Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Mathematics/2015 September 6
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September 6[edit]
Bookmaker odds show that Jessica Ennis-Hill is favorite by far to win the SPOTY award which surprised me. Why/How do so many bookmakers calculate it this way? Pressure and intestine (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:44, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
- This is not a mathematics question. If the betting odds for her to win the SPOTY make her the favorite, it is because people think it is likely she will win, so your real question is why people think it is likely she will win, for which you should try asking at the Entertainment reference desk instead. —SeekingAnswers (reply) 19:35, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
- The article Mathematics_of_bookmaking covers the basic procedure, which is to estimate the true odds, then calculate a book that pays off each outcome at less than true odds, so that the bookmaker makes a profit regardless of the outcome. How the true odds are measured is not, in general, a mathematical question: however, the bookmaker just has to have a reasonable guess, since the overround compensates for any errors to some extent. You might find the article on Handicapping useful, although it mainly refers to predicting the outcomes of horse races. OldTimeNESter (talk) 14:09, 7 September 2015 (UTC)