This post also appears on Indignity.
Last time we checked in with the FiveThirtyEight basketball prediction machine, in the early part of the NBA playoffs in April, the Boston Celtics were its overwhelming pick to win the title. This week, the Celtics take the floor in the NBA Finals as Eastern Conference champions, just as numbers-buffet proprietor Nate Silver's projections said they had a 59% chance of doing.
At the start of the playoffs, I made fun of the FiveThirtyEight numbers for being noisy and absurd — fluctuating wildly off the results of single games and illogically rating the Celtics' chances higher than those of all the other top contenders combined.