我要吃瓜

Citation

Scelles N (2014) How uncertain and full of incidents are FIFA World Cup games?. The Scorecard, 16.06.2014. http://thescorecard.org/post/301

Abstract
First paragraph: In my last posting, I specified that my previous research showed that football games are the most uncertain with 85 to 90% of percentage of game-time with a difference between teams of no more than one goal[1]. Is this percentage true for the World Cup? I worked in the past about uncertainty of outcome but also incidents in the World Cup with a publication in French[2]. Why incidents? Because if a competition with only 0-0 has 100% of game-time with uncertainty, it is not sure that people really enjoy games! Why incidents and not goals? Because it is not sure that people really enjoy games with a lot of goals but only for the same team! Here are the main results I got. Since the 1990 World Cup, all the editions had a percentage between 85 and 90% except in 2002 (84.6%) with 1990 the most balanced (89.8%). Nevertheless, 1990 was also the edition with least incidents: only 1.35 per game whereas 1998 was the edition with most incidents (1.83 per game).

Keywords
football; forecasting; prediction; uncertainty