World Cup Predictions: June 16 – Switzerland 1/Spain 0 (hit!)
Tomorrow I plan to post predictions for three of Friday’s games.
A basic overview of how ARV works using the PRECOG10 database is available in the “About ARV” and “About PRECOG10” sections on the right sidebar. For the World Cup, the chances of hitting the correct answer using ARV is one in three — either team could win or they could tie. For that reason, the chances of picking an upset winner are higher using ARV than with logical analysis. (Anyway, that’s how I’m trying to rationalize not cheering-on the home team.)
The randomness of the system also makes it hard to simply guess. Although there are only three outcomes — labeled A,B,C — matched to the photosites, their order changes. If they weren’t random in the database, a match to the third photosite would always be a tie (Outcome C). But in the database outcome string, the outcome letters A,B,C could be listed in any order, so if you choose the third photosite, it could be Outcome A. I hope that makes some sense.
Congratulations to YOU TW for your excellent underdog hit!!!
(If I read bodog.com correctly, they offered 2.2 to 1 odds on Switzerland, big odds for a 2-team match!)
Point of clarification: you wrote
“the chances of hitting the correct answer using ARV is one in three”
Actually, that would only be true if a tie was as likely as a win by either team, which is rarely the case; for example, this site
http://motivate.maths.org/conferences/conf23/c23_project3.shtml
says
“In professional football [soccer] matches, about 25% of games end in a draw.”
So the “random” chance that each team wins is more like 38%, and the chance of a tie is 25%.
Thanks! That’s why I don’t (usually) try to do any statistical stuff, and leave it to those who know what they’re doing (meaning YOU, Tom!)