This is covering the spread here are your hosts Jim Saunas and Dr. Ed Fang What is going on everybody welcome on into covering the spread? That's right here on the fan dual podcast network and number fire commas today We are previewing the Charles Schwab Challenge as a PGA tour is back from its COVID-19 lab We're gonna discuss that with Brandon Gaddula my co-host over at the heat check fantasy podcast talking about his betting simulations and his process For betting on golf. My name is Jim Saunas I am a senior writer and analyst for number fire comm joined here as always by Ed Fang You can find his work at the power rank comm Ed another sport coming back this week. We've already had USC. We've had NASCAR we've had Bundesliga EPL just around the corner, but golf this week. It's starting to feel like things not back to normal, but getting closer at least Yeah, absolutely. Is there a reason why I mean it feels like golf maybe could have been one of the first to come back given the nature of the sport Was there a reason it didn't Come back earlier. I don't know. I think I Was thinking we're talking about that too. I mean we're talking about golf or with Brandon earlier this week like we don't really know why because NASCAR has more person-to-person interaction than golf does because you're the pit crews and so NASCAR candy back and they've been back successfully. They've done the temperature checks They've had and there are more people at an ask our event to you would think that golf would be able to do so as well I Like I can't criticize them because like I'm always on board of being cautious during during a pandemic But I agree. It's like kind of it's interesting that it took this long, I guess Yeah, I mean the state of Michigan. I mean they allowed people to go play golf. Yeah I mean maybe like a month ago Illinois did like that. I almost at the end of April or early May I think Yeah, so I mean it seems like an a sport in which you can socially distance But that obscures the bigger point in that we're getting back to normal Just a little bit here in the state of Michigan restaurants have opened up this week So we may venture out and take advantage of that sometimes. So yeah, it feels kind of nice It's nice because like you're getting outside you can get like the get some you know Just you can see human beings even if it's from a distance like oh, wow Like there are other humans on this here planet that I can see Physically and it's just nice to like have I know I'm wearing like a mask and stuff But like I'd rather wear a mask and be allowed to go in public then be stuck in my house all day So did you did you end up going to that protest in Syracuse that you posted on yeah? so I went and I wore a mask and I Didn't see hardly anyone who wasn't wearing a mask. So it actually was like Surprising honestly that it worked that way we were able to like I was there with my sister and her husband and then our neighbors and None of us even got like super close to anybody But like when you see like the aerial shots, it looks like it's people on top people and you can't see the masks either So it was interesting. Yeah, and it's also interesting because I mean there's been some positive tests with football players around the nation And obviously college football. I mean I fully expect the NFL to be back But college football is a big variable and I think there was a player from Oklahoma State that said, you know He got it probably from one of these protests. So as much precaution as you can take, right? there's still a risk going on and Yeah, just a lot of questions with college football. I have no idea. I just you know, it's hard No, I mean, I think we can be very optimistic because these kids are getting back on campus which is sooner than I thought they would and So yeah, we want to be optimistic, but still a lot of uncertainty and the other Downside I guess like the other thing too is like when you wear a mask, you're not protecting yourself for protecting others So like you're still at risk even if you're wearing a mask. The other thing too is I had a wicked tan line from my mask Because I kind of forgot to be fully honest to like put sunscreen on because it's been a while since I've been outside So like I had like this really bad tan line like at the top of my nose where you could just see immediately where the mask ended I kind of dig it. It looks really weird But like I'm like, whatever, I mean who cares no one's gonna see it because I'm not going out that I forgot that I had video work But yeah, I can't really see it. Yeah. Yeah, so it wound up being okay but that was a Surprising side effect of it, but you know it's worth it for sure Yeah All right, we are going to get to Brandon in just a bit as mentioned Brandon is the managing editor of number fire Find him on Twitter at Gaduala 13. He is the host of our DFS podcast here the heat check fantasy podcast We're gonna talk with him about golf betting How to utilize stats and betting on golf his win simulations and golfers He likes for this weekend's Charles Schwab challenge if you are looking for some EPL talk We also had Austin Kass on last week to discuss betting on soccer some implications of the EPL I know Fandall sportsbook has some additional EPL markets posted now So you can check out what Austin said by searching for covering the spread wherever you get your podcast Apple podcast Spotify Stitcher the Google Play Store. You name it. You can find this there And if you like what you hear, please leave me a rating and review as well before we get to Brandon Though it's go back to last week because my covering the future discussed some NASCAR and the model was good My bet was not so we'll go through that first Covering the past All right, so last week here on covering the spread I had discussed the NASCAR Cup Series race in Atlanta and I mentioned that my model thought that Kevin Harvick was like outlierishly good and I was like intrigued by that I thought that he was in play of plus 460 But my thought process was I'm not going to bet that because we have limited information though practice Things like that and I was a chicken and decided not to bet Kevin Harvick You will be shocked to learn that Kevin Harvick won the race in pretty dominant fashion So the model is good, but I was like nah, we can't go with the short guy Let's go Joey Logano who is second in the model and he was nine to one and Logano did lead laps early on He had a really good car I thought that he's gonna contend it at least push Harvick for a win, but then he got hit on pit lane Not his fault car never recovered. So Logano didn't win Harvick did so the model I guess was right, but I didn't believe it enough to bet Harvick at such a low number So I had at least encouraged that the model was good But like, you know, it's another another tough NASCAR bet once again Yeah, I mean, it's always tough with like, I mean with the such long odds on on those guys even the top guys You know, I think things like that are gonna happen. Yep We're gonna try it again this week though So we'll talk about that and covering the future later on and we will discuss that in a bit But first we got to get to Brandon Gadoula and speaking of Brandon and the PGA The PGA is back in a big way this weekend with a massive daily fantasy contest on Fanduil This week's mega