California Leads The Way On ID Theft Legislation

Software To Predict Sporting Events

from the good-luck... dept

Fri, Dec 13th 2002 9:41am — Mike Masnick

Some AI researchers have been putting their skills to good use trying to build some software that will accurately predict the outcome of rugby matches (though, they say it will work on any team sport). The system works by looking at statistics and determing what is more likely to make a winning team. The creators claim that it's 66% accurate, which is better than human predictors can usually do. I'm not sure how big a deal this is. People have poured over statistics for ages in order to better predict sports outcomes - but it still doesn't seem to matter much come gametime. Sure, you can often pick out the better team, and they're more likely to win, but I'm not sure how much "AI" that really involves. This program just can hold and compare more stats at once, more accurately than a human looking at the same data.

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KB, 14 Dec 2002 @ 9:36am

No Subject Given
66% is fantastic if you're into betting. People have made millions in Vegas because of card counting techniques that gave them a mere 1 to 2% odds advantage.
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Mike (profile), 15 Dec 2002 @ 11:07pm

Re: No Subject Given
I agree that 66% sounds good... but that doesn't say if it takes odds into account. If a terrible teams is always playing a great team, then it's easy to be right on who wins many more times than you're wrong. That's why bet makers put odds on sporting events. There was no indication that the software took odds into account, which makes me think this isn't much of a big deal at all.
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