An actuary who has spent his career in sports statistics has developed a program to determine who will win the Super Bowl.
John Dewan, who also happens to be a Chicago Bears fan, says he was thrilled to find that his prediction system showed his home team would win the big game. [...]
In the same way corporate actuaries evaluate the likelihood of future events, he has designed a method to determine victory by looking at the Bears’ and Colts’ rushing yards, passing yards, points scored, turnovers, regular-season records, total yards and points allowed to come up with his prediction.
Interestingly, though, when you look at passing yardage statistics, the results go against common sense.[...]
“That’s because the team that relies less on the passing game and more on the running game tends to win the Super Bowl. It’s opposite of what people might expect,” he says, unless you’re a Bears fan.
Personally, I find the idea of a football championship in which Manchester United isn’t playing rather odd…but that’s just me, I guess.