World Cup gambling

Germany’s players hold up the World Cup trophy as they celebrate after winning the 2014 FIFA World Cup final football match between Germany and Argentina 1-0 following extra-time at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 13, 2014.

South African data scientists to predict results of FIFA World Cup

These local data experts have quite the track record…

World Cup gambling

Germany’s players hold up the World Cup trophy as they celebrate after winning the 2014 FIFA World Cup final football match between Germany and Argentina 1-0 following extra-time at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 13, 2014.

In 2015, South African data analytics company, Principa, out-predicted 99.68% of humans using Superbru during the Rugby World Cup. Now, with the same predictive analysis, the group will try their hand at some soccer.

Principa: Some top-notch World Cup predictions?

Principa will use “analytics and machine learning” to predict the results for every single 2018 FIFA World Cup match.

Ok, so what exactly does “analytics and machine learning” actually mean?

The company says it will use the same principles that it uses to predict customer behaviour for its financial services and retail clients.

The data scientists will also use different algorithms to develop models that can predict the outcome of the matches.

These models probably won’t get everything right at the first attempt, though. According to Principa, the algorithms will be retrained with the results of each match to improve the accuracy for the following round.

“The purpose is to see how well different predictive analytics techniques used successfully in other areas can outperform the best human-made predictions,” the company said in a statement.

If the Rugby World Cup wasn’t enough, these scientists also had success with predicting the outcomes of the 2016 Oscars.

According to Principa CEO Jaco Rossouw, this will be the first time the company ever tries its hand at soccer prediction. He say’s he’s feeling “cautiously optimistic”.

“It will be interesting to see how accurate our models are in predicting the outcomes of the football matches.

“We’ve never used our skills as data scientists to predict the outcomes of a football game, and unlike with the Rugby World Cup where we were predicting the point margins between the participating teams, this time we’ll be predicting the exact final scores – a significantly more complex challenge! We’re excited to see how the algorithms perform.”

If you’re the betting type and are looking to trust some local data experts, Principa will be posting the data-driven predictions before every match on their Twitter and Facebook accounts.

You can check out their official website if you’re looking for all of those details.

Who would have thunk it, a whole new way to “support local” heading into the World Cup.