If Microsoft Bing’s prediction engine is as good at predicting NFL games as it was picking World Cup match winners, well, expect a Seahawks victory over Green Bay tomorrow evening.
The Redmond company, which was somewhat of a virtual psychic during the World Cup knockout stage, is again predicting the outcome of sporting events and has added NFL football to its repertoire.
With Thursday’s opening game of the 2014-15 NFL season, Microsoft thinks that the defending champion Seahawks have a 74.2 percent chance of beating the Packers. Here’s the methodology behind that prediction:
For pro football, we model the respective strengths of the teams by examining outcomes from previous seasons including wins, losses, and the very rare tie outcome (two games since 2009), factoring in margin of victories, location of contest, playing surface and roof cover (or lack thereof), weather and temperature conditions, scoring by quarters, and multiple offensive and defensive statistics. In addition to this prior model, we identify fans on Web and Social sites and track their sentiment to understand the aggregate wisdom of this expressive crowd. This introduces data which statistics alone cannot capture, providing real-time adjustments which surprisingly can capture injury news and other substantive factors in win probabilities.
Microsoft said it expects to get a “majority” of its NFL picks correct, but warns that “no statistics or sentiments can fairly capture the energy, the passion and the preparation the players bring on the field.”
Here’s how Bing, which is a big Seahawks sponsor, is predicting the first week of NFL games:
While it was mediocre during the World Cup group stage, Bing correctly picked each of the 15 World Cup knockout round matches with the exception of the third-place match. How it fares during the NFL season remains to be seen.
You can check out Microsoft’s predictions on Bing by searching for “NFL Predictions,” or Windows Phone 8.1 owners can use the virtual assistant Cortana by asking her, “Who will win Team A or Team B.”
