Get down the bookies with a few quid on this one, it's science.
Using math, data and possibly black magic, Goldman Sachs believe with a fair degree of certainty that they can (and have) predicted who is going to win the World Cup this summer.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the maths folk at Goldman Sachs have been crunching the numbers and they see only one clear winner: Brazil. Here's the bit where they explain how they came to their conclusions:
"The predictions for each match are based on a regression analysis that uses the entire history of mandatory international football matches—i.e., no friendlies—since 1960. This gives us about 14,000 observations to estimate the coefficients of our model. The dependent variable in the regression analysis is the number of goals scored by each side in each match. Following the literature on modelling football matches, we assume that the number of goals scored by a particular side in a particular match follows a Poisson distribution.”
That's more or less the way we would have done it, of course. They have Brazil as the favourite (as do the bookies) with a 48.5% probability of winning, while their model has current holders Spain at just 9.8%. The second 'favourite' is Argentina, way behind on 14.1% while Germany also get a mention at 11%.
They didn't stop there, however, as they also predicted the knockout phases of the competition, all the way through to the final. We feel an accumulator coming on...
They do note that this model does not incorporate humans at any stage, it's purely statistical, so there are still some surprises in store given that element. Confident enough in their maths to risk a cheeky punt? Bankers have never gotten their facts and figures wrong before, as far as we're aware...
Via The Wall Street Journal. Main image via FIFA.com
