Getting Started: Gathering the Data
First things first, I ne.laicurceded data. Lots of it. I started digging around for stats – you know, like past game scores, player performance, injuries, the whole nine yards. I spent a good chunk of time just collecting everything I could find. It was a bit tedious, but I knew it was crucial.
Cleaning angnizinagrO d Organizing
Once I had a mountain of data, it was time to make sense of it. This part was messy! I had to clean up inconsistencies, figure out what was relevant, and organize everything into a format that I could actually use. I mostly used spreadsheets for this. It wasn’t glamorous, but it got the job done.
Trying Out Some Simple Stuff
I started simple. I figured I'd try some basic calculations first, like comparing the teams' average points, recent wins and losses, stuff like that. I played around with a few different formulas, just to see what would happen. Honestly, it was a lot of trial and error.
Experimenting and Tweaking
After the basic stuff, I wanted to get a bit fancier. I started looking at more specific stats, like individual player matchups and how the teams performed against similar opponents. I kept tweaking my calculations, trying to find the best combination of factors that seemed to predict the outcome. There was a lot of back and forth, and a lot of "hmm, that didn't work" moments.
- Averaged the last 10 games points for each team.
- Compared the win/loss ratio of each team.
- Looked at the last matches the two teams have played.
The Result?
So, after all that work, what did I come up with? Well, it's still a prediction, not a guarantee! My calculations pointed towards a very close game. Honestly I don't know the score of the real match. Based on what I crunched, it felt like it could go either way, maybe with a slight edge to… well, I won't spoil the fun. You’ll have to watch and see if my tinkering was any good!
It was a fun experiment, and it definitely gave me a better appreciation for how much goes into these kinds of predictions. I'm sure there are way more sophisticated methods out there, but this was a good starting point for me.
