Top all-time · #18796
Laura Albert
Personal blog · punkrockor.commathdata
Laura Albert's personal blog at punkrockor.com covers math and data. Since 2016, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 4 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Laura Albert's football analysis of whether to go for two-point conversions when down by 8, using dynamic programming over game-state scenarios to test a 62.5% win-probability claim.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
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What Hacker News says?
> Under these assumptions, Laura uses a computational technique called Dynamic Programming to evaluate all possible scenarios in the game tree. Once you factor in this more complex set of possibilities, the “62.5%” mirage disappears. Laura finds that if you are down by 2 TDs, G42D8 increases your probability of winning by less than 1%. This is misreading the original source [1]. The <1% figure applies when you have…
Comment linking /2019/11/15/when-should-a-football-team-attempt-a-two-point-conversion-instead-of-an-extra-point-a-dynamic-programming-approach/
on “Should you go for 2 down 8?”Submitted Rare events: there is an app for that as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Be a Satisficer or Use the Secretary Problem to Find Love (2015) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Snowblowing Is NP-Complete as a story · 1 points
HN discussion