Nigel Marriott's Blog

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

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6 Nations History #1 – The men’s story so far in 2021

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The 2021 Six Nations (Men’s) ended with Wales winning the title after Scotland beat France in Paris to snuff out France’s attempt to win the title for the first time since 2010.  Wales let a Grand Slam slip after conceding a try in injury time and as an England fan who was there at Wembley in 1999 I know exactly how the Welsh feel!

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Rugby World Cup #3 – Who will win in 2019? – Model Evaluation

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After 43 matches with 37 correctly predicted, the stage is set for an epic final between England & South Africa to settle the 2019 Rugby World Cup (Men’s).  Ahead of making a prediction for that match, I have examined my model in depth and in this post I explore whether or not the model needs to be adjusted.

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Rugby World Cup #2 – Who will win in 2019? – Knockout Round

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It’s the quarter finals tomorrow and it’s time for me to predict the outcomes using World Rugby’s rankings.  Although I got 33 out of 37 matches right in the pool stages, the 4 errors are enough to change my prediction of who will win.

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Rugby World Cup #1 – Who will win in 2019? – Pool Stage

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Augustin Pichot, vice-president of World Rugby, may not like its ranking system but ahead of the 2019 Rugby World Cup (Men’s), I have been able to use rankings to correctly predict 80% of international matches since 2017.  For the world cup that starts this week, I used a dynamic ranking model to predict all matches and it shows that 4 countries cannot be separated for the trophy so we are in for some very exciting matches!

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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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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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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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