As Germany beats Brazil 7:1 Cortana beats Paul the Octopus 13:8: Update–make that 14 in a row
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Yesterday’s historic Germany-Brazil match will not just go down in the history books for Germany’s score but also for Bing and Contana’s, who have now racked up 13 correct predictions.
A blog post written by the Bing team last month explains how Cortana predicts each game.
“For the tournament, our models evaluate the strength of each team through a variety of factors such as previous win/loss/tie record in qualification matches and other international competitions and margin of victory in these contests, adjusted for location since home field advantage is a known bias."
Cortana has now overtaken the winning streak of Paul The Octopus, who correctly guessing the winners of eight matches during the elimination rounds of the 2010 World Cup in Germany, including the final.
In the same blog post Microsoft wrote:
“Further adjustments are made related to other factors which give one team advantages over another, such as home field (for Brazil) or proximity (South American teams), playing surface (hybrid grass), game-time weather conditions, and other such factors. In addition, data obtained from prediction markets allows us to tune the win/lose/tie probabilities due to the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ phenomenon captured by the people wagering on the outcomes.”
Cortana is currently predicting that Argentina will beat the Netherlands in the next semi-final, which is a controversial position with some experts predicting an all European final.
Do our readers think Cortana will make it to 14 wins? Let us know below.
Update: To the astonishment of the doubters I suspect Cortana has made it 14 in a row, correctly predicting that Argentina would beat the Netherlands.
In the end it went down to penalty time, but Argentina took the game over the Netherlands 4 to 2. Now Argentina is facing Germany, and Cortana is already predicting a German win.
While the Cup is exciting all by itself, I suspect Cortana and Bing will be one of the big winners of the tournament. Do our readers agree?
