Stats Chat

Team Ratings for the Semi-finals

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 132 matches played, 89 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 67.4%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for the Semi-finals

Here are the predictions for the Semi-finals. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for the Final

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 151 matches played, 115 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 76.2%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for the Final

Here are the predictions for the Final. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 11

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 80 matches played, 55 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 68.8%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 11

Here are the predictions for Round 11. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

• From Stuff, an interactive visualisation of homicides in New Zealand, which also lets you do your own comparisons. For example, this one shows that alcohol is most often involved when people are killed by a friend
  
• From the LA Times, a visualisation mapping the settlements of the Tongva, who lived in Los Angeles before it was colonised.
• Previously the questions raised about mining in Foulden Maar haven’t been StatsChat-relevant, but this from Newsroom is. It says animal nutrition specialists are skeptical that the diatomaceous earth is actually of any benefit as an animal food, and there doesn’t appear to be any published research supporting its use. The story also says one of the selling points of the earth is that it contains fulvic acid, which I can recognise as a popular pseudoscience topic (when consumed; it’s a perfectly good soil component).
• Sometimes researchers do try to fight back when their work is exaggerated in the media: here’s an example on Twitter
• A well-sourced Twitter thread from Russell Brown, on how saliva testing to see if drivers are impaired by cannabis is nowhere near ready for use. Note that it’s not even fit for purpose if you’re trying to detect cannabis use, let alone for detecting impairment.
• Epidemic simulations on a network, letting you fiddle with various characteristics of the disease/meme/whatever

Team Ratings for Round 10

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Round 9 games all being played in Brisbane caused problems for me again. I had changed the order of the teams for the Sea Eagles versus Broncos game to give them home ground advantage which then impacted my routines for webscraping results and adding them to my database. I thought I had corrected the resulting errors but missed one. Since that affected the updated ratings and the predictions for Round 10, I have updated the whole post.

Thanks to Chad James for advising me of the error.

Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 72 matches played, 52 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 72.2%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 10

Here are the predictions for Round 10. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 14

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 85 matches played, 57 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 67.1%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 14

Here are the predictions for Round 14. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 10

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 72 matches played, 53 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 73.6%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 10

Here are the predictions for Round 10. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

• Some very good science reporting from Dylan Cleaver (traditionally a sports reporter) in the NZ$ Herald, on what’s known and what’s controversial in sports brain injury. The last of the three-part series is here.
• And explaining colds and flu and the immune system in The Age (Melbourne), co-written by a PhD student and the newspaper’s science reporter.
• Twitter bot @BeehiveBanter gives daily summaries of the most common words used in Parliament
• This went moderately viral on Twitter
  
  There’s obviously something wrong with these numbers — in fact, food is one of the things that’s gotten cheaper in real terms.  Some follow-up shows that the income is inflation-adjusted and the bread prices aren’t.
• From StatsNZ How wealthy are you compared with households like you? Find out with our new app: statisticsnz.shinyapps.io/wealth/
• Good explanation from the Grattan Institute on a misleading Australian housing statistic that keeps recurring

Q: Did you see that drinking wine could prevent colds?

A: <skeptical look>

Q: It’s on Newshub. Feel a winter cold coming? News study shows wine could be antibacterial

A: And how would it help if wine was antibacterial?

Q: It could kill the bacteria that….. oh… viruses?

A: Viruses. And where do you think the cold viruses live?

Q: Um. In your nose?

A: Ever got wine up your nose?

Q: Ok. Point. But later in the story it says “it’s not the alcohol or the acid that kill the bugs but rather the antibacterial properties of both red and white wine that help fight off both tooth plaque and sore throats.” So at least they’ve shown it works for plaque and sore throats

A: Not exactly

Q: In mice?

A: Not even.

Q: It’s bacteria in a dish in the lab, then?

A: Yes.

Q: Do bacteria even have teeth? And where did you find the research?

A: Basically same story was in the Edinburgh News and Maxim and Metro UK, and they all linked. Compounds in the wine kill some of the same bacteria that cause plaque and sore throats.

Q: That could be useful. How long did it take?

A: An hour.

Q: That’s a long time to gargle wine. Do they know what compounds in the wine have the effect? Is it these polyphenols and antioxidants we keep hearing about

A: They say it’s succinic, malic, lactic, tartaric, citric, and acetic acids, and that the polyphenols didn’t show any effect.

Q: But wasn’t it supposed to not be the acids?

A: It’s not just the acidity: the equivalent acidity from hydrochloric acid didn’t kill the bacteria.

Q: So it might not be directly useful, and it’s not a good reason to drink wine, but it’s still interesting new research?

A: The research was published in 2007. I’ve got no idea why it has resurfaced. Maybe that’s why the Newshub headline says “news study”, not “new study”

Q: Seems to reinforce the official StatsChat policy on wine, though.

A: If you’re drinking it primarily for the health benefits, you’re doing it wrong.

Team Ratings for Round 9

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

This is an unusual round in that all games are being played at Suncorp Stadium which is the home ground of the Brisbane Broncos. Hence they have been assigned home ground advantage. All other games are treated as being played at a neutral ground. The exception is the Warriors versus the Dragons where I have penalised the Warriors because they are playing overseas.

Thanks to Ben Frank for alerting me to this unusual situation.

Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 64 matches played, 47 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 73.4%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 9

Here are the predictions for Round 9. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.