The DOI matches its Crossref record; 11 of the 11 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
On the Probability of Winning a Football Game
Abstract
Based on the results of the 1981, 1983, and 1984 National Football League seasons, the distribution of the margin of victory over the point spread (defined as the number of points scored by the favorite minus the number of points scored by the underdog minus the point spread) is not significantly different from the normal distribution with mean zero and standard deviation slightly less than fourteen points. The probability that a team favored by p points wins the game can be computed from a table of the standard normal distribution. This result is applied to estimate the probability distribution of the number of games won by a team. A simulation is used to estimate the probability that a team qualifies for the championship playoffs.
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Journal of The American Statistical Association
Fienberg, S. E. (2004) · Encyclopedia of Statistical Sciences · doi:10.1002/0471667196.ess1317 · Cited by 6,289
On the Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test for Normality with Mean and Variance Unknown
Lilliefors, H. W. (1967) · Journal of the American Statistical Association · doi:10.2307/2283970 · Cited by 4,530
Beating the Spread: Testing the Efficiency of the Gambling Market for National Football League Games
Zuber, R. A., Gandar, J. M., & Bowers, B. D. (1985) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/261332 · Cited by 144
Predictions for National Football League Games Via Linear-Model Methodology
Harville, D. A. (1980) · Journal of the American Statistical Association · doi:10.1080/01621459.1980.10477504 · Cited by 87
Market Efficiency and Football Betting
Pankoff, L. D. (1968) · The Journal of Business · doi:10.1086/295077 · Cited by 83
Winning Strategies for Wagering on National Football League Games
Vergin, R. C., & Scriabin, M. (1978) · Management Science · doi:10.1287/mnsc.24.8.809 · Cited by 72
Improved Least Squares Football, Basketball, and Soccer Predictions
(1980) · IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics · doi:10.1109/tsmc.1980.4308442 · Cited by 65
Football and Basketball Predictions Using Least Squares
(1977) · IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics · doi:10.1109/tsmc.1977.4309667 · Cited by 50
The Profitability of Wagering on NFL Games
Tryfos, P., Casey, S., Cook, S., Leger, G., & Pylypiak, B. (1984) · Management Science · doi:10.1287/mnsc.30.1.123 · Cited by 49
On Any Given Sunday: Fair Competitor Orderings with Maximum Likelihood Methods
Thompson, M. (1975) · Journal of the American Statistical Association · doi:10.1080/01621459.1975.10482468 · Cited by 34
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Irrelevant events affect voters' evaluations of government performance
Healy, A. J., Malhotra, N., & Mo, C. H. (2010) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1007420107 · Cited by 425
Dynamic Risk Profiling Using Serial Tumor Biomarkers for Personalized Outcome Prediction
Kurtz, D. M., Esfahani, M. S., Scherer, F., Soo, J., Jin, M. C., Liu, C. L., Newman, A. M., Dührsen, U., Hüttmann, A., Casasnovas, O., et al. (2019) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2019.06.011 · Cited by 243
Basic concepts in three-part quantitative assessments of undiscovered mineral resources
Singer, D. A. (1993) · Natural Resources Research · doi:10.1007/bf02272804 · Cited by 206
Falter, J., & Pérignon, C. (2000) · Applied Economics · doi:10.1080/000368400421101 · Cited by 132
A State-Space Model for National Football League Scores
Glickman, M. E., & Stern, H. S. (1998) · Journal of the American Statistical Association · doi:10.1080/01621459.1998.10474084 · Cited by 121
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Stern, H.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Stern, Hal
- ORCID
- Stern, Hal
- Venue
- The American Statistician
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1991-08
- Volume
- 45
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 179-183
- ISSN
- 0003-1305 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-2731
- OpenAlex
- W2047377347
- Semantic Scholar
- c6de3d74feb7cc2879c393bee1d59b5b575db2a0
- Cited by
- 106
- References
- 11
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 2.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The American Statistician (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Sports Analytics and Performance
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Probability and Statistical Research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Orthopedics and Sports Medicine › Sports Performance and Training
- Keywords
- football, point spread, margin of victory, National Football League, normal distribution, winning probability, sports statistics
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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