bing11While Bing’s prediction engine was nearly flawless during the latter half of the World Cup this summer, it hasn’t been quite as good with the pigskin.

Microsoft’s search engine, which is crunching all types of data to predict NFL games, is 29-19 through the first three weeks of the NFL season.

That’s a decent effort. If you had just picked the Las Vegas favorites this year, you’d be 27-21. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who went 12-4 last week, is 31-17 so far this year with his Elo ratings.

Here’s the methodology behind Bing’s prediction engine:

For pro football, we model the respective strengths of the teams by examining outcomes from previous seasons including wins, losses, and the very rare tie outcome (two games since 2009), factoring in margin of victories, location of contest, playing surface and roof cover (or lack thereof), weather and temperature conditions, scoring by quarters, and multiple offensive and defensive statistics. In addition to this prior model, we identify fans on Web and Social sites and track their sentiment to understand the aggregate wisdom of this expressive crowd. This introduces data which statistics alone cannot capture, providing real-time adjustments which surprisingly can capture injury news and other substantive factors in win probabilities.

Here are Bing’s picks for Week 4 (it already missed Thursday night’s Redskins vs. Giants game):

nflpicksweek4yes

FiveThirtyEight differs with Bing on five picks: It correctly predicted Thursday’s Giants win, and is going with Houston over Buffalo; Miami over Oakland; Minnesota over Atlanta; and New Orleans over Dallas.

Vegas, without the spread, differs with Bing on three picks: Miami over Oakland; Green Bay over Chicago; and Houston over Buffalo.

You can check out Microsoft’s predictions on Bing by searching for “NFL Predictions,” or Windows Phone 8.1 owners can use the virtual assistant Cortana by asking her, “Who will win Team A or Team B.”

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.