Redskins Football Games Predict Election Winner

jangobongo writes "The folks that investigate urban legends at Snopes.com have looked into the rumor going around on the internet that says, "The outcome of Washington Redskins football games has correctly predicted the winner of every U.S. presidential election since 1936." Their findings? It's true! The predictive game for this year will happen on October 31 vs. Green Bay. Which team are you gonna root for?"

Comments

Complexity

[dtfinch]

15 correct predictions: 1/2^15=1 in 32768
Some ways to interpret:
incumbent vs challenger
republican vs democrat
the inverse of each
=4, making it 1 in 8192
X big teams (I have no idea how many, not a sports fan). Lets say 64.
So 1 in 128 of a big sports team randomly predicting 15 elections in a row correctly, or somewhat greater considering the average odds of winning (team or president) is not exactly 50-50.

And there are easily a couple hundred other possible predictors that people could identify with.
So lets say the odds were 0.99 in 1 of finding something like this.

Re:Complexity

[syrinx]

there certainly aren't that many pro sports teams in DC

Besides the (American) football, soccer, basketball, and baseball teams?

Granted, only the football team has existed continuously since 1936, but that's probably true for most American cities (only one or two teams continously existing for that long), so there's nothing special about Washington.

Re:Complexity

[ewithrow]

It's true that the chance of either team winning this game is 50/50 assuming that they are of equal skill level, however I think the parent was differentiating the odds of this happening so many times in a row. Certainly if you started flipping a penny it would be highly unusual to see heads come up 17 times in a row, and there is a certain probability to how often this occurs if the penny is flipped continually.

Re:Complexity

[Deliveranc3]

As someone in stats I think the most interesting thing is the actual effect the game has on voter opnion.

Which is very real in a race where people don't follow the actual issues. Conservatism vs Progress Pessimism vs Optomism.

Re:Complexity

[Paradise Pete]

It's true that the chance of either team winning this game is 50/50 assuming that they are of equal skill level

Even that's not true. Among equal teams, the home team will win over 60% of the time.

Re:Complexity

[rherbert]

It's AHMAN Green. Sheesh, get to know your players a little better than the A. Green on the summary page.

Re:Quirks of history

[ConceptJunkie]

That's because Reagan dodged that bullet... literally and figuratively.

Besides, these days, I suspect everyone is a little sensitive about the idea. A little superstition like this seems really immature in this context (as if it ever didn't).