I way underestimated how many people would be interested in my netball AutoRoster. Now I have more DMs than I can reply to. So first, fist bump to my fellow roster victims. Second, I'll put this thing on a public site for everyone in the near future.
The AFL did a great job under the circumstances, but 2020 is one heck of an unbalanced fixture. Sucks to be Collingwood, who had one of the hardest journeys and wind up in an away Elimination Final.
For the first time, Squiggle's 2019 prediction will factor in off-season player movements, incl. players returning from injury. Still a work in progress, but here's how it's shaping up...
Who won the round? An algorithmic ranking of clubs that says who had the best and worst weekends, based on their movement in the ladder projections of the internet's finest AFL models. Now in beta.
Think it's under-reported how horrendous St Kilda's fixture was this year. Double up games were against Richmond, GWS, Melbourne, Hawthorn, North; had home games against interstate sides only 4 times but had to travel away interstate 5 times + 1 to Kardinia + 1 to Tas.
One of the most interesting things about this account is how clearly it illustrates the difference between what umps consider important - getting each decision technically correct - and what fans consider important - not unfairly advantaging one side.
I'd like to submit Exhibit W, Your Honour: West Coast crowds have gotten smaller and quieter, and they're tracking for their first negative free kick differential season in 20 years.
Feeling proud and humbled that this year it was only 22 minutes elapsed between the release of the AFL fixture and DMs asking when I’m updating my site.
Net list strength gain vs last game of 2022 due to trades, retirements, return from injury:
Heaps: CAR, NTH, BRI
Plenty: WCE, GCS, STK, RIC
A bit: WBD, ADE, COL
Not much: ESS, HAW, GWS, MEL, SYD, PTA, FRE
Same: GEE
Weird, this model I trained with xScores because they’re more reliable than actual results turns out to be better at predicting xScores than actual results.
I recommend an AFL project for all budding programmers because it's a great way to learn how reality will systematically violate every single fucking assumption you make.
I love that we had a sub rule, which everyone hated, and through a 6-year period of continual rule improvements, we have made it all the way back to the original sub rule.
Wrote a tipping algorithm for my kid's netball league even though I assumed it'd be way more unpredictable than AFL, but nope, turns out if I could bet on Under 13s community sport I'd be absolutely mint.
This seems to happen a lot:
1. Champion Data produce interesting numbers
2. Explanation is only available to select journos
3. Media piece on numbers omits explanation, is misleading, or wrong
4. Public is like wtf is with those numbers
It's simple. 8 teams open the season in the Opening Round. The other 10 open their seasons in Round 1, not the Opening Round. Richmond & Carlton open their seasons in the Opening Rounds and then play their traditional season opener in Round 1. Just open your eyes.
The top 4 computer models tracked on Squiggle are beating all 12 expert tipsters at The Age, all 30 at the Herald-Sun, and all 16 at the AFL. That's 4/15 models outperforming 58/58 humans.
Added Power Rankings to the site, based on the cumulative wisdom of the internet's finest models. It's pretty. It's interactive. It speaks truth to power.
The Tigers run away with it after half-time, winning by 22 points. A successful first game in Virtually Season 2020, with an entertaining contest and only a brief spate of database errors. Tune in tomorrow night for Sydney vs Essendon.
Monday Fun Facts - AFL
(1) The team with more scoring shots at qtr time wins 70% of the time
(2) The team in front at qtr time also wins 70% of the time
(3) If you can only be one, it's better to be the team with more scoring shots (by 0.1 percentage points, data 2000-2020).
So it turns out the mark of the year winner gets $10K, a pie warmer and a year’s supply of pies. Its only small but surely the AFL can find a car for the mark and goal of the year like in the old days. The 17 changes Andrew Dillon can make in the next year
The Hawks are virtual premiers! Mitch Lewis slots a goal with only a minute remaining to sinks Port Adelaide by 6 points. Hawthorn came from 5th, winning 4 finals and inflicting Port’s only defeat for the year in the match that mattered most.
