Home and Away Season Competition Points and Scoring Metrics
/On Twitter today someone made the observation that teams' accuracy or conversion rate differentials seemed to have been strongly correlated with their final ladder position.
Read MoreLeads and Lead Changes in AFL
/In the previous blog here on Statistical Analysis I referred to this paper and applied its drift-free Random Walk model to the "safety" of leads recent AFL history, finding that, to some extent, it fitted empirical data well.
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Are AFL Games Like Random Walks?
/I came across an interesting journal article this week, published in March of 2015 on arXiv.org and entitled "Safe Leads and Lead Changes in Competitive Team Sports".
Read MoreWhen Favourites Lose: Accuracy or Scoring Shot Production?
/In today's post I'll review the performance of all the teams that have been assessed as favourites by the TAB in games played during the period 2006 to the end of Round 17 in 2015, excluding only those games where the TAB bookmaker installed equal-favourites.
Read MoreWinning Scores and Underdogs' Chances
/Recently, I noted, somewhat in passing in this piece on close game and blowouts, the decline in overall team scoring, a topic that's receiving not a little attention within the football community at the moment, fuelled partly by some recent low-scoring games, in particular the Dees v Lions encounter.
Read MoreBest and Worst AFL Teams 2005 - 2015: A MoSSBOD Perspective
/In the last blog on this part of the site I introduced the MoSSBOD Team Rating System, the defining characteristics of which were that it Rated teams based on Scoring Shot Production and Concession and that it provided both a Defensive and an Offensive Rating for all teams.
Today I want to explore the history of those Ratings across the last decade to see what MoSSBOD has to say about the strongest and weakest Offensive and Defensive teams across that period.
Read MoreRating Teams Based on Ability to Generate and Prevent Scoring Shots
/Three distinct pieces from three different Friends of MoS were the direct ingredients for this fresh (to MoS, anyway) take on team ratings
Read MoreTeam Scoring Model Parameter Sensitivity
/In recent blogs we've being exploring a range of topics related to team scoring, all of them based on a model I created in a series of blogs
Read MoreA Few More Simulations: Losing With More Scoring Shots and Playing a Draw
/The last few blogs here on the Statistical Analyses part of the website have used a model of team scoring that I fitted late last year to explore features of game scores and outcomes that we might expect to observe if that model is a reasonable approximation of reality.
Read MoreThe Importance of Goal-Kicking Accuracy
/So far this season, eight teams have lost after generating more scoring shots than their opponents and three more have been defeated despite matching their opponent's scoring shot production, which means that the outcome of over 15% of games might this year have been reversed had the losing team kicked straighter.
Read MoreMapping Expected Margins to Probabililties
/I'm a sucker for a colourful chart, and today's is based on simulations using an earlier model of Home and Away team scoring, constrained by bookmaker-based empirical realities.
Read MoreWhat Lead's a Good Lead in the AFL?
/This 2015 season, seven rounds in, has felt like one where leads of any size have been less comfortable.
Read MorePredicting Total Game Scores Versus Predicting Margins
/In the comments section of the previous blog, LT pointed out that Bookmakers seem to be doing a better job this year predicting the sum of the Home Team and Away Team scores than predicting the difference between them.
Read MoreEstimating Game Margin Variability: Empirical Challenges
/Lately I've been thinking a lot and writing a little - a mix that experience has taught me is nearer optimal - about the variability of game margins around their expected values.
Read MoreSame Head-to-Head Prices, Different Lines
/I've raised an eyebrow or two more than once when I've seen the TAB bookmaker post two markets with the same head-to-head prices but different line market handicaps priced at even-money.
Read MoreWho's Best To Play At Home?
/The 2015 AFL Schedule is imbalanced, as have been all AFL schedules since 1987 when the competition expanded to 14 teams, by which I mean that not every team plays every other team at home and away during the regular season. As many have written, this is not an ideal situation since it distorts the relative opportunities of teams' playing in Finals.
As we'll see in this blog, teams will have distinct preferences for how that imbalance is reflected in their draw.
Read MoreInferring Finals Chances From MARS Team Ratings
/If the Dogs make this year's Grand Final they'll also make history as the lowest MARS Rated team after 5 rounds to do so in the modern era.
Read MoreMargin Prediction 2012 to 2015 Round 4 : A Review
/It's been a difficult season for tipping game margins, by which I mean that Mean Absolute Errors (MAEs) for most of the forecasters I follow have been elevated relative to last year.
Read MoreIf You Can't Get Better, Get More Unpredictable
/For the weaker team in any contest which rewards only victory (or at least does so disproportionately to the rewards for proximity to victory), variability can be an advantage.
Read MoreThe Monash Tipping Competitions: Setting Targets
/Monash University has been running AFL tipping competitions for over 20 years and this year is offering three, all of which are open to the public.
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