Did Yuzuru use Astrology at all?

Yes, astrology, dumb luck and the odds that I found in odds checker.

It is good in two ways: to find the favorite (FRawleys method) and to know what to do when I am stuck.

Example, in the 3pm football starts, Frawley says that you can?t use his method. So I go and just bet in the favs.

Oddschecker is useful when you don?t know squat about football. Specially football in england. I don?t know even if a team is supposed to be famous.

Y

It was very kind of Deb to give the rest of us a head start last weekend Your new method is certainly paying off, Deb!

Last night when they started uploading the scores, the Skyscript team was ranked 97 which was mainly due to three of us having picked the correct score for the first game At that point I was 88 in the individual rankings! This has changed this morning and we've all slipped back, but I thought it was worth recording

oh well
beginners luck ends as quickly as begins
it?s life

You are still doing well Yuzuru, but my goodness, how quickly that wheel of fortune can spin !

I only heard about the Arsenal match on Saturday night and didn?t want to know anymore after that. Couldn?t believe it when I checked my ranking this morning. With 11 points I?ve ascended nearly 7000 ranks in one weekend! (Talk about those fixed stars dropping me down and picking me up again!!)

Best of all - now everyone in the Skyscript team is doing well ? everyone of us has more points than my son and my husband, so I am having great fun at home this weekend (before next week?s fall sets in). The team is ranked at 108 which is amazing. Well done Ficina, you are doing so well!! (But watch this little filly from the rear )

(We should have our own prize for the end of season winner don't you think? I know it won't be a premier league shirt, but maybe we could call it Callanan's cup and get Tom to donate one of his old T-shirts)

Yes, well done to everyone, especially Deb! I am looking over my shoulder The result of tonight's game will be interesting.

how quickly that wheel of fortune can spin !

This is so true, especially at the start of the competition. The person at the top of the individual rankings last week has now disappeared off the leaderboard completely. (For those who don't know, the leaderboard only lists the top 50.)

Just out of interest I set up my own league (with just me in it!) in order to find out how many leagues were playing. This was a daft thing to do of course because rather than allocating me 0 points, it automatically added the 12 points I already had at that point - duh! However, it means that my "league of one" (called Astroleague) actually appears on the rankings in position 27

maybe we could call it Callanan's cup and get Tom to donate one of his old T-shirts

As with the Guardian prizes, it will have to be a signed T-shirt, Tom

Well done to everyone, only 5 points separating all of us.

I thought there may be 'leagues of one' in the table of different leagues. I suspect the top leagues ( at least the top 27) are a league with only one person in it. It's a pity we can't see the teams in these other leagues.

Let's see how tonights game unfolds.

I suspect the top leagues ( at least the top 27) are a league with only one person in it.

Possibly. "Effes" in the top three positions is obviously the same person. There are pros and cons of being a one-person league. You stand or fall by your own predictions, with no team members to help you. One bad week and you can disappear off the rankings. At least in the Skyscript team if/when one of us has a bad week, there's the rest of the gang to keep us in contention

At least in the Skyscript team if/when one of us has a bad week, there's the rest of the gang to keep us in contention

But of course that there is also a regression to the mean. Meaning that, as the size of the individual team grows, the probability is that the value of the team will get closer to the global mean.

Individuals will have more skewed distributions based in hability and luck. In the long run luck is less important, but as you can get 3 point if you get the score, luck is a very important component.

As Deb said "but my goodness, how quickly that wheel of fortune can spin !"

Ah, one more tought.

Ficina, next time, you could create a "control group" profile, betting only in the favorite team in every game to the whole season, so you can get a standard of your gains, compared to the opinion of the bookmakers.

This is similar to what is done in financial analysis: compare a stock with a benchmark.

But of course that there is also a regression to the mean. Meaning that, as the size of the individual team grows, the probability is that the value of the team will get closer to the global mean.

Oh, Yuzuru, I'm an absolute dunce when it comes to statistical stuff, so I don't understand what you mean

Ficina, next time, you could create a "control group" profile, betting only in the favorite team in every game to the whole season, so you can get a standard of your gains, compared to the opinion of the bookmakers.

Actually I had thought about doing that but the problem is I'd still have to guess a correct score, and that's where the luck comes in.

I do have a separate profile where I enter scores predicted by a kind of statistical analysis program. Not calculated by me of course, but pinched from elsewhere. It tends to go with the favourites but not always. So far it's got 12 points.

Oh, Yuzuru, I'm an absolute dunce when it comes to statistical stuff, so I don't understand what you mean

Let?s say we have one million people betting. Let?s assume that, between 0 - 30 possible points, the mean would be 15.

I was just trying to say that, if you have a very large group, say 1000 people, the probability is the mean of the group will be closer to the global mean of 15. Because, as you said, good bets are balanced by bad bets.

So if a group of astrologers use a combination of astrology and intuition (guesswork) and there is some merit in what we do, then you would expect our mean score to be greater than the mean for the whole?

I remember Bernadette Brady making some statistical comment on patterns in the birth charts of the British Monarchy/family lineage that you should expect a certain percentage deviation from the mean. If the result is greater than this deviation then the statistical result shows there is something more than co-incidence/chance and demonstrates (proves) a theory?

I'll go and have a lie down now before the football match.