04/18/24
July 08, 2014
Nate Silver Had Brazil at 65% to Win Today: "We have some reasonably good news for Brazil. Even without Neymar and Silva, the team remains the leading contender to win the World Cup in our estimation. You may or may not agree with the math, but the intuition behind it is this: Soccer is a team sport, and Brazil is a very deep team. ... If we run the new numbers through the SPI match predictor, we come up with a 65 percent chance of Brazil prevailing against Germany." -- Nate Silver's pre-match prediction on 538
bender 1, Nate Silver 874
posted by bender at 12:16 AM on July 09, 2014
The interesting part is that because Brazil collapsed so spectacularly (and Germany took great advantage of it), no one is really making fun of the people who predicted Brazil to win. If Germany had won 1-0, or 2-1, or 3-1, then you could say "Haw haw, what do you know?"
Brazil losing 7-1?! That's black swan stuff right there, and anyone that tries to tell you that they saw it coming is crazy. It's so outside the realm of conceived possibilities that it actually protects the bad predictions. "Oh, sure I was wrong, but look at what happened? That's not normal, and you can't predict that sort of thing to happen."
posted by grum@work at 08:04 AM on July 09, 2014
My six-year old nephew says he saw it coming, "because without Thiago Silva they had no defense, and without Neymar they had no offense."
I told him he was pretty astute and he said, "I pay attention to Jose Mourinho."
posted by Hugh Janus at 09:19 AM on July 09, 2014
Smart kid. I'm picturing a six-year-old in a nattily tailored suit with salt and pepper hair and a pensive expression.
posted by rcade at 10:43 AM on July 09, 2014
because without Thiago Silva they had no defense, and without Neymar they had no offense.
And because of that David Silva tried to play both. Worked a charm.
posted by yerfatma at 11:00 AM on July 09, 2014
I'm picturing a six-year-old in a nattily tailored suit with salt and pepper hair and a pensive expression.
He's more of a pint-sized Erwin Rommel:
posted by Hugh Janus at 12:08 PM on July 09, 2014
Did you know that the human head weighs eight pounds?
posted by beaverboard at 01:03 PM on July 09, 2014
Haha yes!
posted by Hugh Janus at 02:28 PM on July 09, 2014
Nate secretly knew what the plan was, all along.