world cup predictions

In 8 hours from now, the 2018 FIFA World Cup will begin. Having read 538’s predictions, I decided to produce my own predictions based on an adjusted version of their SPI.

I wanted to utilise goal difference as a primary predictor and adjust the SPI based on “hype”, using Google Trends to investigate the 32 countries interest in the world cup. I used STATA for the analysis, then graphed these over time in plot.ly:

The following is a scatter plot to graph Hype vs SPI, the size of the dots indicate average goal difference and the colour of the dots indicate different World Cup groups. Although Brazil, