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Is statistical analysis useless for soccer? No - Australia was unlikely to win the world cup. Is the 538 model a good enough one? No - when we have two event

• Ar-Curunir 12y ago
  I mean at the broad level, sure stats applies. But even so, not many would have predicted Spain going out at the group stages, or Holland making it to the semis. Football is a highly unpredictable sport because individual contributions can completely change the course of a match. All it takes for a minnow to beat a big team is some organized defending and a lucky goal, like Switzerland vs Spain past WC. In a sport where the margins of victory are small, it is difficult to apply statistical analysis correctly.
• crapshoot101 12y ago
  The second assertion is a dangerous leap - an outlier event when the sample is small, may in fact, just be an outlier - ie, there isn't a prognosticator on the planet who called those two results. If anything, trying to "re fit" the model t o account for these outcomes as part of a Taleb-esque fat tails approach seems more dangerous to me.