Prediction Thread: The Lakers WILL lose to the Cavaliers

[pmacandcheese]

Are you the creepy guy in the Kevin Durant commercial?

[LeDouche]

I can play this game too.

Bucks will Win the Championship
Suns will win the Pacific
Boston will trade KG for Darko and filler



All of those things - either it will happen or wont... There is no third possible out come so if I get them right it wont be impressive?

[Tazo]

OP had a 50/50 chance. I'm not impressed.

That said, I'm not impressed with the Lakers, either.

Please go sit down somewhere. The probability of the Lakers winning was not 50%.

Well actually if you're gonna be a smart ass about it, what he said was the OP had a 50/50 chance which is true because there's only two options. One option is the Lakers win and the second option is that they lose, therefore a 50/50 chance. Anybody can make such a prediction thread on any team and have a 50 percent chance of being right. Probability is a complete different thing so maybe you should be the one to go sit down somewhere...

50/50 chance refers to a 50% binomial probability of each of two outcomes occurring. Just the fact that it is binomial however, does not mandate that each outcome gets that 50% chance. The chance the Lakers would win in a game vs the Cavs was not the same as a fair 2 sided coin landing on heads. Otherwise there is a 50% chance I may or may not sleep with Gisele Bundchen tonight.

just because there are only two possible outcomes to something doesn't make the odds 50/50.

Odds weren't being discussed. If you don't understand what's being discussed please stay out of the topic. It's easy, anyone could have made a thread during the Cavs losing streak saying "The Cavs will win tonight against *insert team name*" and if you did this every day until they finally won a game you would eventually be right.

You are right in that if he kept predicting a Cavs win every day, you could sum up the separate binomial probabilities, and would keep increasing the probability that he would actually be right at least once. However, he only predicted one game. He got it right. Lucky, probably, but 50/50, hell no. Stop talking down to everyone else like they're idiots because you have no idea what you're talking about.

[Tazo]

OP had a 50/50 chance. I'm not impressed.

That said, I'm not impressed with the Lakers, either.

LOL 50/50 chance? If deiced to start a fight with Chuck Liddell do you think there is a 50/50 chance I can win?

No, but there's a 50/50 chance a random coin flip could predict the outcome which is what he's saying

Ok, if this is what was meant, then I'm ok with it.

For everyone else:

Warning: Nerd math. Do not continue reading.
Say Heads meant a Lakers prediction and Tails meant a Cavs win prediction. So for a coin to be correct either it would have to be Heads and the Lakers winning, or Tails and the Cavs winning. We know that the probability of Heads and Tails are both 50%. We want for it to be Probability(Coin is correct) equals Prob(Heads&Lakers) + Prob(Tails&Cavs) equals 1/2.
We know the coin being flipped is independent of the outcome of the game, so it also equals Prob(Head)xP(Lakers) + P(Tails)xP(Cavs). We know that only the Lakers or Cavs can win, so P(Cavs) = 1 - P(Lakers).

.5xP(Lakers) +.5x[1-P(Lakers)] = .5xP(Lakers) - .5xP(Lakers) + .5 = .5

So no matter what the chances were of Lakers or Cavs winning a fairsided coin could have predicted it with 50% probability. The probability of a biased observer being right however, were not 50%.