
The Most Shocking Result in World Cup History - houseofshards
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-most-shocking-result-in-world-cup-history/
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jarvuschris
This isn't just about having trouble with "edge cases", it's a fallacy to even
think statistics are useful for predicting outcomes from such a small group
where individuals have so much freedom to determine the outcome.

Statistics may generate interesting facts after an event but for populations
of people as small as two soccer teams there's no way they can predict
individuals' actions. Maybe it works better for baseball because each
individual has a sufficiently narrow range of potential impacts, but in soccer
each person can do relatively whatever they want at any time.

~~~
crag
It's hard to predict a small group. Reliably. The masses are easy. Wall Street
and Madison Ave do it all the time. But in football (soccer); which is fast
paced, unpredictable and where an individual can have major influence you have
a cluster fuck. Anyone's prediction is just a guess.

Now baseball is another matter. A much more rigid game. Easier to predict.

You know, we see this all the time in politics. How many upsets over the
years? The models need to be thrown out every year. But it's expensive. So the
US media clings to their same old models and is "shocked" when an upset
occurs. And then they usually search so fast for a reason, they miss the real
reason in the process. Hollywood has been missing the mark too. They also need
to throw out their models and start over. BADLY.

Anyway I sometimes wonder just how far away we really are from Asimov's
"Psychohistory ".

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jsilence
Has anyone read "The Foundation" by Asimov?

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ghshephard
I'm willing to wager more than half the readers here have. For those over 35,
make that more than 75%.

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lostlogin
For those like me who don't know what the saying means. > Eating crow is an
American colloquial idiom, meaning humiliation by admitting wrongness or
having been proved wrong after taking a strong position.<

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_crow](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_crow)

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elktea
This the same person who suggested Dani Alves would be an ideal replacement
for the suspended Thiago Silva based on their 'defensive' statistics. While he
might be a great statistician, unfortunately it's obvious he doesn't have
enough knowledge of the sport to contribute any meaningful analysis.

~~~
lukencode
To be fair, I dont think he could have gone much worse.

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mehulmandania
Neymar is Brazil's talisman. A majority of their goals in this world cup, and
quite a large percentage of their goals since he made his debut have come
through his direct influence. Ignoring this was the biggest mistake in 538's
prediction. Maybe football predictions needs a mix of stats and social
psychology!

Thiago Silva is thought to be the best centre back in the world by most
people. And by quite some distance. He provided leadership and organised that
back four. Luiz, Marcelo, Maicon and Dante have never exhibited leadership
qualities for their clubs.

I think that by suggesting Willian and Dante and Alves (even though Alves is
ranked highly in the Guardian's top 100 list, he plays in the wrong position)
would be adequate replacements was the biggest mistake.

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plorg
What would be the justification for removing the discounting term for
subsequent goals in the Elo model he mentions?

Silver mentions that it was the lopsidedness of the score that made the game
so surprising, and that the Elo model discounts increasingly lopsided games.
As a consequence, this game would not be the "most surprising" game in the
history of the world cup. Thus he removes the discounting term, re-runs the
model, and _poof_ this is now the most surprising game in World Cup history.

That just smacks of attempting to fit a model to one's intuitions. Was it any
more "shocking" that Germany won 7-1 than that they were up 5-0 at halftime? I
would presume that the "lopsidedness" discount is intended precisely to
address the idea that once a team is winning by an overwhelming score the
subsequent goals aren't really that surprising.

