INDEX OF /RESEARCH
Things I'm Studying
Research at the intersection of evidence, uncertainty, prediction, and action, published through Pascal Institute. Each piece reconstructs what was knowable at the time, compares expectations with outcomes, and reports what the evidence supports, including the inconvenient results.
Ratings & rankings
SCORED WEEKLY| STATUS | TYPE | TITLE / QUESTION |
|---|---|---|
| LIVE | RATINGS | Pascal Team Ratings A rating for every team in MLB, the NFL, college football, the NBA, and the NHL, with NFL and college football win probabilities recorded before kickoff and scored afterward. |
| LIVE | RANKINGS | Pascal Power Rankings Weekly editions built from the ratings and kept online, so each week can be checked against what happened. |
| LIVE | TRACK RECORD | Ratings vs. the Closing Line Game-by-game comparison of the rating's probabilities with the betting market's closing line, whichever way the result falls. |
| PUBLISHED | METHODOLOGY | Ratings Methodology How each sport's ratings are built, replayed over past seasons, and tested on games the model had not seen. |
ABS challenge series
5 ARTICLES| STATUS | TYPE | TITLE / QUESTION |
|---|---|---|
| PUBLISHED | BASEBALL | One in Five: Inside the ABS Recognition Gap How often hitters corrected eligible incorrect called strikes, and how often they didn't. |
| PUBLISHED | BASEBALL | The Challenge Threshold How the location of a missed call and the game situation shape the decision to challenge. |
| PUBLISHED | BASEBALL | Who Sees the Miss? Whether a hitter's past recognition behavior predicts future behavior once opportunity difficulty is accounted for. |
| PUBLISHED | BASEBALL | What Is a Challenge Worth? The value of a correction, the cost of being wrong, and the risk of saving a challenge too long. |
| PUBLISHED | BASEBALL | Pricing an ABS Challenge How strong the evidence must be before a challenge is worth using, with a named break-even reference. |
Baseball case studies
MLB| STATUS | TYPE | TITLE / QUESTION |
|---|---|---|
| PUBLISHED | FORECASTING | What the Market Knew Two 2026 World Series forecasts built from team ratings, frozen before the postseason and compared with the betting market. |
| PUBLISHED | STRATEGY | When to Pull the Starter Pricing more than 84,000 pitching-change moments from 2026, and why most were closer calls than the argument suggests. |
| PUBLISHED | STRATEGY | What the Turang Walk Traded The hidden cost of one intentional walk in Game 2 of the 2026 NLCS. |
| PUBLISHED | HITTING | The Penalty Arrives When the Lineup Turns Over Four seasons of the times-through-the-order penalty, and why it jumps at each lineup turnover rather than rising with pitch count. |
| PUBLISHED | HITTING | Where Home Runs Come From What Statcast contact-point data says about the difference between power and hits. |
| PUBLISHED | VARIANCE | Cal Raleigh: When Regression Becomes Something More Separating real skill change from favorable variance after a historic season and a sharp 2026 decline. |
| PUBLISHED | PROCESS | Brandon Pfaadt: When the Outcome Hides the Process A scoreless outing reviewed pitch by pitch: what happens when execution and outcome disagree. |
Football case studies
NFL| STATUS | TYPE | TITLE / QUESTION |
|---|---|---|
| PUBLISHED | DECISIONS | A Toss-Up From 58 Yards Chicago's long field goal against New England, judged only on what was known before the snap. |
| PUBLISHED | DECISIONS | One Lean, One Coin Flip Two failed calls in the same game, and why only one was the call the model favored. |
| PUBLISHED | BUSINESS | Not All Field Goals Weigh the Same Using a fourth-and-one decision to show what probability, value, and break-even points add to business decisions. |
Listen
THE DECISION LAB| STATUS | TYPE | TITLE / QUESTION |
|---|---|---|
| PUBLISHED | PODCAST | The Decision Lab, Episode 1 A conversation built on “Not All Field Goals Weigh the Same.” |
| PUBLISHED | PODCAST | The Decision Lab, Episode 2 A conversation built on “When to Pull the Starter.” |
Still thinking
CONCEPTS| STATUS | TYPE | TITLE / QUESTION |
|---|---|---|
| CONCEPT | DECISIONS | Beating the Bear Are you better than the alternative, or has randomness made you look better? |
| IN PROGRESS | BOOK | The Pascal Book An upcoming book on decision science, drawing on the research above. |
Good decisions can produce bad outcomes. Bad decisions can be rewarded. The work is learning how to tell the difference.
All research at Pascal Institute → About the Pascal Initiative →