So, I thought I would do a little post-mortem blog, as it were on the Ziggy's Picks segment from Supernatural News. As, I don't think people realize just how awesome of a psychic experiment we actually ran with these two "psychic" pups this year! This was the first complete season of picks we ran psychic predictions with both dogs, Ziggy Starpup, and Talia.
Now, to give you an idea, most "psychic animals" and their picks are done as a novelty and done just for special events, and at the very most for a tournament, to minimize mistakes or "bad picks", with the idea that you want the psychic animal to be featured in it's best light. We didn't coddle (as much as we love both of these pups) our dogs, and they genuinely loved picking these contests (though in hindsight, I don't know if we would ever do this for a full NFL season again).
The following breakdown of the season, to put it lightly, is pretty impressive! Let's recap the idea of the segment before we give you the stats! As you know, there are many psychic animals out there picking the FIFA World Cup results! We figured if their animals were psychic, well, Our own Ziggy Starpup, along with her sister, Talia, may have the gift as well! So, Bruiser and Mrs. Bruiser sat both down in front of that particular week’s NFL Picks, and presented the pups with graphics of two different helmets of the teams playing in that week's contest, and had them pick all of the contests for that week! Exhausting work for a human, much less a dog! So, as a control, we had Tim and Bruiser pick the contests as well (knowing they are huge football fans) and pitted psychic doggies vs. human football knowledge!
So, with that let's talk statistics so you can see just how impressive this really is!
We picked a total of 270 NFL games over the NFL season of 17 weeks... Here is how the percentages broke down during the regular season:
The Dogs
Ziggy’s Regular Season Pick Percentage - .559
Ziggy’s Regular Season Pick Total - 151-119
Talia’s Regular Season Pick Percentage - .537
Talia’s Regular Season Pick Total - 145-125
The Humans
Bruiser’s Regular Season Pick Percentage- .585
Bruiser’s Regular Season Pick Total - 158-112
Tim’s Regular Season Pick Percentage- .630
Tim’s Regular Season Pick Total - 170-100
We also picked the playoffs and the Super Bowl! Here is how that tallied up!
The Dogs
Ziggy’s Postseason Pick Percentage - .428
Ziggy’s Postseason Pick Total - 3-7
Talia’s Postseason Pick Percentage - .800
Talia’s Postseason Pick Total- 8-2
The Humans
Bruiser’s Postseason Pick Percentage - .600
Bruiser’s Postseason Pick Total - 6-4
Tim’s Postseason Pick Percentage - .600
Tim’s Postseason Pick Total - 6-4
Both the dogs and humans picked The Chiefs to win the Super Bowl!!! a clean sweep!!! here is video of Beer City Bruiser Doing the Super Bowl picks with Ziggy Starpup and then Talia. Check out how the process works for yourself!
So, total pick percentages with post-season and the Super Bowl look like this for everybody for the entire season:
The Dogs
Ziggy’s Pick Percentage- .555
Ziggy’s Pick Total - 155-126
Talia’s Pick Percentage - .548
Talia’s Pick Total - 154-127
The Humans
Bruiser’s Pick Percentage - .587
Bruiser’s Pick Total - 165 - 116
Tim’s Pick Percentage - .630
Tim’s Pick Total - 177 - 104
The question then remains, how does this stack up to prognosticators during a regular NFL season? Well, it is hard to find exact figures, but we can find figures for Las Vegas Oddsmakers since the year 2000: they stack up like this:
Since 2000:
When the team is a 10 Point underdog or more, they are 6–14.
When they are a 7 to 9.5 point underdog, 13–32.
When they are 3 to 6.5 underdog, 36-72.
When they are a .5 to 2.5 point underdog, 8–16.
No matter what the point spread Vegas is SUB.500!!! In our crew, in the postseason, only Ziggy was sub .500! That was HUGE!
Now, on the psychic side of things, I will give you two human numbers that will show you just how impressive this experiment truly was..
1) Zener cards are cards used to test for Extra Sensory Perception or ESP. During James Randi's TV special Exploring Psychic Powers Live! a psychic was tested on a deck of 250 Zener cards and was only able to predict 50 of them correctly, which is the expected result of random guessing the cards. That is just a "guess" rate or psychic rate of 20 percent... and...
2) The goal of the Great Australian Psychic Prediction Project was to collect and then vet the accuracy of every published psychic prediction in Australia since the year 2000. The team analyzed over 3800 predictions made by 207 psychics over the years 2000 to 2020. While a few of the psychic predictions were about events outside of Australia, the predictions primarily focused on celebrities, scandals, natural disasters, weather patterns, sports, and real estate trends.
The results of the analysis of the predictions found that psychics were correct 11% of the time, wrong 35% of the time, and that some predictions were too vague to characterize (19%) or the predicted outcome was so obvious it was to be expected (15%). Two percent of the predictions were unable to be categorized.
noticing a trend yet...?
It is HARD to make consistent, correct picks... even with good information! But our good puppies did so EVERY...SINGLE... WEEK!
They were so good in fact, that one listener would hold off sending in his bets to his virtual bookie until the pups had made their picks! He was doing so well following their guidance, that he stopped following his OWN intuition, and went with our psychic pups! He tipped them , by the way, by sending them a weekly box from Chewy ! And, let's be honest, there is no better way than a weekly box from Chewy.com to spoil your good boy or girl at home! They have everything from the most nutritional foods available, to the latest treats, toys, collars, beds, and most importantly... flea and tick treatments!! Ziggy and Talia can't wait to get their box from Chewy.com and you should click over there (and take advantage of a nice introductory discount) and get your good dog a nice treat right now too!
So, now that the NFL season has called it a wrap , and the only thing the pups haven't predicted is if Travis and Taylor will tie the knot (give us time and the pups a little break... we'll get around to asking them), it is on to the NHL and NBA playoffs and of course the start of the MLB season. We probably won't have the dogs pick as many games as the NFL season, but I will tell you this much...
DEM DOGS ARE PSYCHIC!!!
