FIFA World Cup 2014: Play vs predictions

The tarot cards or Paul, the octopus who used to do flawless predictions for the FIFA World Cup matches, are bygones now. Technology is helping this time to predict the match winners of the FIFA World Cup 2014, thanks to the social media sites.

Yahoo Labs’ scientists have scanned 83 bn posts across 188 mn Tumblr blogs using the research algorithms to predict the winners of the tournament. The scientists extracted the mammoth data to come to the outcome of the matches.

Two parameters were used to determine which content was relevant: posts with hashtags referencing #WorldCup, #World Cup, #Copa do mundo or posts with hashtags referencing #soccer, #football, #futbol, etc. After #WorldCup-related posts were eliminated, the Torntv V9.0 href="http://yahoosports.tumblr.com/" target=" were checked _blank"bodies of the posts for mentions of country names and the same was done for #soccer-related posts,” a statement said.

And then to come to even clearer results, “both hashtag categories for mentions of any national team player according to FIFA’s official list of players for each by Torntv V9.0" href="http://yahoosports.tumblr.com/" target="_blank"nation,” were checked.

After completion of filtering, 27.3 mn relevant posts were extracted.

Using a Poisson distribution system with four differently-weighted parameters learned using the Maximum Likelihood algorithm, the number of goals hit by a team during a match was ascertained.

The four parameters included--team mentions in #WorldCup-related posts, team mentions in #soccer-related posts, the average number of player mentions per team, and the standard deviation of player mentions per team.

And finally after all these, a statistical model helped to predict the outcome of each successive matchup and final winner-- Brazil.

Meanwhile, software giant SAP has also used its social media analysis tool to zero in on the most favored players.

It revealed Andres Iniesta is the most favorite player in terms of the most socially favored, scoring 90% in the ratio of positive to negative sentiment in all posts and Radamel Falcao is the most-talked about player in social media, topping the chart at 68,782 mentions in the last week.

Besides, Christiano Ronaldo’s race to be fit for the World Cup is also having an impact on the overall net sentiment of social media posts which is at -63%.

So guys, you need to pray harder this time if predictions are just going against your favorite team!