Tuesday, June 9, 2026
2026-06-09
Today, I learnt about Elo rankings. My aim today was to create a World Cup 2026 prediction but with a twist. Instead of users picking winners for each individual game, users pick teams with semi-random matchups that create Elo rankings. I also use match results from recent games and use Bradley Terry model to create a beginning ranking but at a lower weight. I realized that looking at recent games was not reliable since teams like Senegal were getting ranked higher than France. I chose to use FIFA’s ranking as a stronger signal. Anyways, I should write a #blog in detail about what I learned but one surprising fact was that Elo ranking and Bradley Terry model are the same model with Elo being the online model where Bradley Terry works on batches of data. Also, it is preferable to have decaying K for Elo ranking. #projects-showcase #wc2026