The Human Factor Continually Confounds Probability Models

With four weeks to go in the 2011 Major League Baseball season, the probability of the Boston Red Sox of making the playoffs was 99.6%. And most of us know the story; in one of the biggest collapses in baseball history, the Red Sox tanked a nine game lead and served the wild card slot to the Tampa Bay Rays. In creating “one for the record books”, the 2011 Red Sox show us that the human factor continually confounds probability models.(more…)