Analysis of 2010 WDC and WCC Odds

[lebesset]

me , I'm always interested in what other people think , and where they are putting their money gives some indication of that
the poll is interesting ..hamilton with probably the third best car , yet zooming away in peoples opinions
must say something about peoples opinion of him , and also the ability of McLaren to catch up!

[Hangaku]

Strad, this has nothing to do with statistics

Then why bother with the graphs - its irrelevant anyway

Agreed.

[WhiteBlue]

I have looked a bit into potential weak points of my analysis. I guess the car corrected driver rating doesn't work very well when the car odds go over 30 or 50. It means that very few people are actually betting on the team and that means the strength of the car may be massively under represented. In turn that means that the driver skill is vastly over rated. I have checked the current figures for Kubica and Renault and the odds for Renault are actually three times higher than for Kubica. Although Kubica is interesting to look at I can't include him now because I have no previous data. I will start to collect data now. That means if I later do a graphic representation from race four I can include Kubica.

[jon-mullen]

I think some people here are missing the point. WB's efforts are to be applauded because he is collecting data. You may argue that it is spurious to draw the conclusions of championship winner from this but it is still data and interesting in itself.

+1. Wasn't Button a 180:1 before Brawn showed up at the first practice last year? That didn't turn out to be predictive, but it's something I know because people talked about it on this board. Anyone who gambles knows the more information you have the better, even if sometimes all it represents is what the bookies think.

[WhiteBlue]

Another piece of graphic info will be the WDC points total by races.

[strad]

W/B
I am very happy to see that you enjoy collecting data and turning it into nice fancy and colourful graphs. However, please refrain from using those graphs as a mean to justify what the "general public" thinks. First, betting odds are not in any way related to what the general public thinks. Second, betting odds are reactionary and not pro-actionary (or in words you might better understand: betting odds looks at the past only to predict the future, it does not take into account future variables).

Also, a pie chart is used to divide 1 whole thing/item into several pieces. Adding up betting odds does not make up 1 whole item, it's just a meaningless number.

[Richard]

Those odds seem to mirror the championship table. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of forecasting that a stronger diver (for example Alonso) would rise to the top.

I can't find any driver v driver odds that we saw at the start of the season. I wonder how Massa compares to Alonso now?

[WhiteBlue]

And here the new updates:



Quite a bit of movement in the WDC table but actually a lot of that does not impress the betters significantly.



The national markets develop relative similar for the low odds and show some more spread for the higher odds. Schumacher plummets in the world odds. Also a bad day for Massa and Webber. The McLaren drivers and particularly Button improve.



In the WCC Red Bull is still the strongest car owed to their qualifying performance. McLaren now catches Ferrari and relegate them to third place. The three cars are all capable to win races. Merc is still far behind with odds that do not really warrant the top team label.



In the driver odds Vettel, Alonso and Hamilton keep the lead although they do quite a bit of swapping with other drivers in the WDC standing. This is why I think that the betters do a fairly good job of anticipating the order in the next few races. Rosberg finally makes a jump forward as the punters gain more confidence that his results so far aren't a flash in the pan. In reality Rosbergs relative improvement has a lot to do with Massa and Webber loosing support.



Finally the car corrected odds which should still be consumed with a bit of caution. The Merc rating is so far out that Rosberg and Schumacher get substantially distorted in this view. I would trust this picture if the two Merc drivers are eliminated. Alonso looks now stronger than Vettel because the betters have lost a lot of faith in the Ferrari which may be due to the engine situation. A worse rating for a car obviously improves the driver standing in this view.

That's it for the China update. Next review will be after Barcelona.

[WhiteBlue]

I can't find any driver v driver odds that we saw at the start of the season. I wonder how Massa compares to Alonso now?

I have never committed to record driver vs driver odds. Those relationships can be near enough derived from the WDC odds table or the graph.

[dave kumar]

WB - any chance you can plot WDC Points as a 3D graph in the same way as you have for the WDC Odds. Same drivers in the same order on the axis so we can directly compare the evolution of the two.

Thanks again for all your hard work collecting this data. I would like to reiterate that odds are not purely reactive. When people place a bet they are basing it on their knowledge of what has happened but also an inbuilt bias. Has such and such a driver been unlucky or lucky in how events have unfolded and therefore are the stats not telling the full story. This is why it is interesting to look at the aggregate of such human considerations which go beyond any purely statistical analysis. If we aggregate these views do we get useful information because individual bias is smoothed out or is it meaningless.

Only one way to find out, collect the data. Thanks again WB.

[raymondu999]

oh wow. Vettel still leads?

[WhiteBlue]

WB - any chance you can plot WDC Points as a 3D graph in the same way as you have for the WDC Odds. Same drivers in the same order on the axis so we can directly compare the evolution of the two.

I'm not sure that the second view of the data is so much better. Please give feed back. If there are more people asking the change I will change.

[WhiteBlue]

senna-toleman, please enable PM so that I can return your message and give you the requested data.

[hollus]

WhiteBlue, in your betting odds graphs the favorites have the lowest values. In the WDC, they have the highest points, and thus the two graphs cannot be compared. You will need to plot one of them as some sort of reciprocal so they look qualitatively the same.
For example, plot the WDC as 10 / average points per race.

[WhiteBlue]

I'm actually aware of this. It takes a small bit of mental capacity to correlate such figures but I was reckoning that those people who are interested in the figures would all be intelligent enough to make those kind of abstractions.

The reasoning why I do not want to modify the odds or the points is simple. I want to stay as close as possible to a set of original data so that people can mentally check probability and realize that they are genuine. When you go into derivatives like the driver rating with relative car odds you get too many relations working to have those figures trusted by most readers.

I will keep it this way, but you are welcome to give us your own version. I do give out raw data for those who want to try their own hand on graphs. PM me!