Stats Chat

Team Ratings for Round 15

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 108 matches played, 68 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 63%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 15

Here are the predictions for Round 15. 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 Week 15

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 114 matches played, 79 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 69.3%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Week 15

Here are the predictions for Week 15. 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.

I randomly came across a story about a “small modular reactor” startup that was having its first pre-operational test, not ready to generate electricity or anything, just heating up.  This made me think about the recent suggestion that NZ should buy a couple of small modular reactors, as if they were standard off-the-shelf equipment like windmills or ferries. In fact, China has one SMR, Russia has one pair, and lots of people are doing R&D trying to develop them for sale in the future.

RNZ had a story this week, where most of the content was attributed to a spokesperson from “the international organization that promotes nuclear power and supports the companies that comprise the global nuclear industry” (per Wikipedia).  I’m not going to check the whole thing, but I was struck by one statistic

Finland reportedly saw its electricity prices fall 75 percent when its latest nuclear power came online.

This obviously wasn’t a small modular reactor, but also there is no way that could possibly be an honest summary (I suppose the ‘reportedly’ might also have signalled that)

If you follow the link (as RNZ perhaps should have) the headline is Electricity prices in Finland flipped negative — a huge oversupply of clean, hydroelectric power meant suppliers were almost giving it away.  As with similar stories, this is a transient phenomenon. There is no mention at that link of nuclear power.

We can also check with Stats Finland. Here’s the price of electricity from the start of 2023

That does show an apparently important drop in early 2023, which is when the most recent nuclear station went online, but a relatively short-term one. Looking back before 2023 we see

with a big run-up in prices suggesting there might have been other forces affecting Finnish power costs in 2022 that would complicate the pro-nuclear interpretation.

I don’t have a firm opposition to small modular nuclear reactors (I’m not a proper Kiwi), but if they were a good idea you’d think the links would be to documents that actually support the case.

Team Ratings for Round 18

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, 59 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 69.4%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 18

Here are the predictions for Round 18. 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 26

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 175 matches played, 137 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 78.3%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 26

Here are the predictions for Round 26. 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 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 148 matches played, 101 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 68.2%.
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 Quarter-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 77 matches played, 55 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 71.4%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for the Quarter-finals

Here are the predictions for the Quarter-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 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 100 matches played, 61 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 61%.
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 Week 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 106 matches played, 75 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 70.8%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Week 14

Here are the predictions for Week 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.

RNZ: NZ among world’s worst for landfill waste per person 

RNZ: New Zealand generates double the global average of rubbish, report says (also repeated here and here)

This attributes the claim to a World Bank report, but doesn’t link to it or describe in any more detail where to find it.  Searching does give a World Bank report on waste. This does agree with the 2kg/person/day figure in the RNZ story, so it might be the right one. Here is a graph from it (click to embiggen)

There are clearly some outlying points here. They aren’t New Zealand, which is in the middle of the pack.   We have similar waste generation to other moderately rich countries.

The point here isn’t that New Zealand’s level of waste generation is ok. The point is that if you want to do something about it, you need to have a realistic understanding of what the problem actually is.  If you look at an older World Bank report, described in Stuff in 2018 and visualised here, you see that New Zealand actually was called out as notably high-waste back then, and was ranked 10th in the world.  We were generating 3.68 kg/person/day, so there’s been a big decrease — perhaps because of the ban on so-called single-use plastic bags.  The situation then is different from the situation now, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from the media coverage.