eagle contest includes one million dollars in total prizes with first place netting $100,000 best of all it's only $7 to enter to get yourself a chance at all that cashing turning $7 into $100,000 go to Fanduil.com or download the Fanduil app Eligibility restrictions apply. Let's bring in Brandon Gadoula now follow him on Twitter at Gadoula 13 The managing editor of number fire and see what he likes this weekend at the Charles Schwab challenge Covering the present Let's bring on Brandon Gadoula to covering the spread as we get both of my Podcast co-hosts to converge for the first time here Brandon welcome to the other podcast covering the spread How you doing today? I'm good I get to see like the other side of gym with a with a different co-host. It's I mean we've been doing it for years now So yeah, it's nice to like come on covering the spread finally, but it's also nice to have golf back for real Yeah, are you jealous of Ed since like I'm he's kind of like I mean like I also I've talked to Austin Swain a couple of times Like I've had a couple of other colas. I've had a dabble with so are you getting jealous yet? Yeah a little bit I mean we had Tom Vecchio on to talk about legends.  I just got lucky in the dust man. That's that's the big goal Yeah, I mean obviously just you know leave you behind and go from there But like you said we do have golf back this week, which is pretty exciting because it's been About three months and it's been tough with no golf with things to track. What are you been doing to occupy your time? I know you're busy with work obviously, but like from a sports perspective What if you've been tracking to kind of keep your brain occupied here? Well, I mean there's really no off-season when it comes to football so building projections with football Studying up there, but I mean when League of Legends is around. I'm a big e-sports guy So I've been digging into League of Legends quite a bit. That's coming back. I mean it is back, but yeah LEC is coming back. That's my that's my preferred one because it's on Fridays in the afternoon like in the United States So get to kind of watch some sports during work As opposed to kind of spending all my time after work working in sports all day watching sports So it's always nice to have that on the background not that you would ever be distracted during work, of course That would that would never happen. Yeah, let's go with that one. Sure. Yeah, okay So I will cover for you and we'll move on here and talk about this weekend's Charles Schwab a challenge and like we said Brandon there's been a long way off between the most recent PJ event when they tried to do the players and had to scrap it So we don't know what type of form everybody is in does that alter the way? You are viewing the field from a betting perspective for this week Yeah, it has to but the way that it affects things is pretty much his guesswork I mean, let's be real. We don't know you can follow all the golfers you want on social media But you can't really quantify what that means You also can't track everyone no matter if you look at everyone's social media feeds in the field You're not gonna know some guys post a lot some guys don't we talked about this yesterday But I mean Xander Schoffel is my favorite golfer and he's He's not super Active on social media. He's the Brandon Gadoula of the PGA tour. Yeah, he just kind of does this thing And you can't tell me that he's not out there working on his game. He's a young guy No, no family yet. So I mean He's got to be working on stuff But doesn't post I mean what do you do with that? Like if you see someone out there posting all these rounds posting all these highlights You can think that he's working harder than anybody else, but you don't necessarily know So I think really the real takeaway is embrace some chaos in the short term Golfs chaos and golf is already a big part of it I will say that I did see a study on PGA tour calm from Dylan Barney. I think it's how you pronounce it I believe he's Irish. I hope I don't get that wrong, but I did some research. Sorry Dylan, but actually He found that putting was actually the most stable stat after a long layoff, which is Actually not that surprising I guess because if you're not playing a lot of tournament golf maybe your your ball striking is not quite there, but You know, there's always an anecdote kind of against that and we saw Justin Thomas return from his wrist injury And we were like, well, you know, the putting is going to be there It's just a matter of whenever the ball striking returns He came back as ball striking was on fire and he couldn't putt because he like he said he overthought it and got too methodical so Yeah, you have to adjust you have to embrace for you know the layoff But the way that you do it is not necessarily very clear Yeah, so Brandon, let's still talk a little bit about your method for predicting golf I'm interested in some of the factors that you consider. So how would you weigh something like current form versus like course history? so In terms of actually like my model, I don't look at course history at all In terms of and not everything I do is based on the modeling that I do because golf is probably the sport where I would consider the eye test to be more important than almost anything because Some stats are still kind of in their infancy You can miss a fairway by a few inches and that's a missed fairway But I mean there are other ways that we can adjust for that So it's very difficult but as for as far as course history goes I mean, I think there are just too many variables that we can't really account for the right way You don't know if someone slept well the week entering that event last year if they had family stuff going on behind the scenes They miss a cut that might sound a little dismissive, but I'll definitely take a larger sample anytime I can over a you know at at best four round sample So, you know, even when we account for all that we don't always do a great job of adjusting for the current form when they had Entering events. So if you you know happen to be You know top 10 at a particular event you might be in good form at that time of year based on your schedule And how you train You know, someone might have missed a cut at a course, you know a few years in a row But is that because he's just typically bad in the swing season? Is it more about the course fit? We don't really know so the way that I look at things is more current form over course history Of course, it's a little more problematic without that super current form to dig into I mean another with another problem with digging into, you know Course history is we can look at finishes too much and it's not a terrible way to look at things But to finish top five you almost always had a good putting performance for example Sometimes it is elite t-degree and just lukewarm putting but you know, we're usually looking at outlier ish performances Unless it's like a superstar golfer. So I mean you have to factor that in And I don't think we always do if we just look at finishing positions and if you look at missed cuts They're always treated badly But you don't have someone missed the cut unless you're digging into stuff and looking at more strokes gained actual scores You know, you see three missed cuts But someone could have missed the cut on