Effectively Wild Episode 1853: What Are the Odds?

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley talk to Kelly Pracht, the CEO and co-founder of predictive analytics startup nVenue, which has provided the real-time probabilities displayed on this season’s MLB Network-produced Friday Night Baseball broadcasts on Apple TV+. They discuss nVenue’s origin story, its sports-betting ambitions, its 100-plus-input machine-learning model, which factors are and aren’t predictive of performance, Ben and Meg’s misgivings about some of the displayed probabilities, and much more. Then (1:04:37) Ben and Meg bring on FanGraphs writer Ben Clemens to discuss the results of his study about how nVenue’s odds compare to a simplistic, one-factor model, and why they think the accuracy of the system matters. Audio intro: Remember Sports, “Odds Are” Audio interstitial: Sunflower Bean, “Beat the Odds” Audio outro: The Rock*A*Teens, “Count in Odd Numbers” Link to Friday Night Baseball details Link to nVenue’s website Link to article about nVenue fundraising Link to SportTechie on nVenue Link to SportTechie on nVenue again Link to D Magazine on nVenue Link to InnovationMap on nVenue Link to nVenue YouTube video Link to nVenue on PitchBook Link to nVenue on Crunchbase Link to Emily Bender on AI Link to machine learning wiki Link to overfitting explainer Link to SABR on machine learning Link to “reach base probability” tweets Link to Ben Clemens’s nVenue study Link to Ben’s study data Link to Brier score wiki Link to league count splits  Sponsor Us on Patreon Subscribe to Stathead (Code: WILD20)  Facebook Group  Twitter Account  EW Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)  Get Our Merch!  Email Us: [email protected] var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source