Week 17 of the NFL season is here, and Cortana is back to make picks in a head-to-head showdown with Elo.
We looked at two popular systems used to pick NFL games: Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, and Elo, the modeling system used by Nate Silver’s data-journalism site, FiveThirtyEight.
In both cases, the computers are picking outright winners and not against the spread. Each gives a likelihood that a team will win, however, which in theory could help measure the strength of certain lines.
Cortana is having another strong season, correctly picking 65% of the games, including an 11-5 record in Week 16. Elo has nailed 60% overall.
Here are the picks for Week 17, with each team’s percent chance of winning in parentheses. Point spreads are for reference, via Vegas Insider as of Friday morning.
Be the first to comment