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When is a two point conversion better than an extra point? A dynamic programming approach.
Posted by Laura McLay on February 3, 2012
This post continues my series of slidecasts about football. My first slidecast is here.
Today’s topic addresses when a two point conversion is better than an extra point after a touchdown. As you may guess, it is best for a team to go for two when they are down by eight. You can see other scenarios when it is best to go for two, based on the point differential and the remaining number of possessions in the game.
This presentation is on Wayne Winston’s book Mathletics, which is a fantastic introduction to sports analytics.
Should a football team go for a one or two point conversion after scoring a touchdown?
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This entry was posted on February 3, 2012 at 8:53 am and is filed under Teaching materials, Video, Screencasts, Media. Tagged: slidecasts, sports, teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Dan Black said
I have seen something similar at the UK OR Society conference last year. It calculated these probabilities for cricket (they may have used statistical methods rather than DP as the end point of a cricket match is rather difficult to define) and used the changes in these probabilities to calculate the contribution of each player to the game.