WSJ ‘Bet on Baseball, Learn About Investing” Challenge

As part of the Investing Challenge email course, we created a baseball betting simulation to teach investment lessons.

Week three of the investing challenge email course is all about asset allocation, and the idea that, even if the odds are in your favor, you could end up losing money if you choose the wrong amount to bet. 

There is a mathematical formula (the Kelly Criterion) that calculates the optimal betting amount. To teach readers about this, we created a simulation where you can bet (made-up) money on a team that wins as often as the New York Yankees historically has done (57% of their games).

One innovative aspect of this project is the user feedback at the end of the game. By anonymously storing player scores, we are able to tell readers how they fared compared to others, thus encouraging them to replay the game to try to get a better result.