by André Vizzoni

Introduction

In this post, I will introduce a prediction model that was the product of a research project that spanned four years (winning a few awards) and was the final project for my degree in Statistics. For those interested in the final project, here it is – though I warn everyone in advance that it is in Portuguese. The objective of this post, then, is to translate the most central parts of that project to English while, at the same time, talking about applications of the model to basketball data, since the original project used soccer data.

First, I will give an intuitive explanation of the model, with no equations or mathematical concepts introduced. Next will come the methodology section, where there will be a lot more maths and formal definitions. As such, people who are interested only on the intuitive definitions might wish to skip the methodology section). The idea behind this structuring of the post is for it to be understandable, both by laypeople and by people well versed in statistics. Finally, in the discussion section there will be a few summary comments, as well as a preview of things to come on this site.

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