Posts from August 2012 (64)

Stuff seems to think so (via a Stat of the Week nomination)

If you plan to celebrate 25 years of Lotto with a ticket for tonight’s Big Wednesday draw, some outlets offer better odds than others.

No, they don’t.  They offer the same odds, roughly zero. Some outlets have sold more winning tickets than others in the past, that’s all.

Many people, even statisticians, enjoy playing Lotto. If you want to buy tickets at places where other people have won in the past, there’s nothing wrong with that and it won’t hurt your chances.   Since many people enjoy playing, it makes some sense for newspapers to write about Lotto from time to time.  But there’s no excuse for leading with a blatantly untrue statement.

It’s probably a bad sign when Dilbert’s boss has heard of what you do: Big Data

Team Ratings for Round 22

Here are the team ratings prior to Round 22, along with the ratings at the start of the season. I have created a brief description of the method I use for predicting rugby games. Go to my Department home page to see this.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 152 matches played, 86 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 56.58%.

Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 22

Here are the predictions for Round 22.

Team Ratings for Week 24

Here are the team ratings prior to Week 24, along with the ratings at the start of the season. I have created a brief description of the method I use for predicting rugby games. Go to my Department home page to see this.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 124 matches played, 87 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 70.2%.

Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Week 24

Here are the predictions for Week 24. The prediction is my estimated points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.