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Dan Nettleton

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Using Random Forests To Estimate Win Probability Before Each Play Of An Nfl Game, Dennis Lock, Dan Nettleton Jul 2019

Using Random Forests To Estimate Win Probability Before Each Play Of An Nfl Game, Dennis Lock, Dan Nettleton

Dan Nettleton

Before any play of a National Football League (NFL) game, the probability that a given team will win depends on many situational variables (such as time remaining, yards to go for a first down, field position and current score) as well as the relative quality of the two teams as quantified by the Las Vegas point spread. We use a random forest method to combine pre-play variables to estimate Win Probability (WP) before any play of an NFL game. When a subset of NFL play-by-play data for the 12 seasons from 2001 to 2012 is used as a training dataset, …