The Machine had a terrible Week 3, going 7-9 on its NFL picks. On the season, the Rational Picks are now a very poor 25-23, which is about 2 games behind the average of the ESPN experts.
This begs the question as to whether there is an error in the data or, worse yet, some kind of problem in the mathematical algorithms that have, until now, routinely demonstrated superiority over the human experts.
Statistically, it can be shown that a three-week win-loss of 25-23 or worse will happen on average once every 3 seasons even if the algorithms are working well, so perhaps there is no need to panic yet. On the other hand, if you side with man over machine in this battle, for the first time in a long time there may be some hope for your team.
On the plus side for the Rational Sports Machine, it did correctly predict two upsets: the Jets over the Dolphins and the Titans over the Giants. In so doing, it beat the majority of the experts and the Vegas line for those two games. Unfortunately, that didn’t make up for The Machine’s other wacky picks and a season that is off to an unusally upredictable start, even by NFL standards.
