Harmonic Accurately Predicted Rugby World Cup Results
December 2011
Now the 2011 Rugby World cup is won, data analytics consultancy Harmonic, can now reveal their statistics team accurately predicted the outcome of the pool matches using a sound statistics team approach – in February 2010. This exercise was done voluntarily for the RWC2011 Management Team, to illustrate the possibilities provided by statistics to address a range of planning challenges.
Harmonic developed a methodology using historical match results, world rankings and simulation, to predict the winning team of each pool match (and pool winner) and got it right each time. This includes the Ireland V Australia Pool C upset!
We had fun looking at this RWC challenge of determining the most likely top 8 teams”, says Chief Analytics Officer, Shirley Wu. Our statistical team, with high-level review from the Professor Alan Lee at the University of Auckland, completed the preliminary analysis, which we then fine tuned to obtain the final results.
The methodology developed by Shirley’s team simulated the outcome of each of the games in a given pool (including bonus points) from which Harmonic estimated the probability that a team would qualify for the quarter finals. The matches scheduled in each pool play were simulated 10,000 times. The number of times each team would have qualified was tallied based on the outcomes of the 10 matches in each pool.
Harmonic provides specialised analytical expertise and decision support tools for a range of sectors particularly in asset intensive industries including: telecommunications, energy/utilities and agriculture. To find out more contact Phil Shepherd.
