Super computer SAM predicted Boxing Day Premier League results. Here's how it went
The human pundits are dead?
Boxing Day saw all 20 teams in the English Premier League in action, so it was a good time to test SAM (Sports Analytics Machine), a super-computer created by Ian McHale, professor of sports analytics at the University of Salford and his colleague, Tarak Kharrat.
SAM is designed to, among other things, predict the outcomes of football matches.
"We have data on results, teams, players and every event in every match - there is no better time to see if man can beat the machine," Prof McHale told the BBC.
So how did it go?
Terrible (see table below).
The super computer predicted only two exact score lines, and picked the correct outcome in only five of the games.
The only consolation for the machine was that it did better than the famously duff Lawrenson (one exact scoreline, four correct outcomes).
van Gaal
What's going on here? In part, statistics can't tell the whole story. For example, After Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal walked out of a press conference earlier this week, it was obvious to any human (bar the hapless Lawro) that the Dutchman was losing the plot under immense stress, and that his team was likely to put in a flat and frail performance. To SAM the machine, not so much.
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Super computer SAM predicted Boxing Day Premier League results. Here's how it went
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