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

Data science and machine learning algorithms can help us form probabilistic forecasts of things like sporting events.

By: Achim Zeileis, University of Innsbruck, The Conversation

Outlets: The Conversation

Published: June 9, 2026

Words: 1,009

Last Updated: 1 month, 2 weeks ago

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By Achim Zeileis, 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 …

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