Friday, June 20, 2014

World Cup: Ecuador vs. Honduras

***Which result should I root for?***

I'm adding a new piece of data for this game. First I need to give credit to my colleague Eric for originating this idea!

I expect a lot of World Cup fans don't have a direct rooting interest in Honduras vs. Ecuador, so I'm here to try and help you find one! I wanted to know how this game affected other countries chances of winning the World Cup, so I did some digging. I ran 30,000 simulations of the remainder of the World Cup, recording how often teams from each country won in the event of a Honduras win, an Ecuador win, and a draw.

For example, Chile (top of the left hand column) won the World Cup more often (on average) in simulations where Ecuador wins today than simulations where Honduras wins or the match is a draw.

So! If you're wondering who to root for, just find your country below and look at the column it's in, and root away.

So gogogogogo Draw!!!



Note that there's some potential noise. It is a simulation results and at the margins it's possible that, when it's close, a county could happen to end up on one side in one simulation and on another side in another simulation. I've tried to minimize it by running a large number of sims, but it could still be there.

***Win Probability Graph***



***Pregame Work***

Either team with a win would really improve its lot for advancing out of group play. OTOH each team is o-u-t out with a loss

Honduras favored to win a low scoring affair, but 0-0 draw is the second most likely outcome so buckle your seatbelts!



This post  has a little more on how the win probability graphs work
This post has a little more on how the predicted outcomes charts work

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