Comments on: Thoughts on Ranking Football Teams

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:40:28 +0000

@Bedo: I think I’ll post the easynn data file

By: Bedo

Bedo — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:04:57 +0000

Call me crazy, but the process of getting to the ranking system sure would make an interesting tutorial….

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:52:04 +0000

@Tim: Now the trick is developing the ranking system. I already have some strong leads on how to do that.

By: Tim Troutman

Tim Troutman — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:15:36 +0000

Tom, two years ago I did almost the exact same thing and found that you’re right – the ranking system is key. I had pretty good success with it, the model would only get 2 or 3 games wrong each week. It just took a lot of data entry time and I stopped doing it.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:32:29 +0000

@Bedo: I like the sound of “Tom’s Power Rankings.” Who knows, lol.
@Caprica: I need to create a diversion for myself or else I’d shut down this blog completely. I’m pretty sure I’ll have some readers complain, “but this is a financial blog isn’t it?” There is some information out there that says you can get a betting edge of about 55 to 60% with the proper model, you need a 53% edge to make money.

By: Caprica

Caprica — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:28:54 +0000

btw. speaking of predictive variables, after years of watching footy tipping competitions at the office, it is interesting to see how bad the real fans are at predicting who will win. It is not uncommon to see those who have no real knowledge of the game and just pick the home team to be in the top quartile of the leader board every time.

By: Caprica

Caprica — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:25:01 +0000

Interesting to see you have changed from stocks to footy. A mate of mine who was into bond trading got into the horse racing prediction a while ago and has had an interesting “ride”.

After looking at numerous “predictive” variables, the best ones he found involved combinations of the owner and the trainer. Why you ask? It has partially to do with better trainers are good at training horses and the richer owners can afford to buy better horses for them to work with. The other interesting thing is you get owner/trainer combinations that never fit the model. He did not know what to do with these outliers until he realized that certain owners and trainers were fixing races. He knew that if these horses appeared in the race, his model was never valid and he should not bet.

Anyway look forward to further posts in this area. Keep up the good work.

By: Bedo

Bedo — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:00:01 +0000

So does this mean that soon we will have the “Tom’s Power Rankings?” And could the inclusion of your rankings be too far away for college football and the BCS! haha.

I’m enjoying reading your work. I basically learned RapidMiner (or a small piece of it) through your tutorials (thanks), and continue to learn from your posts.