Predicting the outcomes of annual sporting contests

Baker, RD and Scarf, PA 2006, 'Predicting the outcomes of annual sporting contests' , Journal of the Royal Statistical Society - Series C Applied Statistics, 55 (2) , pp. 225-239.

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Akaike information criterion; Cricket; Exact tests; Football; Generalized linear models; Rugby; Sporting contests
Themes:	Subjects / Themes > Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA275 Mathematical Statistics Subjects outside of the University Themes
Schools:	Schools > Salford Business School > Salford Business School Research Centre
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of the Royal Statistical Society - Series C Applied Statistics
Publisher:	Blackwell Publishing
Refereed:	Yes
ISSN:	1467-9876
Related URLs:	Publication
Depositing User:	H Kenna
Date Deposited:	21 Aug 2007 12:31
Last Modified:	26 Nov 2017 09:34
URI:	http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/264

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