the number three straight years But had really good ball striking at this course and that was the missed cuts would make it seem like he struggles the course But maybe just had three bad putting Experiences and so I think I think course history is always very difficult to factor in the right way I Think that one interesting way to get around the course history aspect is by Looking at different stats that fit well for the upcoming course You know, you look at course fit rather than course performance So what process do you use in order to decide which stats you want to emphasize in a given week? So you can kind of predict how well a golfer will fit with that specific course Yeah, so that's actually changed over the years for me kind of changes week to week really based on what I find I used to get I used to try to be very methodical with it pulling like historical results looking at correlations and our squared values and Generally, it's a it's kind of a lukewarm relationship between predicting finishing position if you're looking at bedding because I know that you want to factor in strokes game But finishing position does matter you know, so it's usually kind of a mild relationship if you look at a large sample, so Yeah, I mean that kind of deterred me from digging in in that in that sense and as well It's usually the same types of stats that that kind of a merge is the most important the most predictive Strokes gain approaches always one strokes gained off the tee greens and regulation driving distance So you have to factor that in that it's always kind of these similar Like stats and play styles for these guys who really separate themselves week to week So for me now what I do is I dig into my past notes and kind of get some shortcuts there Which I know is not super actionable for listeners, but you can't go to you know any number of sites and kind of get some You know a little bit of shortcuts whether it's number fire and the course primers that Mike Rodden does for us Or going to data golf org you can find things like course fit and historical results They actually show you The percentage of scoring dispersion at each course that's explained by off the tee play approach play around the green play and putting So you can kind of see what's most important and I mean spoiler alert. It's always approach followed by putting But putting is very hard to predict So that's why approach is always going to be touted as a as a super vital stat So, you know, I'll still look at like in turn in tournament Performances to see hey if someone was hitting all the fairways that's kind of these are the types of players who actually separated themselves If you do that just being be wary that good putters are always going to be near the top because that's kind of the way that golf works So There's no real process. I wish there was I tried to have I tried to have that be the process But the way that golf works is there's never really one way to make a birdie It can be a 40-foot putt it can be sticking it to six feet whatever it is So I again, I used to get super into things and try to figure out the the right way to weigh things But court course fit only goes so far toward picking players Brandon I'm really interested in the simulations that you run to get the odds for every golfer to win a tournament What goes into these simulations? Yeah, so I kind of actually changed my my my model Pretty substantially, but I'll go through what it used to be and I'm still kind of averaging things out To see which one I like more but what I used to do and still am doing but my initial process was Pulling round by round scores. So not any stats, but just scores and Then using the official World Golf rankings field strengths data golf's field strengths You can kind of tweak different events across different tours So really what I wanted to see was how does a pga tour event compare to a cornfairy tour or a european tour event? Mainly because it seems like sometimes if there's like a phenom on the european tour who comes over To the states to play in a pga tour event. We look at like a string of top 10s or top fives, but Really if you kind of factor things in the right way, it's not necessarily more impressive All the time like depending on the fields It's not necessarily more impressive than a string of top 10s on the cornfairy tour and we don't always give those players a ton of weight So I wanted to adjust so basically I'd get adjusted stroke averages for golfers Across those three top tours Then use their round by round variants to simulate out events that accounted for, you know specific individual golfer variants and it worked well But now I'm transitioning more to a model that relies on Stroke skein t-degree and stroke skein putting because as I alluded to before I mean Anyone who deals with golf a lot knows that putting is hugely important, but it's not necessarily consistent T-degree though is hugely important as well. Uh, and it's more consistent. So I kind of wanted to adjust for That knowledge that I have that we all kind of have And really with the old model, uh, I didn't really have a way to separate or lesson unless it was super subjective Golfers who are boosted by their putting so for now, like I said, I'm kind of averaging out both of those models, but The important thing to keep in mind kind of what I was talking about with digging into the course fit is The purpose that the purpose of a golf model to me isn't to run simulations and find The winner for that week the golf your golf model is not really going to tell you that Patrick Reed is going to win the wgc mexico or That's Sebastian Munoz is going to win the standards and farms instead. It's more If you run enough simulations and your data is right, it'll show you something like, you know Hey, Patrick Reed won this thing 2% of the time But his price like he's going to win it 1.3 percent of the time And that doesn't sound like it's huge but in golf you you don't really get Spots where hey this golfers five percentage points more likely to win than the betting line suggests because really Whether you look at betting odds or any simulations you can find the best golfers kind of max out at around 15% in win odds someone like Rory Rarely gets past even 15% So it's more about finding those general discrepancies than it is getting a perfect model because Yeah, it's great if you hit cam smith to win the sony open over justin thomas who actually missed the cut But you don't really want your model to say hey, I think cam smith's the better pick outright Than justin thomas that week because that's not really what you want your model to say based on all the data we have It's more finding those leverage spots. So Hopefully that answered your question Yeah, I think that it's uh, it's interesting to that you're changing it up because it seemed like it was doing well before Is it did you change it because you had to lay off me a time to tinker or what kind of led to you Deciding to switch things up here It's partly that it's mostly that uh, I didn't have a way to Give proper context to golfers who were generally boosted by pot or uh, were great tea to green and again, I mean really You can kind of make the case that what I was doing before was fine because you still have to make putts as jim knows Some of our favorite golfers are golfers