At the start of each Prediction League thread I usually add in a link to
My Computer's prediction. I notice on this week's thread yam man asks how often is my computer right. So I thought I'd tell you a bit more about them. Back in 1989 I wrote a little computer program called "Dr Fox's Football Annual" on an Atari 1040 STFM home computer. It let me keep track of football results across the leagues in England and Scotland. It also calculated league tables and produced performance statistics. I think I produced a really nice user interface on it that made it easy to enter and analyse results.
As I had all the results in it I thought it would be neat to have a go at using them to make predictions, although just for a bit of fun rather than a serious attempt at beating the bookies or winning the football pools (remember them?). I just chose a simple configurable formula that pitted the home team's form against the away team's. The formula could include results, goals scored and conceded and could go back a set number of days. So I'd calculate a number for each team, e.g. how many wins*2 + draws*1 over the last six weeks and then compare the home team against the away team and if the two numbers were about the same then it would predict a draw and if one team's number was much bigger than the other then the prediction was a win for that team. So it's not very sophisticated, it's just based on previous results with no additional information on players or management changes or the weather or anything else that effects the results of a football match, but hopefully it would give some idea of the current relative strengths of two teams. The program also produced nice graphs showing the relative league positions of the teams, the goals scored and conceded and runs the teams were on e.g. consecutive wins, games without a draw etc.
I'm still using the program. It's now Windows based on a PC. I use it on the web site to automatically produce the Next Game page each week. So on that page you get the Position, Goals and Statistics graphs along with the last six matches played by each team and their lines in the league table. It also gives the prediction of the result. The predictions aren't quite as good as I'd like them to be, but football wouldn't be so much fun if everything was predictable! It seems to get about half its predictions right. For this season here are the results of the the 20 league games played so far along with the prediction that was made and I've put a Y or an N at the front to indicate if the prediction was correct or not:
Y Boston United 1-1 Chester 3rd August 2019 PREDICT : A Draw ( DELTA= 0 )
N Alfreton Town 1-1 Boston United 6th August 2019 PREDICT : Away Win ( DELTA=-50 )
N Boston United 1-0 Leamington 13th August 2019 PREDICT : Away Win ( DELTA=-42 )
Y Boston United 1-1 Guiseley 17th August 2019 PREDICT : A Draw ( DELTA=-12 )
N Gloucester City 3-0 Boston United 24th August 2019 PREDICT : A Draw ( DELTA=-5 )
Y Boston United 5-0 Altrincham 26th August 2019 PREDICT : Home Win ( DELTA= 27 )
Y Hereford FC 0-0 Boston United 31st August 2019 PREDICT : A Draw ( DELTA= 19 )
Y Kettering Town 0-2 Boston United 3rd September 2019 PREDICT : Away Win ( DELTA=-58 )
Y Boston United 2-1 Bradford Park Avenue 7th September 2019 PREDICT : Home Win ( DELTA= 94 )
N Gateshead 3-0 Boston United 14th September 2019 PREDICT : A Draw ( DELTA= 0 )
Y Boston United 2-0 Southport 28th September 2019 PREDICT : Home Win ( DELTA= 50 )
N Darlington 2-1 Boston United 12th October 2019 PREDICT : Away Win ( DELTA=-75 )
Y York City 2-1 Boston United 29th October 2019 PREDICT : Home Win ( DELTA= 100 )
N AFC Telford United 1-3 Boston United 2nd November 2019 PREDICT : Home Win ( DELTA= 50 )
Y Spennymoor Town 2-1 Boston United 12th November 2019 PREDICT : Home Win ( DELTA= 137 )
N Farsley Celtic 2-4 Boston United 16th November 2019 PREDICT : A Draw ( DELTA=-19 )
N Boston United 2-0 Blyth Spartans 19th November 2019 PREDICT : Away Win ( DELTA=-29 )
Y Kidderminster Harriers 1-3 Boston United 7th December 2019 PREDICT : Away Win ( DELTA=-135 )
N King's Lynn Town 1-0 Boston United 26th December 2019 PREDICT : A Draw ( DELTA= 8 )
Y Boston United 2-1 Kettering Town 28th December 2019 PREDICT : Home Win ( DELTA= 58 )
So 11 out of 20 correct so far, so just about respectable.
I also use it to help me with my predictions on the Sky Super Six each week and it sometimes does quite well, but not quite well enough to win the jackpot so far. It did get all the results right one week, but I only got four of the scores right - I have to use my judgement to predict the goals scored as the program doesn't do that, though it does help with the analysis as I can see how many match scores e.g. 1-1, 2-1, 0-2 etc there have been for each team and each division.
