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- Elo and Cortana have made their picks for the divisional round of the NFL playoffs.
- Cortana correctly picked 65% of the games this season and Elo was not far behind at 62%.
- Both models struggled in the first round of the playoffs.
- Elo and Cortana agree that most of the divisional-round games have a clear favorite.
The second round of the NFL playoffs 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. Each gives a likelihood that a team will win, which in theory could help measure the strength of certain lines.
Cortana had another strong season, correctly picking 65% of the games, while Elo nailed 62% overall. However, both struggled in the Wild Card round as Elo went 1-3 and Cortana was 0-4.
Here are the picks for the divisional playoff games, with each team's percent chance of winning in parentheses. Point spreads are for reference, via Vegas Insider as of Friday morning.