A quick review of an important concept going into this weekend's Super Bowl:
The "point spread" for a football game is set at the level required to get equal numbers of bets on the two teams.
The spread is not the consensus opinion of expert observers as to the likely outcome of the game. The two are often similar, but the point spread is fundamentally about the behavior of bettors, not the prediction of outcomes.
This ought to be trivially obvious from the fact that you don't see anybody on ESPN taking the Patriots and giving the points. It's surprising how many people who make their living talking about sports can't seem to remember it.
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When we look at a the data for a population+ often the first thing we do
is look at the mean. But even if we know that the distribution
I love this question:
Why is it warmer in the summer than in the winter (for the Northern hemisphere)?
Go ahead and ask your friends. I suppose they will give one of the following likely answers:
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markcc-screwups
Last week we looked at the organ systems involved in regulation and control of body functions: the nervous, sensory, endocrine and circadian systems. This week, we will cover the organ systems that are regulated and controlled.