Every four years, the human population generally goes crazy due to a global phenomenon called the FIFA World Cup. People all over the world paint their faces, dye their hair, and do all sorts of insane stuff, even if their country isn’t playing. But the craziest FIFA World Cup tradition began eight years ago — the animal oracles.
I’m sure all of you remember Paul the Octopus — the fan-favourite fortune teller of World Cup 2010, who accurately predicted the results of almost all matches played by Germany. Sadly, Paul passed away soon after, but his legacy lived on in the form of other psychic animals — Shaheen the Camel, Nelly the Elephant, and Achilles the Cat, to name a few.
However, this is 2018 — we have flying cars and robots with citizenships! We deserve something more reliable than animals to predict results, right? Bhubaneshwar-based Data Scientist Abhinav Kumar Singh thinks so. Having dreamt of a better prediction system for a long time, Abhinav used his extensive knowledge in Data Sciences and Machine Learning to design an AI that can predict the result of the entire tournament.
Following the tradition of Paul the Octopus, Abhinav asked his AI (which I nicknamed Nostrabot) to predict the fate of Germany in this World Cup. Nostrabot obliged, and accurately predicted that Germany will be eliminated in the Group Stage.
After gaining confidence in his creation, Abhinav tasked Nostrabot with predicting the results of all matches in FIFA World Cup 2018. Nostrabot once again obliged and produced results with extreme accuracy.
Abhinav says that the AI is constantly learning; the result of every match is fed to its database, and this makes the AI smarter. Today, Nostrabot isn’t just capable of predicting results, but it can also predict the exact number of goals each team scores.
So far, the AI has made only two mistakes — in the Group Stage, it wrongly predicted that Germany would lose against Sweden; in the Round of 16, despite correctly predicting that England would win against Croatia, it made a mistake saying there will not be a penalty shootout. But result-wise, Nostrabot has accurately predicted ten out of eleven matches.
Abhinav has released the results of the entire tournament in his blog (including the to-be-champion) but refuses to share the number of goals scored per match. He says that even though his AI can predict it, he wants to maintain a bit of mystery, and refrain from spoiling the game completely for fans. He is also an impartial, neutral fan, and wishes the best for all participating nations.
You can see the Nostrabot’s predictions for Germany here, and its prediction for the knock-out rounds here (warning — there will be spoilers). Abhinav’s simple and elegant explanation of his AI’s functioning can be seen here.
If you’d like to congratulate Abhinav for his work, or if you’re interested in knowing more about it, contact him through LinkedIn or drop him an e-mail.
So do you guys think this AI is legit? What is your take on machines stealing animals’ jobs? Drop your comments, thoughts, and questions below, and don’t forget to follow The Casual Techster!
The Casual Techster 
The model Abhinav created does the capability of data in recent world, behind an onset of prediction models. The predicted matches becomes more difficult when the superpowers of FIFA are being knocked out. The predictions may not be conpletely correct, but considering the negligible deviations, the prediction model showcases it’s ability of how data can be constructively handled.
LikeLike