Congrats to the 2010 champions, ¡Viva España! What were the chances?
Well I do not know much about soccer, but I do know that JP-Morgan, UBS and Goldman Sachs issue in depth reports every fourth year calculating the next champion based on predictive modeling. Turns out, England, the team JP-Morgan's 70 page report referred to as champs lost in the Round of 16, while UBS and Goldman reports predicted Brazil would end up on the top. C'mon... did you really need a complicated algorithm to predict that?
After reviewing the reports, the questions are: Where did Wall Street go wrong in their models (and why isn't Congress investigating it)? What was the data set, assumptions, independent and confounding variables? Is it necessary to include GDP in the calculation, and how about including team performance outside of the World Cup to the data set? Can you think of a better methodology to predict a winner? Clearly, there is no absolute truth in predictions, but we can try to improve their ability to foresee the future.
Or perhaps we should save ourselves the trouble and just depend on Paul the Octopus to call the shots?! Now I'll toot my vuvuzela to that!
