Nigel Marriott's Blog

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

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6 Nations #8 – Who will win in 2018? – Week 1

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The 2018 6 Nations begins tomorrow and fans will be looking forward to a feast of rugby for the next two months.  As always, pundits galore are making their predictions and the one thing we can count on is that some will have egg on their faces by the time it is over.  In 2017, I used World Rugby’s Rankings to predict who would win each match in the 6 Nations and the Autumn Internationals and these predictions worked out well with 12 out of 15 6 Nations games and 15 out of the 19 Autumn International matches involving 6 Nations teams correctly called.

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UK Opinion Poll Tracker #9 – December 2017

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Labour continues to hold a small lead over the Conservatives as the nation entered the Christmas holidays.  There is evidence of some voter movement towards UKIP which indicates that their true national level is around 4% or 5% and their General Election performance was distorted by so many of their candidates standing down.

[Read more…] about UK Opinion Poll Tracker #9 – December 2017

UK Weather Trends #3 – Autumn 2017

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Meteoologists define autumn in the UK to be the period from September to November so autumn is now over and we are officially in winter.  The 2017 autumn was completely unremarkable but this hides the fact that our autumnal climate has changed quite notably over the last 25 years.

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UK Opinion Poll Tracker #8 – November 2017

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Labour’s 2 point lead over the Conservatives disappeared during November and they now hold a very slight lead.  There is evidence of some voter movement towards UKIP which indicates that their true national level is around 4% or 5% and their General Election performance was distorted by so many of their candidates standing down.

[Read more…] about UK Opinion Poll Tracker #8 – November 2017

Autumn Internationals #3 – Who will win in 2017? – Week 3

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The third round of the Autumn Internationals take place this weekend and for nearly all nations that will be the end of the action.  For the last two weeks, I used World Rugby’s Rankings to predict who will win and to set expectations for each nation for the whole series and my predictions have worked out well with 11 out of the 12 matches involving 6 Nations teams correctly called.  This performance is consistent with a similar set of predictions I made for the 2017 6 Nations where I correctly called 12 out of 15 games.

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Autumn Internationals #2 – Who will win in 2017? – Week 2

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The second round of the Autumn Internationals take place tomorrow and some tasty matches await us.  Last week, I used World Rugby’s Rankings to predict who will win and to set expectations for each nation for the whole series and my predictions got off to a good start with 5 out of the 6 matches correctly called.  This performance is consistent with a similar set of predictions I made for the 2017 6 Nations where I correctly called 12 out of 15 games.

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Autumn Internationals #1 – Who will win in 2017? – Week 1

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It’s November again and for rugby fans, it means the Autumn Internationals are on us again.  The nations of Europe welcome teams from all over the world for the next 3 or 4 weeks to test each other and find out where they stand.  Ahead of the first round of matches, I have used World Rugby’s Rankings to predict who will win and to set expectations for each nation.

Earlier this year, I made a similar set of predictions for the 2017 6 Nations and correctly called 12 out of 15 games.  The prediction model is explained in one of my 6 Nations post but World Rugby’s goal is that rankings can be used as a predictive tool.  The idea is to take each team’s current ranking and add 3 points to teams playing at home.  Whoever has the higher ranking is then expected to win but clearly the closer the rankings, the closer the game is expected to be. [Read more…] about Autumn Internationals #1 – Who will win in 2017? – Week 1