who were some of the best ball strikers and tea to green players In the world, but they don't putt well and that really hinders their high end variance So again for now, I'm still considering, you know averaging them out looking at what both spit out, but Really, they're kind of similar. Um, because again Your your golf your win odds for The the vast majority of golfers is somewhere between like 0.8 and like one 1.2 percent something like that I mean, that's an oversimplification, but uh You're not getting rory mackleroy to win 30 of the time unless it's a super small super weak field You would think with all the putting practice Young hanan has had eventually you would catch. I mean because when you get two or three putts per whole You're hitting a lot of putts Oh, I know I turn around Yeah, I know that from first hand experience Yes, absolutely and he is abundantly aware of this as well So this week's event Brandon is at colonial country club. Uh, it's obviously a unique course as they all all are But what makes colonial country club unique and how are you adjusting for that by looking at different golfers this weekend? Yeah, so the way that this course is laid out There's more of an emphasis on driving accuracy than distance, which is actually pretty uncommon Uh, it's a it's a kind of a I won't say it's unique But we generally put more emphasis on distance than we do on accuracy So driving accuracy is getting more weight than usual for me Uh, but I mean again if you're if you're new to golf betting And you can really only look to a few stats to start Uh, I think the key one this week and every week is just stroke scan approach or stroke scan t-degree Can't really go wrong But uh one pitfall you can find is if you give too much weight to stroke scan t-degree and off the t And approach you're kind of looking at the same stats. Uh, same same with stroke scan approach in greens and regulation It's not the same stat, but it's a lot of the same statistics Uh, so just kind of keep that in mind You can't really go wrong with just looking at the best t-degree and golfers and guys who aren't terrible with the putter So that's the case for me this week with approach getting the most value Especially with these smaller guarded greens. I think that there's merit to thinking about how the course will play Without spectators this goes for this week and you know the a few weeks coming up These errant drives could get lost more easily Rough around the green where spectators generally stand it's not going to be you know tamped down Some of these lives might be tougher. So potentially prioritizing accuracy to stay out of trouble. Uh, and then green uh greens and regulation or Also factoring in stroke scan around the green for guys who can get up and down So it's kind of an all around us, you know profile for me this week because it's also a tough field So you want golfers who kind of do everything? Uh, so, uh, I would say approach driving accuracy greens and regulation Kind of the big three for me Yeah, let's talk about some odds Brandon. Um, is there anything you like over at fando sportsbook? Uh, based on your model Yeah, so so far this week, uh, my betting card has, uh, featured zander schaafley Shocker shocker Sorry, uh He's 33 to 1 on fando sportsbook right now. He has the all around game To contend he's definitely not afraid of a tough field Which is one of those things that will show in the data if you look at it right and you adjust for field strength But we also know what he does in majors and in these more difficult fields anyway. So He's young. Uh, he's a grinder and as jim knows, he's my my favorite golfer But I think it's a really solid pick this week, especially at 33 to 1 Everything kind of sets up for someone like zander to return and have everything sort of finely tuned about his game He was really improving with the short game One of the best ball strikers, uh, you know on the planet as it is So I think zander at 33 to 1 is a standout I also have some stabs at brooks kepka who was in terrible form Entering the hiatus, but he's 25 to 1 on fando sportsbook He's one of those plays where the stats just aren't there But we know what the high end of his range of outcomes is and Depending on how you look at things you you sometimes might over or underestimate What it takes to win a golf event and I think sometimes we get You know excited on some of these golfers who can finish top 10 But can they really actually hit that outlier performance it takes to win a pg to our event? We know brooks kepka can so uh for the price I think brooks is worth a bounce back shot and then I have a few more youngsters Uh, I think that standout on fando sportsbook Collin more call at 45 to 1 victor hovland at 65 to 1 and walkie neiman at 85 to 1 These guys all fit that world-class ball striking mold with some short game issues They're all young enough where this time off might help them figure things out. So and walking neiman's back on bank grass so so uh, we can always uh play that angle and then uh, billy horschel uh someone also who's kind of You know, uh, interesting to me So I might be a little out of my skis with all these names. I get that but It's it's hard not to be excited the first week back and if you're betting golf And you want a lot of plays none of these guys are super pricey. It's not like we're betting It's like it's rory rom jt. That's not really uh, how you want to start your betting card Yeah, I think with the longer with the longer odds it's it's acceptable to bet more than one obviously I want to go back to brooks though because he's really interesting because there were several golfers who were just really bad Short-term form before the layoff. Uh, you have brooks capka Dustin johnson, justin rose all at least at least to a certain extent in that mold are you Looking at at those guys for this week with the long layoff seeing if they've made corrections Or was it just brooks specifically that got you interested? I think it's mostly brooks. Uh, I think that there's probably any almost any angle this week is justifiable To think if you see something and again I'm usually much more methodical with sports than Than I am with golf because golf just kind of is that sport where You know, it takes an outlier performance to win We know from studying golf over the years that it's not like we can Feel super confident in any specific play Favorites can miss the cut. So it's more about brooks Getting some time off And we joked about this on the heat check, but the time off might be great for brooks To to kind of figure things out, but he also doesn't like to practice So he could miss the cut which is very much in the realm of possibilities for him But it's just jumping back on brooks. I think Before everyone else does and getting him at you know around 25 to 1 Uh, it's it's probably too long for someone of brooks kept his caliber Yeah, the negative side of the variance not a bad thing as long as they can hit the top end of the variance too When we know brooks can do that. So I think that that makes a lot of sense Go ahead and if you're if you're betting outright winners, it doesn't matter if you miss the cutter Exactly you want them to scrub your hands put in some round three bets and move on They've also got a bunch of other markets posted a fandom sports book because