Originally <a href='/showthread.php?p=16457574'>posted</a> on 10/20/2012:
It's an amazing learning experience, especially if you keep at it long enough. I look back at my earliest 'models', and even though they may have worked they now seem like kindergarten stick figures. The model I'm currently completing has been a year-and-a-half in the making. It's art. The ability to distill something complex into something extremely concise and precise develops with practice. It wouldn't surprise me if history would decide that serious sports bettors did predictive and probability theory an enormous favor.