
World Cup 2014 Predictions and Results - danso
http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/world-cup/
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von_tenia
Now I wonder if an octopus would be more reliable this time.

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TillE
That's a whole lot of 1-0s in their "projection" of the knockout stages, and
not a single game in the entire tournament where a team scores more than 2.
Not at all realistic.

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joosters
You're missing the point. They are showing the most likely scores. Take a look
at the betting for any of the matches and you won't find the most likely
correct score being 3+ for any side.

Of course, taking the entire set of games into account, there's likely to be
some games with higher scores, but when you consider each game _individually_
, as this web site does, the likely result will not have many goals.

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soperj
Then what is the point really? You could figure all this out by looking at the
odds, which are probably more useful then this info-graphic.

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joosters
Well, yes. But the point of these pages is to show opposing views and how
different people and different systems come up with the chances.

Personally I love the mathematical complexities involved in trying to come up
with odds/chances for events. It's applied maths with the potential for
monetary reward :)

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thanatropism
Nahhh.

This would be my prediction if the WC was a long series of randomly defined
games. The specific games calendar has effects, though.

My own model goes from the Elo ratings at
[http://eloratings.net](http://eloratings.net) (with Elo, a pair of scores
gives you an expected result) and simulates 10^7 World Cups, updating scores
for each simulation as it goes and so on.

There aren't any clear favorites, although of course there's an elite group
(IIRC 5 or 6 teams together have 25% of likelihood of being champions) and
Germany is slightly ahead. But in the modal scenario Brazil is eliminated by
Spain in the eighth-finals.

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phreeza
Not sure updating the Elo ratings throughout the simulation is a good idea.
The rating should reflect the 'optimal' estimate given the current
information. A simulated result is not actually new information.

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martijn_himself
Nice visualisation but assumptions seem to be based on past performance in
world cups. The Netherlands is supposed to have the 6th best defense in the
competition, which is ludicrous.

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toyg
_> assumptions seem to be based on past performance in world cups_

Not even that: England has a 35% chance of winning their match against Italy,
which only has 33%. Overall stats in the competition are twice as good for
Italy, as you can see at
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-25233859](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-25233859)

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xedarius
Wonder if the host advantage is taken into account (not that Brazil need any
kind of advantage).

As last time France hosted the world cup they won, yet they were not the best
team in the tournament.

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phreeza
I have a similar model for league matches, and the home advantage usually
works out to something like 0.1 goals per match. It's important in estimating
the odds, but rarely tips the balance with respect to who the most likely
winner is.

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lazyant
"Soccernomics" claims iirc that the home stadium (not exactly the same as home
country) advantage is a full 1 goal

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aubergene
Hey, one of the Bloomberg developers here. Thanks for the comments.

The prominent most likely score is a bit confusing, if you click through to
the match detail then the histogram shows a range of goal differences. So for
the first match we predict a goal difference of >2 to Brazil, although the
highest probability for an actual score result is 2-0 (16%). Our model makes
projections for up to 8-0 in both directions, but we aggregate them for
display in this interactive.

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pmoods
This is awesome but the predictiveness is quite unpredictive. I guess that's
what happens when you quant everything

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david927
Or it's what happens when you look at data in the simplest way possible. We
know there will be upsets, we know some players play better together than
others, etc. This could have been enriched to show something quite
interesting.

On a side note, personally, I think England will surprise everyone by making
it to the finals.

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TillE
You mean out of the group stage? That wouldn't be too much of a surprise;
oddschecker.com has England and Uruguay about equally likely to qualify, with
Italy a bit ahead. And if Luis Suarez isn't fully fit, England have every
chance.

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lportion
We shouldn't forget about Costa Rica too. They finished above Mexico in
qualifying, they have a decent team and they will probably have a slight
climate advantage in the games at Forteleza and Belo Horizonte (vs. England).

I wish I could also share the optimism about England. If we do get out of the
group stages we may have to play Brazil or Spain in the quarter finals.

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vide0star
Favorites win every game! Try doing your March Madness basketball bracket like
that and you will not get very far. Saying the 1st and 2nd seed teams will be
in the final is not a reasonable prediction.

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grahamel
But that's how predictions go, same as the betting odds.

It doesn't mean a lesser team can't win or a bigger team not loosing all their
group games (as France did one time)

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corin_
It's possible you're thinking of a previous event I've forgotten, but
presuming you're referring to South Africa four years ago, France actually
lost 2 and drew 1 - sorry for pedantry :)

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grahamel
that's alright, was actually thinking of 2002 when they did the same (lost 2
and drew 1). Anyway, they did badly

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1781
To go an entire World Cup without conceding a goal is unprecedented, and I
would expect the probabilities to reflect this. I seems that the probabilities
are calculated independently.

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joosters
They aren't claiming that. The page is just showing the most likely outcome
for each individual game.

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gnagatomo
Brazilian here. The brazilian politics already bought the World Cup. It's 100%
chance for Brazil to win. Mark my words and make some bets.

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kafkaesque
This would be more interesting if people made and posted their own
predictions, which this graph lets you do!

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wslh
I wonder if they analyzed the Messi factor correctly against Spain...

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pms
It's funny to see all scores being 0-0, 1-0, or 2-0... ;)

