Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Session 2-2-F: Combining Forecasts To Predict The Outcome Of Horseraces, Stefan Lessmann, Ming-Chien Sung, Johnnie E.V. Johnson, Tiejun Ma, Chung-Ching Tai

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

A variety of methods are often employed to forecast the outcome of sports events and to shed light upon the factors that influence contestants’ winning prospects. We explore the potential of combining forecasts to improve the accuracy of sports event prediction. Successful combination usually involves accurate and diverse individual predictions. Further, to accurately predict the outcome of sports events it is important to effectively account for the intensity of rivalry among contestants. Consequently, we develop modeling procedures and practices for addressing these challenges: First, in order to construct a large and diverse library of base models, we employ a range …