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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?"
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.
...the incumbent party decides what the outcome of the games are...
OK, not funny, I know, mod me down...
"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."
thanks for clearing that up...
That man tried to kill mah Daddy
man, i'm glad they're playing green bay. for a while there i was worried bush was gonna get re-elected.
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
If this were ture then the Redskins would have won the game by scoring a touchdown with four minutes of play left in the fourth quarter of their october 30th, 2000 game against the Titans while the referee wasn't watching. ESPN would have reported that the Redskins had won two minutes after the end of the game, but Fox Sports would clain that the game was too close to call until midnight, when they'd claim that the Titans had been victorious.
Two days after the game, Jeff Fisher, the Titan's coach, would have mailed a red flag to NFL headquarters, thereby challenging the play. The NFL commisionner would have informed him that the referee on the field that day had final discretion. The referee would have been Jeff Fisher's brother, Jeb Fisher. Jeb would have claimed that the tocuhdown never happened.
Steve Spurrier would then appeal the decision with Paul Tagliabue who, after long deliberation, would have ruled that the final decision lies with the scorekeeper. The scorekeeper would have been found to be keeping tally of the score using marbles. He would eventually admit that he wasn't quite sure how many marbles had been on his table and how many of them had been in which team's box. He would however claim that he was almost entirely certain that there had been more marbles in the Titan's box than in the Redskin's. Eventually everybody would have been confused to the point of desperation and the Titans would have been handed the victory by the gist of having won three of the four quarters.
I want the fire back.