this is the uh, the first match back So they got round leaders top 5 top 10s head to heads any of those numbers stick out to you as being advantageous for the trial swap So historically I have not been great with head to heads. Um, I don't know what it is I think it's probably because I looked to uh, to find too much value as opposed to just picking the the golfer who's Uh, the better golfer the more likely to to finish better But I'm going to stick with my usual process. I like John rom against rory mackleroy, uh, which is Scary to go against rory at all But uh rom is plus 116 on fandom sports book and that head to head That's actually right in line with where I have it and all my simulations. So I think rom Makes sense whenever you can get, uh, you know Those type of odds on someone as good as john rom who's really to me the only golfer in the same kind of atmosphere as rory right now As far as some top 10s. I like victor holland. Uh, plus 700 He's actually one of the golfers who sticks out to me the most Uh, we we already sort of talked about it You need golfers to hit the high end of their variants and victor holland's very Or had been very consistent His standard deviation and round around scoring was one of the lowest that I've tracked over the past like two years That's great, but it's not necessarily great if you're looking for outright winners So I know I mentioned holland, uh, I think 65 to one but top 10 He's but he's uh, you know plus 700. So I think that makes sense. Billy Horschel as well A golfer who has been very consistent over a pretty large sample now. Uh, he's plus 750 I like him as a top 10 as well and someone like adam had when is uh, plus 1000 Uh, he's very consistent. It seems to fit the course well with the accuracy And then there's actually an odds boost Between rory rom and justin thomas. That's plus 375 to win I like that by a few percentage points. So I might not be bad at top on that and just have one of the favorites and and not really worry about which one it is So I think that makes sense on fandom sportsbook as well Yeah with rory and rom being as short as they are and adding jt on top of that But I I can see why that would be intriguing as well. That is brandon gedula Make sure you follow him on twitter at gedula 13 and check out his simulations over at numberfire.com also has Other daily fantasy stuff up there and check out our podcast if you want to play some dfs the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed brandon Thanks for swinging by appreciate it and enjoy the gulf this week Thanks for having me guys. It was a pleasure Covering the future One final thank you to brandon gedula for swinging by and talking about golf for this weekend and ed It was nice to get to hear you talk with brandon about betting models because I mean both of you have like your own numbers and stuff And it must be like I have it for nascar too, but it's the only sport where I have it So it but it must be satisfying for you to put in all these inputs And then get like an actual like tangible product out of it that you can look at Yeah, for sure. I mean, I always think it's it's cool when brandon does the model you know improves upon the model and And that was interesting hearing about how he's kind of got two different ways of doing the simulations now based on different inputs and And yeah, I mean, that's definitely the way to go And then write about it and talk about it. I think that's pretty awesome So it was really nice to hear him talk about that and I look forward to reading more about it And for people who didn't listen, maybe we've gained new listeners since the fall You have a similar approach with college football, correct? Where you have multiple different models you can look at to decide Where you may have some betting value Yeah, I mean So all my best models are a combination of models from that use different data sources So, um, you know the machine learning people have known that ensembles and models. So basically combining the predictions of Strong models together will give you an even stronger model Uh, I you don't really want to put something weak in there, but If you have a number of good data sources, uh, the combination of those things ends up being pretty powerful And uh, yeah, I mean, that's that's how I go about my business Hopefully we'll get to discuss those models this fall. We shall see for sure I'm pretty confident we will for the nfl. So yeah, at least we'll get that Hold on to that to be determined about college. So let's move now into covering the future ed We've been discussing boondestliga and compiling some data on the boondestliga as the sample expands You said you were crunching some of the numbers from the boondestliga. What do those numbers say about the return to play so far? Yeah, so first, I just want to thank austin from last week for pointing me to to fb reference If you guys don't know like the sports reference sites are one of your best resources for getting data On whatever you might need. So it starts with pro football reference.com. Actually, I think they started with baseball reference.com and uh A lot of you know, if I need some nba numbers, I will go there and and look at that And um, anyways a great reference. So, you know, when austin last week mentioned that fb reference has Expected goals like I got really interested in that and so they actually expected goals for the last two years and then this season As well as results and and other things for the boondestliga So it actually allowed me to kind of get a little bit more complete of a picture of home field advantage something I've been talking about The home field advantage was 0.4 goals the last two seasons um The thing I hadn't told you guys about is like what happened before the pandemic this year and that home field advantage was down to 0.23 So significantly lower than uh, you know, what it had been In the past couple seasons. So, you know, these things tend to be really random in the nfl this year Road teams scored more points than the home team, uh, which was definitely a fluke We don't expect that at all except we might expect it the upcoming season because there won't be any fans so So anyways, uh, so in the boondestliga last season 0.4 goals Usually it was 0.23 and now we're at negative 0.4 goals per match For so the actually advantage for the away team at this point So anyways the I think the I don't think we can say there's a road advantage at all So I'm just assuming these are all neutral sites I don't think that's completely correct, but I think home field advantage is so minimal that I'm just not going to worry about it right now So you can go to football reference, uh, I took the scores and I looked at adjusted goals And then I can adjust for shrink a schedule with the methods that I have And you get rankings for teams and then predictions for some games And let's just go through two just quick insights from them Byron munich is the best team In the table and they're the best team by these Expected goals as well in the table Dortmund is ahead of leipzig at three But they're actually flipped when you look at this analysis based on adjusted expected goals So leipzig is better um In the actual table, you know dortmann's ahead by four points and leipzig Allowed her like a 90th minute goal to the worst team in the