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mcphage
How does this paper not even mention the word "overfitting"?
dwedge
A good AI would calculate refereeing decisions and put Argentina at 100% unless England can pull off a miracle against FIFA today.
killingtime74
"They've done studies, you know. 60% of the time, it works every time." - Brian Fantana, Anchorman
anamax
One of the founders of Renaissance Technologies, which runs some of the most successful quant funds of all time, said ""We’re right 50.75% of the time... but we’re 100% right 50.75% of the time."
walthamstow
It's worth noting that there has only been 24 world cups
mikelward
> the model identifies Argentina (28.0%) and Spain (21.1%) as the leading championship candidates
derdi
> Applied prospectively to the in-progress 2026 World Cup from the Round of 32, the model identifies Argentina (28.0%) and Spain (21.1%) as the leading championship candidates.

Seems weird to wait to run the "prospective" simulation until the World Cup is already in progress. Although it seems that the model also needs to use "the actual bracket and group-stage performance". So it's not prospective?

malthaus
now back your claim with money and bet accordingly on betting sites to see if you uncovered some actual alpha here
yardie
Does the model account for the blatant favouritism in the refs? We used to laugh about it before but as the cameras have gotten better it has become a lot more visible. And in this case, is turning the tournament into a bit of a joke.

-- Egypt was robbed.

xiaodai
how statistic significant is it.
xiaodai
but does the model predict the right match up along way? if not it's just wrong wrong make a right
jonwinstanley
Also, being able to predict football with complete accuracy is impossible
pestatije
and how many models did you model?
amazingamazing
Why is the world cup so infrequent anyway? I assume to match olympics?

Good models need a lot of data. Can you really be accurate with what, 30 data points, in which the team composition is basically reset each time?

toyg
World Cups have to alternate with continental competitions (Copa America, Asian Cup, European Cup, Africa Cup of Nations) which are on similar cycles. They could technically be held every two years (and current FIFA leadership is pushing towards that), but federations and clubs are resistant (because every summer tournament places even more stress on an already-long club season, and it would likely devalue other competitions).
bArray
I've been messing with the magic value weights, and it doesn't take too much to push them in any given direction. The TEAMS_2026 should really be taken with a pinch of salt.
bArray
I've updated the magic weights, and I too can get the result I want:

    WEIGHTS = {
      'w_xg': 0.09,
      'w_goals': -0.07,
      'w_star': 0.018,
      'w_value': 0.18,
      'w_rank': 0.4,
      'w_def': -0.12,
      'xga_share': 0.85,
      'w_gk': 0.0042
    }

    $ python3 worldcup_model.py --sims 100000

    2026 FIFA World Cup -- championship probabilities (100,000 simulations, from Round of 32)

     1. England                 11.7% *
     2. France                  10.0% *
     3. Spain                    9.3% *
     4. Argentina                8.4%
     5. Germany                  8.1%
It's coming home!
fabioricardo7
Maybe in an alternate reality. Jokes aside, discovering the right weights to match the current fixture, along with the limited data available, were the key challenges in forecasting at such an early stage.
elombn
Not with tuchel Ball
artur_makly
There is no MODEL for pure Argentine magic. vamos carajos! vamooooooooo con todo!!! Our time has come again.
pessimizer
Make sure your email is on file with every horrible news outlet in the world so they can write over 9000 stories about you before the next World Cup.

Get a few nice glamorshots and make sure you have something else in the queue before then to plug during the interviews.