Snow yesterday was fluffy

The picture of the creek was taken while the snow was still falling.

There was 5" on the pathway at 5pm yesterday. Amounts ranged up to 7" and down to 4" depending on the spot. It was still snowing so we might have gotten a little more, but official numbers for Tslleyville and Claymont were 5" and 4.8" so I think my measurement us consistent.

The snow was extremely light to shovel. Even a shovelful only felt like the weight of the shovel. We shoveled a few times to keep up.

This morning at 7am the various thermometers read 4F, 5F and 7F so it was cold!

Back to the Future Lego!

That's a lot of blocks to assemble. So many that Linus and I actually separated them by color as recommended to make it easier to find the pieces during assembly.

The final vehicle has parts that can be substituted so you can make the different cars for the first second or third movie. Mine is a mix of the first movie with Mr. Fusion and the third movie.

There is the OUTATIME and future barcode license plate, a flux capacitor and the control panel with the date entry system. Cool!

New Superbowl 48 predictions after the Wild Cards are done.

We lost four teams to wild card playoffs this past weekend.  Three of the games were very close and exciting.  The only surprise perhaps from my simulation standpoint would have been SD's win.  That being said, the final Superbowl predictions don't change that much.  Denver and Seattle are the clear favorites to make it to the final game, as the bubble chart below shows.

I also have the box chart sorted by Superbowl and colored to make it clearer to see.  I like this one because the area of the color represents the probability that that team wins the Superbowl, but you can see the boxes within that show who their opponent would be.

Another weekend of football awaits.

As Frozen as Shellpot Creek will get this week.

The continuous freezing temperatures through night and day have left the creek in as frozen a condition as it has been in recent years.

I think this is as far as it will get for this cold snap.

Snow and Cold on Shellpot Creek

It looks like about 5 inches of snow on the rocks of the creek.

The creek is frozen in the middle. It is 15F outside.

“Social Security is not driving our deficit,” - Elizabeth Warren corrects some Bloomberg TV analysts.

“Social Security is not driving our deficit,” the senator continued. “Social Security is a system that pays for itself. If we did absolutely nothing to Social Security, we would make payments for more than 20 years exactly at this level. And then they would drop by roughly by about 25 percent and pay forever into the future… 

Found here.

Who will win the SuperBowl 48? Simulations will tell.

Although RKB fantasy playoff football is on hiatus this year, that doesn't mean we can't still have some fun simulating the potential outcomes.  As in other years I have used the Sagarin ratings, assuming the standard deviations of the spreads is 13.89 and the pure points home advantage is 4.2 points.  The results are shown below.

As you may have guessed from their performance this year,  Denver plays Seattle in the Superbowl 31% of the time.  Denver plays somebody 51% of the time, while Seattle plays somebody 58% of the time.  It's probably a good idea to have some of those players in a fantasy roster.

The figure below shows the number of games that the teams play, this would be the multiplicative factor on a play chosen to be on a roster.

KAN, SD, PHI and GB play only one game, they lose the first game they play, more than 60% of the time, so you likely won't get much mileage out of those players on your roster.

Finally some alternate views of the Superbowl outcomes.  Do these give you a better idea of the relative probabilities?

Colors to tell whether AFC or NFC wins, sorted by winner color.

Colors to tell whether AFC or NFC wins, sorted by AFC.

Colors to tell whether what team wins the Superbowl, sorted by AFC.

Colors to tell whether what team wins the Superbowl, sorted by NFC.

Colors to tell whether what team wins the Superbowl, sorted by SB winner.

Football awaits.