Really, though, a measure of "shockingness", at least as described in this
piece, suggests more about what the Elo model cannot capture than it does
about the subjective way that any one game was perceived.

~~~
ohashi
I imagine the discount on a lopsided game is because the teams stop really
playing. After 3 goals or so it's generally a done deal. So you start to see
players pulled, playing very differently (conservatively).

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zimpenfish
That might apply in a league where you can amortise that loss over a whole
bunch of games but in a single-shot knockout game, I'd expect a professional
team to keep fighting even at 5-0 down - much as the Brazilians did in the
second half. If it weren't for Neuer's outstanding saves, they could have had
3+ goals in the first 15 minutes.

(Although the league sometimes doesn't work like that either - I remember
listening to Spurs vs Man Utd when Man Utd went in at half-time 3-0 down and
ended up winning 5-3 in what is possibly the most epic half of football I've
heard in 30+ years.)

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coriny
Arsenal coming back from 4-1 down against Reading to win 7-5 was pretty epic
as well.

Also, goal difference is important in leagues, so teams tend to play to the
end even if the gap is large. Though I think this could be improved by
changing to 2 points for a win, with a bonus point for scoring 3+ goals.

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pinars
Is this data accurate? As a Turkish fan, I don't recall nor can find any
records of Turkey losing to Switzerland by a 7-0 margin in 1998.

Edit: Also sadly, Turkey didn't make it to the World Cup in '98.

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mikeyouse
The only thing I could find was potentially a 7-0 match for Turkey vs. Korea
in the 1954 World Cup, which was played _in_ Switzerland? Hard to say, since
the data seems to come from:

[http://www.world-results.net/](http://www.world-results.net/)

and is a paywalled API.

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petepete
[http://www.fifa.com/tournaments/archive/worldcup/switzerland...](http://www.fifa.com/tournaments/archive/worldcup/switzerland1954/matches/round=211/match=1304/index.html)

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axilmar
Given the following:

1) the psychological pressure put on Brazil's players to win the cup in their
home turf by their local fans, worldwide fans, media and history of the team.

2) the injury of their most valuable offensive player.

3) the non-participation of their most valuable defensive player.

4) the failure of their coach with other international teams.

5) the general attitude of Brazilian football towards "Zogo Bonito", giving
importance to offense and neglecting defense, against the very well organized
team like the Germans.

it was pretty obvious that the Germans would dominate the game.

The shocking part for me was not the score. It was the psychology of the
Brazilian defenders. They quickly lost their nerve. These players are supposed
to be of world class, having played in top clubs and knowing how to handle
pressure. I was wrong, apparently.

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boobsbr
I think you meant "Jogo Bonito". Yeah, our J sounds like Zh / ʒ.

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hownottowrite
From the handicap article:

[Among semifinalist teams, only Argentina has maintained ball possession more
often than Germany, and nobody makes more short passes per game than the
Germans. Germany’s approach is to patiently work the ball into the opponent’s
territory, passing it around until its players can create a high-percentage
scoring opportunity. Brazil, on the other hand, loves to dribble the ball and
create chances by taking on defenders in one-on-one situations.]

[http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/world-cup-semifinal-
crib-...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/world-cup-semifinal-crib-notes-
brazil-vs-germany/)

So here's what happens in nearly every sport. A team focused on individual
brilliance and passionate "opportunities" gets clobbered by a disciplined
opponent who remains patient. Situations like this often turn into a rout.

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mladenkovacevic
Clearly the model does not claim to predict the future or else we'd all be
putting money on the games. I don't think a justification or "eating crow" is
necessary as the match was obviously an anomaly.

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mikegriff
Reading this article (and lots more around world cup time) written about
football by North Americans, I've noticed that there's a different way of
thing about teams and countries than in Europe (or the English speaking part
at least).

The biggest one that jumps out at me is using single person to describe the
teams. We generally describe a team as 'they' rather than 'it'. So we are more
likely to see 'Germany’s win will also affect their odds in the World Cup
final' than the way it's written in the article.

Has anyone else found any other Americanisms?

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StavrosK
I'm guessing you're from the UK? This isn't specific to teams. Any group is
referred to in the plural in the UK and the singular in the US. For example,
"the police is" vs "the police are".

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noahc
I'm from the midwest (USA) and I'm not sure what the rule is but here is how I
would say it.

The City Council is … The class is … The police are … The firefighters are …

The phrase "the police is" sounds so foreign to me, that I am almost certain
I've never heard nor said it.

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blndcat
If you don't understand what you're modelling, you won't create an accurate
model.

For programmers, we create an approximation to the real world and then refine
the model as we (or the users) come across the imperfections.

Unfortunately, Nate probably still doesn't know how much he doesn't know.

> But there was almost certainly some bad luck for Brazil. It had more shots
> than Germany in the match

Comparing number of shots (or possession) is a bad metric if the playing
styles are different.

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erehweb
Is statistical analysis useless for soccer? No - Australia was unlikely to win
the world cup.

Is the 538 model a good enough one? No - when we have two events it thinks are
extremely unlikely (this and Netherlands-Spain 5-1), we should suspect that
there's something going on it's not capturing.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
I mean at the broad level, sure stats applies. But even so, not many would
have predicted Spain going out at the group stages, or Holland making it to
the semis.

Football is a highly unpredictable sport because individual contributions can
completely change the course of a match. All it takes for a minnow to beat a
big team is some organized defending and a lucky goal, like Switzerland vs
Spain past WC.

In a sport where the margins of victory are small, it is difficult to apply
statistical analysis correctly.

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callum85
Nate Silver stops making adjustments to the model as soon the results fit the
headline.

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macco
Actually the prediction is kind a awkward.

Germany was the clear favorite, better team, better individual players on most
positions (especially in the crucial midfield) and better strategic education.

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cheepin
It seems the actual article points to the contrary: that the prediction model
is generally good, but can get unlucky, and has trouble with edge cases.

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NicoJuicy
If i'm not mistaking, Germany used SAP (the big German ERP company) and
bigdata for help in decisions :)

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lurcio
Looked like a thrown match to me tbh

Dont think models need fitting to this kind of result

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vajorie
Gotta adore the whitewashing priorities.

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anuraj
Brazil looked like a pack of nincompoops scurrying around without sense. Well
deserved win for Germany!

