STATISTICA Blogs

Next Sunday, February 5, the New York Giants and the New England Patriots will play in Super Bowl XLVI. I’m not a huge American football fan, but I do typically watch the Super Bowl, just so I can keep up with pop culture and to hear what kind of music the kids are listening to these days.

I took a trip through Super Bowls past on Wikipedia. I played with the data in several ways, but these Categorized Pie Charts were my favorite. I had hoped to make a prediction of who would win the game based on the location of the game, but unfortunately the Super Bowl has never been played in Indiana before.  

So, pick your favorite team and see where they’ve won their Super Bowls. The Pittsburgh Steelers have won the most games (6), half of which were played in Florida. The New England Patriots have won in Texas, Florida, and Louisiana, and the New York Giants have won in Arizona, Florida, and California.

Here are the losing teams. For some reason it’s interesting to me that there are more teams that have lost (25) the Super Bowl than teams who have won the Super Bowl (20).  Some sort of mathematical or organizational psychology principles at work there?

There have been two teams to lose four Super Bowls so far, the Buffalo Bills and the Minnesota Vikings. The Buffalo Bills have had the dishonor of losing in four different states (Georgia, California, Minnesota, and Florida) four years in a row (1991 to 1994), all to teams in the NFC East (twice to my Dallas Cowboys). 

The New England Patriots have lost twice in Louisiana and once in Arizona. The New York Giants have lost once in Florida. None of these locations are very close to Indiana.  More variables are needed to make a prediction that I'd feel comfortable sharing, and it turns out StatSoft doesn’t pay me to analyze sports data all day. So I’ll just say that the likely winners next Sunday night will be purveyors of pizza, beer, and any other symbol of American gluttony and consumerism.  

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/5426348626/sizes/s/in/photostream/