UPDATE: See predictions for any bout in the future!  Look for the Bout Stats icon in bout listings.

Click a blue upcoming bout in the bout ticker above to see what kind of outcome the ranking system expects.

How accurate are the predictions?

Well, we believe we've maximized how often it's right, but that's not quite the point. Of course unexpected outcomes are just part of the process.

The more off the mark the ranking system was, the more it <--break->will change it's opinion about those team's skill. And if it totally nailed an outcome, nothing will change.

Here's some stats about the accuracy of the FTS ranking system:

FTS predicted the winner in 154 out of 202 bouts (76.24%) for 2008 
FTS predicted the winner in 228 out of 299 bouts (76.25%) for 2009 
FTS predicted the winner in 335 out of 397 bouts (84.38%) for 2010 
FTS predicted the winner in 173 out of 209 bouts (82.78%) for 2011


FTS Predictions

Comments

Wow! It's gorgeous.

Okay, I've been trying to figure it out... how are you generating the %WinProb?

yeah...that's a bit more complicated. I'm hoping to put together a Stat Chat on the underlying concepts soon because it goes to the heart of the statistical nature of the system. The short (opaque) answer is that the win probability requires an additional level of abstraction based on an assumption that each team's variability is consistent with the league-wide statistical distribution of performances. Having previously determined the statistical distribution, I can look at the probability of a result fluctuating far enough to flip the winner.

I'm content with that for now, thank you. When I was thinking of my own ways I would try to calculate that, I thought of a way that attempted to use the ratings, but I wasn't very confident in it. I would've rather had one based on the distribution of performances of the teams, but I didn't have that data easily in front of me. I look forward to hearing more!

You went 9-0 with your predictions this weekend, congrats. I don't believe that has that ever happened before.

If only I could dig up what the win percentages used to be, we could calculate the odds of going 100% for the weekend.

Feature request? I just noticed that if I click on one of those bout links from a team's history... it shows me numbers from if they were to currently play against one another. I think I'd rather see a comparison of what their numbers were when they played... and keep those predictions.

well, just using the overall accuracy from above (between 82-84% right on average), there's about a 1 in 6 chance of having 9 straight bouts right....and at least as of last weekend, we're still right about at 82% for 2011.

I'd like to see that as well. Another great content option would be to choose 2 teams, that aren't necessarily slated to play each other and see what their bout matchup odds would be

Yes agreed. The popup/page for played bouts is just slapped together. Might be a couple weeks before I get to it, but features like you mention are on the list :)