Sr. Clarke, COMPUTER FORECASTING OF AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL FOR A DAILY NEWSPAPER, The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 44(8), 1993, pp. 753-759
Citations number
14
Categorie Soggetti
Management,"Operatione Research & Management Science","Operatione Research & Management Science
An exponential smoothing technique operating on the margins of victory
was used to predict the results of Australian Rules football matches
for a Melbourne daily newspaper from 1981-86 and again for a competito
r in 1991-92. An initial 'quick and dirty' program used only a factor
for team ability and a common home ground advantage to predict winning
margins. Probabilities of winning were accumulated to predict a final
ladder, with a simulation to predict chances of teams finishing in an
y position. Changes to the competition forced a more complicated appro
ach, and the current version uses several parameters which allow for a
bility, team/ground interaction, team interaction, and a tendency for
team ability to regress towards the mean between seasons. A power meth
od is used to place greater weight on the errors in closer matches, an
d errors across the win-lose boundary. While simple methods were used
originally, the Hooke and Jeeves method was used in optimizing the par
ameters of the current model. Both the original model and the improved
version performed at the level of expert tipsters.