bundesliga to to get a tie this weekend So they essentially dropped two points in a very Bad fashion this weekend. So just other four points down there But the number is overall for the season like them better than dortmann And then the other thing that I was looking at that I found interesting is is that byron host munchen gladbach This weekend and the odds actually like munchen gladbach in this game So my odds give him about a 17 chance to win. This is not high But it does suggest that there's some value at plus 700 The markets are strongly in favor of byron munich And we definitely expect byron munich to win this game But the one thing is that they will not have two of their best players Their best player is robert levendowski He is their goal scorer. He is maybe one of the best goal scorers in the world anytime you miss him You're going to be missing someone and they're also missing thomas muhler Who's another one of their their key attacking players. So those odds look interesting. I'm not quite ready to I'm still thinking about whether to put some money down on it, but it is Is the game i'm looking for i'm it's a game i'm looking at in relation to these new numbers Well, and like brandon said like, you know You're not going to get munchen munchen gladbach. Is that how you say it? munchen gladbach gladbach, okay I wrote it definitely on my sheet. So I just put it down I don't have no idea why i'm telling you if that's right or not. I don't know But if you want to look it up, you'll know what team we're talking about right exactly But like we're not the numbers aren't going to say ever that they're going to win outright Against byron munich and if they do your numbers probably suck But you're just finding value and 17 percent versus 12.5 percent or whatever they implied our odds are a plus 700 That's good. You'll definitely take that like that's that's expect plus expected value So, uh, i'm glad that you had these numbers now. I'm pretty excited about that any thought to you on publishing those on the power rank or Yeah, so tinkering around I mean I was uh I was more I think i'm going to post them on the public part of my site. Um, I mean, I would be very cautious in using them I would not use only these numbers in right in a bet But I think it can be a resource I think I can make them better by next week, but there's no harm in In you know putting it out there. I think with just all the caveats of this is something that new that i'm trying Absolutely, I like that and I look forward to seeing how things go. All right So we got we gotten down here for this weekend in the byron munich match last weekend I decided not to bet kevin harvick even though he was first in my model He was just too short as you mentioned with my liking This week harvick is not first in my model. Uh, but from a value perspective I think he is the best bet on the board So we are going to go kevin harvick this week for recovery in the future Uh, the top two drivers in my model this week are joey legano and martin truex jr Legano always grades out pretty well my model. I don't know why uh, he's won two races this year So I guess it's not a bad thing, but he's plus 950 and then truex is plus 550 at vandal sports book I think both those numbers are fine and I'd be interested in legano for sure But harvick is third and he is within a half position of both legano and truex But harvick's odds are somehow 12 to 1 That is the longest of anybody in the top seven of my model and harvick is all the way up in third My best guess at why this is happening is that it's being driven by harvick's history at martinsville He has just one win here that was all the way back in 2011 So I wouldn't even factor that in honestly the fact that he won here back then and he has not led a single lap In any of the past seven martinsville races But it's also not as if he's like non competitive here He has five straight top tens. Uh, he has a pair of top buys and he had a seventh place average running position In last year's spring race and when you pair That decent track history with how good harvick has been this year It's really hard for me to see why he would be all the way down at 12 to 1 So I like harvick quite a bit. I was going to mention william byron as someone you could bet Uh, he was 42 to 1 when I was doing my notes. He is no longer 42 to 1. He is 30 to 1 So it's probably a bit too short for my liking now But if you find william byron at longer than 30 to 1 I could go in there But otherwise I think harvick and legano My two favorite guys on the top end For this weekend legano plus 950 again always seems to pop my model and then harvick is 12 to 1 So the main two guys for me for martinsville this weekend and We talked about, you know Track history. We talked about course history at brandon I would say this is one race where I'd be more willing to do course history versus or track history versus current form just because there aren't a lot of recent relevant races like Martinsville is unique because it is shaped like a paperclip. It is very it is very flat It is very very, uh very slow and there have been a lot of tracks like that So looking back to last year my model did favor track history quite a bit more so than it usually does So that would be an argument against harvick given that his track history is not like elite But i'm still going to go there regardless I do like being able to look back and back test things. I think it's pretty fun Yeah, for sure. And so so what you're saying is, you know, harvick was first in your model last week Because of track history and then that is the factor that's bumping him down this week. Correct Yep, exactly and like he was he was also first because of current form last week Like he was just like elite like he was all around really good It was actually like the eighth best mark my model has had In it and it's hard to get that that could have a number without practice Which shows you I should have had more confidence in him But alas, you know, we live and we learn and hopefully he can do it again once again this week Ed what you got going on over at the power rank and on the football analytics show Yeah, I mean, I will post some soccer numbers. Maybe get some bpl stuff up next week as well And still working on some long-term projects for football And but if you want to know about them go to thepowerrank.com sign up for my free email newsletter Do you typically do epl stuff or because I know you do like international soccer, right? Yeah Yeah, so I've always been an international soccer. I think that's An area where my methods really kind of stand out because this schedule adjustments are I mean just just huge when when you have When you have just the disparity in team strength that you do on the international level That's less so in You know in these top leagues, although, you know, I mean with european soccer There's a little bit more of uh, you know the the big teams like buyer munix that and the man cities that are always the That are the best right now Um, and I think part of it is like I've never run these numbers because a I've never had an easy data source Like awesome pointed out last week and b like club soccer just kind of never fit into my sporting life until this pandemic So, uh, I'm enjoying it. I like it So we'll see. Uh, it's just uh, you know, I think it's always good to get some diversity and what you're thinking about in terms of sports Embedding and so this is my venture to do that I tried to do legal legends and venture out that way. I ditched it pretty quickly. So hopefully Your ventures into bundesliga and epl are more fruitful For you one final big. Thank you to brandon gadoula at gadoula 13 for swinging by talking some golf for today Check out his simulations over at number fire.com follow ed on twitter at the power rank and check out his website The power rank.com. I am on twitter at jim sonnis j i m s a n n e s You can also follow the fan dual podcast network at fan dual podcast Big thank you as well to calvin theobald our video producer for running the video side of things here today Thank you cal as always and of course Thank you to everyone for tuning in for this week for this episode of covering the spread Good luck if you decide to dive into some golf or nascar bets and we'll talk to you again next week This has been covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network