I admire AFL Tables' decision to say nah, the first round is Round 1, instead of spending stupid amounts of time rewriting terrible hobbyist code like the rest of us
The real problem with Opening Round is that it's going to make using AFL Tables a little bit more annoying for the rest of time - because they're just referring to it as Round 1, and we're gonna have to double check which round 2024 events really happened in.
Let's not pretend that 100k fans get a seat at the MCG. Members of competing GF clubs are allocated 28-34k tickets. A 50k-seat stadium is fine if you stop giving tens of thousands of tickets to sponsors, corporates and neutrals.
Things as likely as Geelong winning the minor premiership (about 70%):
- Pies top 3
- Giants top 4
- Tigers top 6
- Eagles / Crows make finals
- Brisbane 4th-8th
- Suns bottom 3
- Carlton bottom 2
- At least 3 of the above being wrong
Expected scores are informative, but expected score *ladders* crush the numbers down to binary wins and losses, destroying most of the info gained. I bet a simple percentage ladder is more predictive.
I thought my site being attacked by maniacs, but it turns out there's a class at La Trobe University with an assignment to build a footy website based on the Squiggle API.
This was a successful year for AFL models. For the first time, the average of all models was (ever so slightly) more accurate than the average of all bookies' closing lines, both in terms of tipped margins and win confidence.
In 2021 I said, "Of the 26 experts and models I’ve tracked for three consecutive years,
@petryan
has the best record [of predicting the final ladder]... he’s been getting better, too." This year Peter's was the most accurate out of 45 experts & models.
“Expected scores” is a concept invented by Champion Data, an alternative reality in which there’s a statistical likelihood that a goal, behind or miss will be scored from a particular position. In this parallel universe, Richmond are equal with Geelong.
Gee this is telling! Locked out of official AFL data, these guys painstakingly compile their own shot data by hand, prompting a small explosion of articles & insights on Reddit, social media - and the AFL’s own site!
#sharingiscaring
Hey imagine that,
@StatsInsider
provides freely available shot data and
@AFLcomau
writes an article using it? Why not use official data?
- Is the process 2 long?
- Is the data too hard to access?
Is this really the situation Aus biggest sport is now in?
Models are better tippers partly because they can effortlessly consider large numbers of recent results, an advantage that shrinks in finals and is almost gone by the Grand Final. So go with your heart.
I mean not to nitpick but that's 6 out of 8 columns for info that can be easily inferred from the other 2 (name & pts), yet percentage, which does matter and can't be inferred, is left out.
@hasumpstuffedup
This pic actually shows the cameras are NOT synced, as it's impossible to draw a line from all three camera angles that intersects. The ball is to the left from the left angle, dead over from the right, and to the right from in front.
Things I noticed while pressing "UPDATE SEASON" button:
- Melbourne should be hot hot favourites
- Richmond will be much better
- Good fixtures: ADE, SYD, GEE, RIC
- Not great fixtures: Docklands tenants, MEL
Think it's under-reported how horrendous St Kilda's fixture was this year. Double up games were against Richmond, GWS, Melbourne, Hawthorn, North; had home games against interstate sides only 4 times but had to travel away interstate 5 times + 1 to Kardinia + 1 to Tas.
The AFL app scoreworm is wrong again. Collingwood weren’t over 20 in front in the 4th qtr, and if they had been, it would have taken more than 3 goals to put the Hawks in front.
Isn't it physically impossible for the ball to be directly over the post when viewed from two (perpendicular) angles but not a third? Are these cameras correctly synced?
Full results are in for 50 expert & media pundit preseason ladder predictions. Summary: Over the long term, Squiggle is going quite a lot better than any of them. I will be reposting this link once per day forever.
In March 2020, I built a calculator from
@MatterOfStats
's brilliant work on the predictability of AFL crowds. COVID immediately crushed the numbers, and now it only works as a peek into an alternate reality where we'd had no pandemic.