Nigel Marriott's Blog

An independent statistician using data to understand our world and to predict the future

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EPL 2017/18 #5 – My Prediction of the Final League Table – Round 36

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With only 3 or 4 games to go for the teams of the Premier League, most of the season’s excitement has dissipated.  Man City have wrapped up the title, the top 7 who will be playing in Europe next season is more or less settled and the former 10-team dogfight for relegation has resolved itself with a 4 point gap between the bottom 3 and the rest.  Probably, the only remaining uncertainties are who will take 4th place (Spurs or Chelsea) and will Southampton escape relegation at the expense of Swansea?

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EPL 2017/18 #4 – My Prediction of the Final League Table – Round 33

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After many weeks of a relegation dogfight involving up to 10 teams, it now appears that an exciting finish to the 2018 EPL season is becoming less likely as a gap opens up between the bottom 3 and the rest.  After 34 matches, another gap is opening up between the 4 prediction methods I use and one method so far has a 74% success rate in predicting the match outcome.

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UK Opinion Poll Tracker #11 – March 2018

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For my latest Opinion Poll Tracker, I will explore 4 points currently being debated by political pundits.

  1. Have the Conservatives taken the lead in the polls?
  2. How much weight should we give to Survation polls who were the most accurate in 2017 and are the outlier poll today?
  3. Was there a “Youthquake” in the 2017 general election?
  4. What would the effect be of allowing 16 & 17 year olds to vote in general elections?

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UK General Elections #3 – Who is the most accurate pollster?

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The last 3 general elections have seen some significant polling errors.  In 2010, the Lib Dems were significantly overestimated, in 2015 the Conservatives were underestimated and last year saw the largest ever underestimate in the Labour vote.  Whilst these errors suggest that the polling industry is struggling with general elections these days, a natural question to ask is “are all pollsters equally bad or are some better than others?”

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6 Nations #12 – Who will win in 2018? – Week 5

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We now know the answer to who will win the 2018 6 Nations Championship.  Ireland won the title with a match to spare after England failure against France resulted in my second forecasting error of the championship.  There is still much to play for though in the last week with the main question being whether England do to Ireland what Ireland did to England last year and stop them from winning a Grand Slam.  Whilst I am cheering on England, it is St. Patricks Day and I do have some Irish blood in me so part of me does wish Ireland well.

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UK Weather Trends #4 – Winter 2018

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Meteoologists define winter in the UK to be the period from December to February so winter is now over and we are officially in spring.  The 2018 winter was very sunny but this hides the fact that our winter climate has changed quite notably over the last 25 years.

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EPL 2017/18 #3 – My Prediction of the Final League Table – Round 30

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My first published attempt to predict the outcomes of Premier League matches got off to a good start last week with 23% of my predictions getting the right scoreline and 52% getting the right outcome.  I have updated my prediction of the final league which continues to point to an incredibly tight relegation battle, especially for my team Newcastle United.

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