this for 2007, Taylor McKnight says he’s about to finish up his second Project 365, a photo-a-day posting effort. Here is Taylor’s tutorial on how to do one yourself. (Best advice: Always have a camera with you.) I may try — or, perhaps, we’ll do an office version — one in 2007. I’ve seen similar projects where people take a photo of the same thing everyday — a pet, themselves, a scene that changes with the seasons. I like Taylor’s approach of using the project to experiment with different photo techniques and to document where you are and the people you met. Also, I’ll echo Taylor’s suggestion for using Flickr as the detailed view and calendar view (although I can never recall how to get to the calendar view) provide excellent ways to display the finished work.

Technorati Tags: photography

(From Nature.com [later: sorry, it's now behind a cost wall]) “Bouncing backpacks can make hiking easier, researchers have shown.Lawrence Rome and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania have designed a backpack in which the load hangs suspended by bungee cords from a frame strapped to the walker’s back.”

According to the article, they don’t have a product on the market yet, but plan to develop one.

Note: There’s a link to a video that shows how it works, however, this would have been a great place for a video sidebar that could have told the story on one page. Come to think of it, a video sidebar is like adding bungee cords to your backpack — it makes understanding how something works easier.

(via: NYTimes.com, third item.)

Technorati Tags: gadgets, puppy, video sidebar