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Predicting the outcomes of annual sporting contests

Baker, RD; Scarf, PA

Authors

RD Baker

PA Scarf



Abstract

Data from 20 sporting contests in which the same two teams compete regularly are studied. Strong and weak symmetry requirements for possible models are identified, and some simple models are proposed and fitted to the data. The need to compute the exact likelihood function and the presence of missing values make this non-trivial. Forecasting match outcomes by using the models can give a modest improvement over a naïve forecast. Significance tests for studying the effect of `match covariates' such as playing at home or away or winning the toss are introduced, and the effect of these covariates is in general found to be quite large.

Citation

Baker, R., & Scarf, P. (2006). Predicting the outcomes of annual sporting contests. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C, 55(2), 225-239. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9876.2006.00525.x

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Mar 2, 2006
Deposit Date Aug 21, 2007
Journal Journal of the Royal Statistical Society - Series C Applied Statistics
Print ISSN 0035-9254
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 55
Issue 2
Pages 225-239
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9876.2006.00525.x
Keywords Akaike information criterion; Cricket; Exact tests; Football; Generalized linear models; Rugby; Sporting contests
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9876.2006.00525.x
Related Public URLs http://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-9876/