Sport Analytics

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

November 9, 2017 By Nigel

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

Sporting GOATs #1 – English football clubs

September 9, 2017 By Nigel

My team Newcastle United are also known as the Magpies but how much of a GOAT are they? In recent years, this acronym has become popular as a shorthand for Greatest Of All Time. Given that the Magpies have not won a trophy in the 40+ years that I have supported them, I know they are not the number 1 GOAT in English football but where would they sit in a GOAT table?

Ranking tables are extremely common in sport and sport analytics as they are easily understood by fans. If I want to compile a ranking of all English football clubs, there are two decisions I have to make:

Over what time period will the data come from? (ERA)
On what measure will I rank the clubs? (METRIC)

In this post I will use 3 eras and 3 metrics to creating 9 GOAT tables in all. Read on to find out which club is #1 GOAT! [Read more…] about Sporting GOATs #1 – English football clubs

EPL 2017/18 #1 – What are you expecting for your team this season?

August 12, 2017 By Nigel

The 2017/18 English Premier League (EPL) kicked off yesterday with Arsenal beating Hull 4-3. Tomorrow, my team Newcastle United will be playing my wife’s team Tottenham Hotspur so marital harmony could be in short supply! Be that as it may, what should fans of the Magpies and Spurs be expecting this season? Newcastle are a recently promoted team whilst Spurs were runners up last season Is there a way to set realistic expectations for the 2017/18 season?

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

March 23, 2017 By Nigel

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.

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

February 18, 2017 By Nigel

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.