Nigel Marriott's Blog

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

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6 Nations #10 – Who will win in 2018? – Week 3

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After two weeks of the 2018 6 Nations, all 6 of my match predictions have been correct.  Whilst this might be vindication of the World Rugby ranking model, the last thing we want in sport is a perfect prediction model otherwise what’s the point?  Where would be the excitement of watching sport live?  So I am hoping for an incorrect prediction soon …

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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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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

6 Nations #7 – Should there be promotion & relegation?

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Throughout the 6 Nations this year (and in previous years) there has been a constant debate about whether promotion and relegation should be introduced.  A lot of people have stated that Georgia have earned the right to play in the 6 Nations and that Italy have failed to make any progress over the 18 seasons they have been in the 6 Nations.  Actually had promotion & relegation been in place this season, Italy would have been relegated and Romania would have been promoted after winning the Rugby Europe Championship with a narrow 8-7 win over Georgia in the last round.  This win ended Georgia’s 6 year winning streak.

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6 Nations #6 – How did the rankings do in 2017?

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Ireland’s win over England brought the 2017 6 Nations to a close.  England were crowned champions but were not able to top it with back to back grand slams.  Over the last few weeks, I have been using the World Rugby Rankings to predict the outcome of the matches and now it is time to see how they performed.

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6 Nations #3 – Who will win in 2017? – week 3

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So the 6 Nations is underway again and the traditional rivalries are reheated. Who will win is once again on all the sports pages and there are no shortages of pundits willing to give their opinions. If you want a different way to predict what will happen, why not use the World Rugby Rankings?

Ranking tables play a big part in a number of sports but they are not widely understood among sports fans. At bottom though, rankings are intended to be used as a predictive tool for what will happen in a match. A good ranking system will be more accurate in predicting outcomes than a bad ranking system. However, a perfect ranking system is something we don’t want otherwise sport becomes boring as we will always know the outcome in advance. So as a forecasting tool, a ranking system is a curious beast. We want it to be good but not great.

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