Disqus - Friends of michaelmayes

Re: Brittany Bohnet

Danny Conway — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:19:55 -0000

can you post a link to the original story?

Re: “Zero Dark Thirty” Takes Home Top Prizes with New York Film Critics Circle

Darryl Gaines — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:19:33 -0000

Life of Pi

Re: Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom (and… Value?)

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:15:14 -0000

Great post, Andreas!

Re: NumberFire Gets Scientific About Fantasy Football Picks

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:43:53 -0000

Hope you like it! :)

Re: NumberFire Gets Scientific About Fantasy Football Picks

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:39:23 -0000

Hi Buster,

Thanks for logging in. Yeah, optimally I would have loved to get those data pulls in, but unfortunately three-legged auth is a total beast. You can still manually create your teams, but I also understand there's a bit of work to that.

Nik

Re: NumberFire Gets Scientific About Fantasy Football Picks

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:52:55 -0000

I guess that means everyone in your league will have to sign up and subscribe; after all, have to ensure a level playing field, no? :)

Re: NumberFire Gets Scientific About Fantasy Football Picks

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:30:31 -0000

Great catch! Yes, that is an easy enough fix - that's what I get for running batch data import crons at 5:30 am :)

Re: NumberFire Gets Scientific About Fantasy Football Picks

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:32:17 -0000

The goal is in time to generalize the model to apply to any number of sports, not just American football. It's also a goal to extrapolate the concepts to other industries and verticals, such as movie grosses, political elections, and any number of things. Essentially, any place where there is a premium on having hyper-accurate predictions (and thus, making smart decisions in accordance) is on our radar.

That said, the project now consists of me, me, and me. So it'll take some time :)

Re: NumberFire Gets Scientific About Fantasy Football Picks

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:05:05 -0000

TSN built a great app, they're really leading that space as far as platforms go. However, I prefer the kind of model that exposes the data points, the similarities, and so on.

This sort of space is going to be crowded soon - just as there are many hedge funds and financial analysts who try to predict the movement of stock markets. May the best algorithm win.

Re: NumberFire Gets Scientific About Fantasy Football Picks

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:06:34 -0000

A very fair point. However, my beef with AccuScore is that they just give you a number - exactly what ESPN, Yahoo, and so on do. I want to know WHY you think that score will happen, what reasoning is behind it, and why I should feel confident trusting it.

Re: NumberFire Gets Scientific About Fantasy Football Picks

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:22:36 -0000

Yes, I backtested it several times as if it were last season to help me figure out some of the coefficients I should be using in my modeling. Obviously it is an imperfect science, but I was seeing some very good results, which had the effect of encouraging me to continue.

I hesitate to quote any numbers because I know Week 1 is going to be difficult, as a lot of players are rusty, etc. and I don't want to be wildly off in either direction.

Re: NumberFire Gets Scientific About Fantasy Football Picks

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:00:44 -0000

Seems like a trend. Thanks again for the catch.

Re: NumberFire Gets Scientific About Fantasy Football Picks

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:41:11 -0000

Yeah, I tried to make it as painless as possible given that it wasn't going to be able to pull the data. It's not a perfect solution, but it's workable, IMO. But yes, dont worry, the pull of league settings and team info is in the works :)

Re: NumberFire Gets Scientific About Fantasy Football Picks

Nik Bonaddio — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:45:57 -0000

Fair criticism. It's not designed to tell you what to do; it's designed to present information that is contextual and allow you to make decisions based off of it. I'm not going to feel comfortable with telling a user "You should definitely drop Player X" - that is up for them to decide. After all, what if Player X is their favorite player?

However, I'm very comfortable with saying "I think you should start Player X over Player Y this week, and here's why". In time, the functionality to recommend players to pick up, the ability to adjudge trades and usefulness, and so forth will come. Right now, I preferred to focus on the things that would make a user more confident in their matchups in a given week.

Re: NumberFire Gets Scientific About Fantasy Football Picks

Nik Bonaddio — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:48:35 -0000

Great! Thanks for coming.

