We ran 100,000 computer simulations of the World Cup. And the winner will be …

By Achim Zeileis, Professor of Statistics, University of Innsbruck

In times past, when we wanted to know which team would win the World Cup, we had to turn to seers with crystal balls, use divination via tea leaves, or hope for Paul the Octopus to tell us what would happen.

But modern data science can provide a better alternative. As part of a team of statisticians, I helped train a machine learning algorithm to predict the most likely course of the tournament.

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We ran 100,000 computer simulations of the World Cup. And the winner will be …

Probabilistic forecasts and loaded…Read complete article© The Conversation - Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Probabilistic forecasts and loaded…

Read complete article
© The Conversation - Tuesday, June 9, 2026