Before the Christmas/New Year's break, I published a post at my HexagonalBlog site that ran through the numbers for the two-leg format in the first round of the MLS playoffs. The format has come under some criticism since its introduction in the 2003 season, especially for having the higher seed team host the second leg […]
Today is the one-year anniversary of Soccermetrics. It's been a place where I could let my geeky side hang out and explore some interesting questions in the soccer world. I'm always flattered to get readers, but I'm especially pleased to find out about the types of readers this site has attracted over the past year […]
Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey — and Even Iraq — Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport, Nation Books, 2009. [Amazon link]There has been a lot of interest in sports from "the geeks" over […]
I just submitted that soccer Pythagorean paper to the MIT Sports Analytics conference. Now I'll have to wait until next month to see if I will be one of the presenters. When I find out, I'll post the news here.If the paper is not accepted, I'll post the paper on this site in January; if […]
The agenda for MIT's Sports Analytics conference continues to be filled out. And there will be some additional figures from the soccer world appearing — USSF president Sunil Gulati will appear on a panel discussing international trade in sport from American and European perspectives.For those of you who would like to submit a draft publication […]
I've seen a number of websites performing mock draws and projections leading up to the World Cup draw later today. To be brutally honest, I really don't care for much of them. They're nice as far as conversation starters are concerned, but I doubt that they have much utility beyond that. I have my own […]
[Originally written 31 October. Bumped to the top with updates.]A few nights ago I posted a link to the MIT Sports Analytics Conference to be held in March and later included a link to a call for papers to the event. I am thinking very seriously about submitting a paper to that conference. It will […]
In my first post on the Sports Analytics Conference at MIT's Sloan Business School, I lamented the fact that there were no sessions or panel discussions by anyone in the soccer world. That situation has since been remedied; there will be a discussion on "Emerging Analytics" with Michael Forde and Simon Wilson, who are the […]
ESPN, through Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus and Fivethirtyeight.com fame, has rolled out a Soccer Power Index that intends, "to provide the best possible objective representation of a national team's current overall skill level." I'm looking through the explanation of the index and at first glance it attempts to make the best of the statistics […]
M. J. Dixon and M. E. Robinson, "A birth process model for association football matches", The Statistician, 47(3): 523-538, 1998.How does the probability of the final score change with the relative strength of the two teams, home advantage, time elapsed, and the current score? This publication describes what's called a "birth process" model and it […]