As I made mention before, I don't want someone to make all their decisions based on me. I think I can make a compelling, rational argument for Player X over Player Y, but at the end of the day, you should be looking at as much information as you can to make a decision. If I can bolster your confidence in a decision, great.

Re: 200!

Nik Bonaddio — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:21:36 -0000

Awesome work, Tyler!

Re: Quantitative Analysis: Fantasy Football

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 09:56:09 -0000

Darren,

Thank you for the write-up. I'm actually not wild about the name either, but the domain was available for the right price (free) and I didn't feel like writing some squatter a $50k check for predictable.com. It is what it is though :)

I pride a lot of things I'm doing on nF in being transparent, which is why I go through the trouble of exposing the data points of players, matchups, and scenarios. That said, I can certainly look into exposing the methodologies behind where those data points come from. For purposes of not wanting to get into data overload, I erred on the side of only showing the most pertinent information (the predictors that most strongly correlate to our performance projection) and not the relatively extraneous ones (similar players, matchups). I am more than happy, however, to be equally transparent about all of my algorithms if critical mass dictates that level of transparency.

Any other comments or questions, please do feel free to reach out to me personally. nF is a one-man band, so I can assure you that it won't be lost in the ether. :)

Nik

Re: IMDb Turns 20, Launches Original Video to Celebrate

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:55:17 -0000

The new design is absolutely horrendous.

Re: Eniac Ventures Launches $1.6 Million Seed Fund To Invest In Mobile Startups

Nik Bonaddio — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 17:00:55 -0000

I hope I'm not the only one who appreciates the fact that it's named after the ENIAC.

Re: Startups Started By Former Yahoo Employees [Graphic]

Nik Bonaddio — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 02:17:31 -0000

Y! was a great place to work, and the combo of YQL and oAuth makes my fantasy projections platform run super smooth.

Re: Meet NELL. See NELL Run, Teach NELL How To Run (Demo, TCTV)

Nik Bonaddio — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 18:57:05 -0000

Tartan power!

Re: http://www.bryanbirsic.com/post/5405350994

Nik Bonaddio — Thu, 12 May 2011 10:58:12 -0000

Great to see your blog updated, Bryan!

I would say that while you synthesized my arguments well, a larger point I was making is that having known my friends for almost ten years now, it's hard for me to see them as a cog in the problematic machine - especially given all of their virtues as friends of mine.

Considering they almost all come from a CS background, it's clear to me that they don't view finance and the black art of making money the interesting part of it or even the goal; they view the quantitative joy of unlocking a seemingly random mystery as the enjoyable part. It may be shortsighted for them to take this argument and for me to believe it, but they'd defend their work through total disintermediation - they're simple programmers, what the suits do with their recommendations is not of their concern. They're not the ones doing backroom deals with GS. I will however agree that they're guilty of the bystander effect to some degree, in that the longer you go in that environment without trying to promote positive change in any fashion, the longer you become culpable in that environment's misdeeds.

Re: Rent or buy? 10 cities rated - Dallas -- RENT (1) - CNNMoney

Nik Bonaddio — Fri, 13 May 2011 14:40:22 -0000

Pittsburgh is the opposite of a dying city. The fact you think that it is means that you're either stuck in the past, or too influenced by it to see the future. Either way, you're wrong.

Re: Entrepreneurs Teach VCs to be VCs

Nik Bonaddio — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 11:30:00 -0000

It's great that you have this humbleness about you, Fred, but surely you know that it's a two-way street: the entrepreneurs are certainly learning a lot from you and things that you've seen in the industry. The ultimate relationship - inside of this industry or in general - should be very symbiotic, two different viewpoints and sets of experiences working in concert to build great things.

In my specific case, I'm wholly cognizant of the fact that as a first-time entrepreneur, there's a lot of things that no amount of enthusiasm, passion, or hustle will teach me. As such, finding a VC who is truly a partner in my progress will not only make my business stronger, but make me a more effective leader both today within my company and later, when it comes for me to teach others.

Re: Entrepreneurs Teach VCs to be VCs

Nik Bonaddio — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 11:39:20 -0000

Thank you, Tom!