{"id":506,"date":"2014-06-10T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/inside_microsoft_research\/2014\/06\/10\/seeking-answers-amid-world-cup-excitement\/"},"modified":"2016-07-20T07:30:02","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T14:30:02","slug":"seeking-answers-amid-world-cup-excitement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/blog\/seeking-answers-amid-world-cup-excitement\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeking Answers amid World Cup Excitement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by Rob Knies<\/span><\/p>\n

\"David (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

When the world starts watching, it\u2019s time for David Rothschild (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> to shift into overdrive.<\/p>\n

Readers of this blog need little introduction to the work on prediction models from Rothschild, a Microsoft researcher and economist. Past posts have examined his efforts to produce accurate forecasts for events such as the 2012 U.S. presidential election (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, the 2013<\/a> and 2014<\/a> Academy Awards, the 2014 NCAA men\u2019s basketball tournament<\/a>, and, recently, India\u2019s general election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s the next big thing to which he can apply his prognosticative powers?<\/p>\n

The World Cup, of course.<\/p>\n

The premier international event for the sport known as \u201csoccer\u201d in the United States and \u201cfootball\u201d elsewhere, the World Cup has become one of the most viewed sporting events on Earth. Hosted this year by Brazil\u2014the nation with the most championships, five, including two of the last five, and the only team to play in every tournament since the event\u2019s 1930 debut\u2014competition in the 64-game event will be played by 32 men\u2019s national teams across 12 Brazilian cities, beginning with a Brazil-versus-Croatia match on June 12 and culminating with the Finals, July 13 at Est\u00e1dio do Maracan\u00e3 in Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n

Rothschild will be watching intently, though his interest might differ a bit from the nationalistic fervor of most the game\u2019s other adherents. For him, this is simply the latest step in an ongoing attempt to fine-tune increasingly accurate prediction models that can applied to domains far afield from the pitch.<\/p>\n

\u201cSports are extremely predictable,\u201d he explains, \u201cbut the World Cup is much more idiosyncratic. It\u2019s more like politics in that way. We know a lot about how a generic Brazil team would do against a generic Croatia team, similar to the way I know how a generic Republican candidate will do against a generic Democratic candidate. Yet it is a whole lot less certain than how the New York Yankees are going to do against the Seattle Mariners with 60 baseball games of data already in the books.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat being said, over time, we learn more and more ways to get the data we need to answer the idiosyncratic events in a purely data-driven way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Right now, Rothschild\u2019s model (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, which also contributes to the new Bing Predicts service (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0bears a striking resemblance to that of Betfair, a U.K. betting exchange that supplies some of the data that fuel Rothschild\u2019s models. Both currently have Brazil with the highest likelihood of success, a reasonable assumption given the host country\u2019s history of success.<\/p>\n

That, though, could begin to change (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> once the action begins.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have created a full model,\u201d Rothschild explains, \u201cbut I rely heavily on the prediction-market data. The reason is simple: The problem with pure fundamental models is that even the best fundamental models are lacking because the World Cup is an event held just once every four years, without any regular season. There is a lot of idiosyncrasy in the event that is hard to capture in historical data sets.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth the fundamental data and the prediction-market data will update as the World Cup progresses. The predictions will update every few minutes, and I will also show the pregame predictions for all games.\u201d<\/p>\n

The peculiarities unique to the World Cup in the sporting sense serve only to help bolster and extend Rothschild\u2019s models.<\/p>\n

\u201cNormally,\u201d he explains, \u201csports playoffs do not actually update the predictions that much. There is a long regular season, and the way a team plays in any given game of the playoffs is not providing too much new, meaningful information. That is not the case in the World Cup, which lacks a regular season, so each match tells me a lot, and the long duration of the event means I am making serious updates after every match, not to mention during the match.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe international flavor is fun, but it does not change the method: providing accurate, quantifiable, and updated statistics to the right question.\u201d<\/p>\n

While sports can provide diversion for millions and deliver improbable drama, such as in 1990, when the unheralded Indomitable Lions of Cameroon stunned the world with an opening-round victory over defending champion Argentina, for Rothschild, the ultimate result represents simply another step toward his goal of using finely grained data to forecast individual and aggregated outcomes, regardless of domain. Still, such competitions are extremely useful.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn an effort to build more generic infrastructure for data collection and analysis, sports is a huge positive,\u201d he says. \u201cAs you consider how different a regular-season baseball game and a World Cup game are, you can appreciate how sports provides the kinds of examples we need to create domain-independent technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis technology is helping us answer weightier questions than sports outcomes, covering a range of topics and data types.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted by Rob Knies When the world starts watching, it\u2019s time for David Rothschild to shift into overdrive. Readers of this blog need little introduction to the work on prediction models from Rothschild, a Microsoft researcher and economist. Past posts have examined his efforts to produce accurate forecasts for events such as the 2012 U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30766,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194466,194465],"tags":[200133,200153,200223,200501,200645,194862,200813,201249,201511,201607,201965,201981,203339,203557,203905,204669],"research-area":[13556,13548],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-algorithms","category-theory","tag-2012-u-s-presidential-election","tag-2014-ncaa-mens-basketball-tournament","tag-academy-awards","tag-argentina","tag-betfair","tag-brazil","tag-cameroon","tag-david-rothschild","tag-estadio-do-maracana","tag-football","tag-indias-general-election","tag-indomitable-lions","tag-prediction-market","tag-rio-de-janeiro","tag-soccer","tag-world-cup","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-research-area-economics","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"","podcast_episode":"","msr_research_lab":[],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[],"related-groups":[],"related-projects":[],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_type":"Post","byline":"","formattedDate":"June 10, 2014","formattedExcerpt":"Posted by Rob Knies When the world starts watching, it\u2019s time for David Rothschild to shift into overdrive. Readers of this blog need little introduction to the work on prediction models from Rothschild, a Microsoft researcher and economist. Past posts have examined his efforts to…","locale":{"slug":"en_us","name":"English","native":"","english":"English"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30766"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235615,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions\/235615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"msr-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-region?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"msr-event-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-event-type?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"msr-promo-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-promo-type?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"msr-podcast-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-podcast-series?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}