statistics and excel mean and outliers got data let's get stuck into it with statistics and excel I mean we'll be using one note here but we'll still talk about Excel you're not first a word from our sponsor yeah actually we're sponsoring ourselves on this one because apparently the merchandisers they don't want to be seen with us but but that's okay whatever because our merchandise is is better than their stupid stuff anyways like our accounting rocks product line if you're not crunching cords using excel you're doing it wrong a must-have product because the fact as everyone knows of accounting being one of the highest forms of artistic expression means accountants have a requirement the obligation a duty to share the tools necessary to properly channel the creative muse and the muse she rarely speaks more clearly than through the beautiful symmetry of spreadsheets so get the shirt because the creative muse she could use a new pair of shoes if you would like a commercial free experience consider subscribing to our website at accounting instruction calm or accounting instruction dot think of it dot com require to but if you have access to one note one the icon left hand side one note presentations 14 16 mean and outlier tab we're also uploading transcripts to one note so that you can go to the view tab use the immersive reader tool changing the language if you so choose being able to read or listen to the transcript and multiple languages tying the transcripts into the video presentation using the timestamps one note desktop version here data on the left hand side our salary data that we are imagining for a corporation for example we're going to do some of our standard calculations on the data set such as the mean or the average the median the max the men quartile one quartile three and then we're going to add an outlier in this case imagining that to be the CEO salary which is far higher than any other salary and then look at what changes with those standard calculations and what implications those changes may have when we're making decisions in the future in terms of what types of numbers do we want to be using to represent our data set for relevant decision making alright so if we look at our data set on the left hand side this is our salary data set we're going to be doing the average calculation these are just our formulas for the average calculations that we've seen in prior presentations here's going to be our numbers that we would be calculating we've got the mean or the average which we could calculate using our formulas up here which means we would basically add up our data set and divide by the number of items within the data set if using excel we can use this trustee average function which would simply be equals average in order to calculate it scroll out of here a little bit so we could see this at one time then we're going to have the median remember that's the one that we're going to pick the one in the middle so if we sort it from the lowest to highest simply picking the one in the middle is the median and if we have excel excel can do that for us obviously we not we need to know what the difference is between a mean calculation and a median calculation and we'll see here that of course there are times when one will be more relevant than another and we have to pick the more relevant one in this case you can see that there are two are fairly close to each other and that would give us an indication in and of itself that there isn't a huge outlier possibly that's really skewing the mean if these two are very different from each other that might give us an indication that that there could be an outlier impact and if there is then we probably want to dig down deeper and see what's going on with it so then we have the maximum this is the largest number in the data set we can get that by just using the function equals max to pick that up and then we have the min that's going to be the lowest number in the data set which we can see right here is the 67 9 the highest number if I go down 84,000 was the 84,000 here we can get to the men with simply equals men calculation and then we've got quartile one which now we're taking like the middle point of that first quartile we're break we're basically breaking the data set taking it from top to bottom right and then breaking it up not just in the middle point but by quartiles and you can use in excel the quartile.exe you have to use one more argument a comma one to get the quartile one to calculate and then we have quartile three because we already have quartile two in the median and here's the calculation for that quartile three you just need a three at the end of it to be picking it up now if we were to do the average calculation using our formula we can sum up the entire all of our cells which would be quite tedious to do in a calculator but in excel we can recalculate this number the average 71 498 by summing everything up which is our most trusty function in excel the sum function and then we are going to divide that by the number of values meaning we can count the number of values now to not do that manually we can use a count function in excel equals count all of all the cells in this table it comes out to 51 and if we divide that out then we get to our average let's see if I pull out the trusty calculator just to check it 3646400 divided by 51 and we get to the 71 498 it's rounded as you can see so there we have that and this is just going to show us the division in excel's taking the cell divided by this cell alright so then if I go to the right here we can look at a histogram here is a histogram of our data which is simply taking the buckets on the bottom and seeing how many of these items fallen to the buckets from 67 9 to 69 364 you know you had between about 9 from 69 364 to 70,000 827 you up to like 15 and so on and so forth and you've got a couple that are still kind of outline kind of outside of this particular histogram but the data set is not a that long either now let's add a significant outlier however so we've got the same data set but now at the bottom of it it jumps up we've got this one outlier which is significantly larger than the rest of the data set and it could be much larger than that even a one million I mean it could be like