Sox Win, As Formula Predicted

pudge on 2007-10-29T05:39:08

So in 2004 I predicted the Red Sox would win in 2006, using a mathematical formula. I was wrong. So I realized that my formula was off. Because the length of difference between last year won and the pivotal year of beating St. Louis crossed millennia, we had to add an extra year.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

# script to predict when the next Boston team championship
# will occur after either:
#
# * winning first championship in team history, against St. Louis
#
# OR
#
# * winning first championship since St. Louis existed as a team

my %boston_team = (
	# team        last year won,  year beat St. Louis
	Celtics   => [1957,           1957],
	Bruins	  => [1941,           1970],
	Patriots  => [2002,           2002],
	'Red Sox' => [1918,           2004],
);

for my $team (sort { $boston_team{$a}[1] <=> $boston_team{$b}[1] } keys %boston_team) {
	printf "%s: %d\n", $team,
		predict_year(@{$boston_team{$team}});

}

sub predict_year {
	my($last_won, $beat_stl) = @_;
	my $base_year = $beat_stl + 2;
	$base_year += int($beat_stl/1000) - int($last_won/1000); # adjust for difference
	return $base_year;
}

__END__

This formula correctly "predicts" the next championship of each team:

Celtics: 1959
Bruins: 1972
Patriots: 2004
Red Sox: 2007

I CALLED IT!!!!!</colbert>

---

And what about the future NOW

Alias on 2007-10-29T23:39:13

So, does it predict any new victories?

Re:And what about the future NOW

pudge on 2007-10-30T02:05:16

I don't know. Might be a one-time deal.