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Well, No One is Perfect

April 8th, 2009 · 2 Comments

Looking over my latest post (since removed since the numbers are a little wrong), something jumped out at me: of the 11 times the Netherlands didn’t win their group, they didn’t qualify from the playoffs a single time. This meant that either they had some really bad luck in those playoffs, or there was something wrong in the simulator. Then I noticed that none of the other teams in the group, except Scotland, qualified from the playoffs in any of the sims either.

And the error was mine. It appears that I made a reference to the wrong variable when doing the “worst of the second place finishers” part in UEFA qualifying, and essentially hard coded Scotland in as the 2nd place finisher in that group, regardless. OOPS!! This also apparently is why they were so commonly the worst of the 2nd place finishers; because they were finishing in 2nd even when they didn’t do so well on actual points. Full marks to the two people who noticed that the Dutch were qualifying less than the Spanish and Scotland was so commonly the worst 2nd place team seemed wrong. You were both right.

I probably would have caught the screwup earlier, but Scotland is the most likely team to finish second in the group. So, it looks like I’m going to have to run the simulations again. The problem in the code is fixed. But the damage has already been done, and now I stand here with my pants down (and that’s really not pretty).

Every cloud has a silver lining, and now I can code in the UEFA seeding process as well. That may very well mean that Spain or the Netherlands (or both) hit the 10,000 out of 10,000 mark. I suppose the margin of error is such that the Aussies could hit it this time (they only missed twice last time) too. The upshot is the other teams in Group 9 will see their chances rise, Scotland will see their chances fall, and the other European teams will see their chances slip very slightly due to the increased risk of being “worst second place finisher.”

Since the mistake was mine, I’ll try and do this as quickly as possible and have new numbers as soon as I can get it all done. Until then, please refer to me as “Dumbass McCracken” in any conversations you have about this…

Tags: Soccer!! · South Africa 2010 · Uncategorized

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Amir // Apr 9, 2009 at 9:41 am

    Well, it can happen to anyone I guess…
    Anyway, I would like to know how will you use FIFA rankings for that? will you use April’s rankings, or calculate the rankings based on the simulation results?
    I guess the 2nd option would be too hard to implement, but I just want to be sure.

    And one more request, could you please post the number of times in the playoffs for every team (only for Europe might be good too) and the number of wins in it?

    Thanks,
    Amir

  • 2 Voros // Apr 9, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    Will do Amir. The sims are all done, I just have to put the post together.

    Just used the April rankings, the other way would be far too complicated.

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