you know 10 million or something you know they could really skew the numbers so what does that do when we look at our standard calculations so if we do if we do our standard calculations with the same data set but simply adding the outlier now we're at 87 or 89 354 as opposed to the 71 498 so it's a pretty significant change and if that outlier was a lot larger you would have even a more significant kind of change to the average so the outlier you know it will depend on how many numbers are in the data set and then how big that number is relative to the to the rest of the data set and then if I look at the median you could see that the median did not change so that's a huge indication notice that these two have a fairly significant difference so if I just looked at these two numbers versus these two numbers I'm more likely to say over here well maybe there's an outlier because the median and the mean are fairly are a little bit more significantly different from each other than over here so that's going to be an indication that also shows us that if there's something that has an outlier in it we have to we have to ask the question of what is our objective and which number would be best how are we going to deal with that if there's an outlier in it then we might say that it'd be better to take the middle number if I'm trying to for example see how much money I'm gonna earn at a particular organization I probably can't pick the the outliers probably gonna skew that because I would I would assume if I'm an average person I would be somewhere in the middle but I can't take the average of all of them because that outlier kind of skews the whole average therefore you're likely to take the median that often happens with things like home prices for example if there's a million dollar home in the neighborhood or multiple million dollar home but most of the homes are around you know 200,000 or whatever then then that outliers gonna really skew the numbers of what the home may actually cost the other thing that you could do is say well let me take all of the numbers and just trim off the outliers I'm gonna remove the outliers and then take the mean or the average without those outliers in it so those are some strategies that you might take but obviously also realize that when there's an outlier that's another opportunity to kind of be a little bit deceptive with numbers depending on what they're trying to do you know if they're trying if someone is trying to say I live in a very wealthy area and get prestige or something or whatever they could say well the average of my the average home price in my neighborhood happens is higher because they're taking into account outliers maybe right because you know some rich person happens to have a mansion that lives in the neighborhood or something like that and the when in this happens of course in business all the time as well when people are trying to make an argument they're usually going to look for the statistics not to look for evidence to support a hypothesis in good faith unfortunately oftentimes they're looking for numbers to support their argument just like when they do with words that again it doesn't mean the it doesn't mean the numbers are wrong you can't blame the numbers you got you got to blame the person who's being deceptive with the number with the numbers right and then and then look at it from up from a fuller picture and see if you can pick up what is going on if we look at the maximum obviously the maximum has changed now because this is the highest number in the data set so this will give you a clear indication generally that there's an outlier if you take the max and the men there could be an outlier on the small side to so now you can say okay well yeah the now this outlier looks way higher than the average or the median and that's another indication that there's that there's this outlier issue that you're gonna have to deal with in some way in order to come up with a rational conclusion about whatever decision we're making and such as should I work for this place or how much am I likely to make in this place if I go in as an average person the men number did not change because there's no outlier on the men side of things the outliers on the max side of things now if one person like if there was if the CEO tried a bold strategy and said I'm not gonna earn any money unless the profits go up and they take $1 salary or something like that then it's possible you could have an outlier on the small side of $1 right which again would probably skew the numbers the other way not as far not as far as the million dollars but it would skew the numbers that way so then on quartile one were a little bit different because I added a number over here so now the quartiles are a little bit different because when I picked the middle number in the quartile but it's still somewhat similar because that number similar strategy as the strategy of the median and then quartile to it's a same same concept and so there we have those and then the average down here if I take my sum of the average numbers now if I recalculate the average I take the sum which now comes out to that of all the numbers instead of this because the one million increased it significantly if I do account I come out to 52 instead of 51 because we added that one million dollar number in the number of in the how many numbers are here and if I divide that out that gets that's how we get to our 89 354 versus the 71 498 now if I took this data set as well and I made a histogram from it now this histogram I purposely put all this is like all the data from the prior histogram which is kind of over here scrunched together and I put all the buckets in here so that we can get that outlier so that outliers over here so obviously this is not a histogram format that you would probably want to to give to someone else or something but I the only reason I'm formatting it this way is to show this outlier really skewing things so right if you had if you took your focal point the meat the mean it would be over here somewhere and that and that outlier like a teeter totter is weighing way over on the on the right side which is which is why you get this this kind of impact now how can you deal with that with your histogram to me if you wanted to plot the data well there's a couple ways you could do that you could you could take all of your outliers anything that's over a certain dollar amount like say $90,000 you you put in as an outlier and then in excel your histogram would then cut out all you can cut out all these boxes and just include it over here at at the at the 90,000 so that would mean that people looking at your histogram aren't going to get a sense of how extreme the outliers are so again you can see that as deceptive depends on what you're doing because if you if you say I just put everything that's an outlier over 90,000 in the outlier bucket then you're going to get a histogram that shows you kind of the middle point better but that it doesn't tell you how extreme the outliers are which is fine because that might be useful for for some cases you could you could take the outlier out of your data set and then take a histogram without the outliers so but those are some strategies to to put together the histogram in excel which we do in excel if you want to check that out