Tdbabe ....i know you posted this in the HOF forum .
Figure i'd bump it to foxden.
-------------------------
A game of real simulation
After much analysis, Accuscore knows the score -- and it's closer than you think

January 25, 2007
BY ROMAN MODROWSKI Staff Reporter
The game is over. Super Bowl XLI has been played -- more than 10,000 times. It has been played in various weather conditions with evolving injury reports and thousands of game situations.
P>Bears fans shouldn't necessarily plan on attending a victory parade, but it appears the game will be much closer than what many experts are predicting. The Colts might be a seven-point favorite in Las Vegas, but there is a dissenting -- and powerful -- forecast.

The game was played by a simulation engine called Accuscore, which is so accurate that several pro sports teams are on board as clients.
''The median margin of victory is around 3.5 points in favor of the Colts,'' Accuscore chief operating officer Gibby McCaleb said. ''This game has a good chance of being very close, down to the wire.''
Accuscore is not designed to provide any type of betting line. In fact, it was designed by Stephen Oh -- while he was pursuing a masters in biological anthropology at Michigan -- to simulate human evolution.
''There is a lot of statistical modeling, forecasting and simulating done for the science community or the financial world,'' said McCaleb, a Chicago native. ''We do the same thing -- only for sports, which is far more interesting than genetics and world commodities to most of us.''
Impressive track record
On Dec. 13, with three weeks left in the regular season, Accuscore predicted the Bears would host the New Orleans Saints in the NFC Championship Game. It wasn't exactly going out on a limb, considering both teams were atop the NFC standings for much of the season, but Accuscore was on a limb last week. ESPN.com listed predictions by eight of its human experts and Accuscore. Only Accuscore predicted a Bears victory.

''We had predicted the Bears to [beat the Saints] by at least 10 points, assuming bad weather, and that was back on Dec. 13,'' McCaleb said. ''If you look at the analysis, we about nailed it dead on.''
The Bears won 39-14 in a light snow.
Accuscore analyzes other sports with even more success.
''On our site, we were 75.6 percent for NCAA football and 62 percent for the NFL on ESPN.com,'' McCaleb said.
Accuscore powered the NFL Harmon Forecast for CBS last season, and Harmon's number of victories went from 126 in 2004 to 146 in 2005. And that was against Vegas' spread.
Aside from ESPN and CBS, Accuscore is used by Yahoo!, Cingular, Head2Head and Athlon/Grogans.
There's also discussion of using Accuscore as the basis of a television show matching up NFL teams next season.
How it works
Accuscore doesn't use the same type of formula utilized by popular video games.

''We don't input any stats into our engine,'' McCaleb said. ''I can't go into too much detail because of our intellectual property, but we actually play the game one play at a time.
''Stats are completely misleading. Weather, field position, score, time on the clock, coaching tendencies -- you name it, it's in there. This is why our simulation engine is so complex and takes days to run a full NFL season.''
It's a far cry from how the engine originally was conceived.
''In studying evolution, I worked on ... simulations where a population's segment of DNA was modeled one generation at a time,'' Oh said. ''Each generation [featured] things like mortality rates, birth rates, mutation rates and population movement rates, which were used to simulate how each generation 'lived.'
''To determine what these rates are, we reviewed extensive research by geneticists, mathematicians, archeologists and anthropologists. The evolutionary program would use the average rates and variability to simulate a single generation. It would then simulate the same sample for a predetermined number of generations and output how this population looks 'genetically.'''
Super Bowl XLI
According to Accuscore, the Bears have a 39 percent chance of success, and the score looks like it might be in the mid-20s.

''If we add up all the points the Bears scored in the simulations and divide by 10,000, you get 23.4,'' McCaleb said.
''For the winning percentage, we basically take all the games won by each team in the 10,000 simulations and turn that into a percentage.
''So we have the Colts at 60 percent and the Bears at 39 percent. We don't do overtime, so 1 percent ended in a tie.''
One variable that puts the percentages nearly even is the Bears' special teams and returner Devin Hester.
''I don't think the data says specifically that Hester needs a return touchdown as much as it says Hester and special-teams performance is a huge boost to the Bears,'' McCaleb said.
''There were some simulations we ran where Hester did not score a TD, but the Bears' chances are still much improved due to better field position.
''So you could interpret that by saying that if the Bears' return teams perform as well as they are capable, Chicago's odds of winning improve almost a full 10 percent -- making this a coin-toss game. Factor in one or more of the other data points, and the Bears start to take the advantage.''
Despite Vegas' spread, Accuscore doesn't see this game as easy to predict as the NFC title game.
''This is an interesting matchup from the looks of our data, and it does not appear as cut-and-dried as the Bears-Saints game,'' McCaleb said.
And this time, that's good news for Bears fans.
rmodrowski@suntimes.com


SPECIAL IMPACT
Bears return man Devin Hester could be the decisive factor in Super Bowl XLI. Here's how Accuscore sees the game in general ...
Team Pct. chance of winning Predicted score
Colts 60.2 27.5
Bears 39.8 23.4
... and here's the forecast if the Bears return a kick for a touchdown.
Team Pct. chance of winning Predicted score
Colts 50.9 27.7
Bears 49.1 27.4