Rob Carr/Getty Images
Week 9 of the NFL season is here, and Cortana is back to make picks in a head-to-head showdown with Elo.
We looked at two popular systems used to pick NFL games: Cortana, Microsoft's digital assistant, and Elo, the modeling system used by Nate Silver's data-journalism site, FiveThirtyEight. In both cases, the computers are picking outright winners and not against the spread. However, each gives a likelihood that a team will win - which, in theory, could help measure the strength of certain lines.
Cortana is off to a strong start this season, correctly picking 74% of the games over the last five weeks - including 11-3 last week - and 70% overall. Elo has nailed 70% over the last five weeks, was 11-3 last week, and is at 63% overall.
Here are the picks for Week 9, with each model's percent chance of winning in parentheses. Point spreads are for reference, via Vegas Insider as of Thursday morning.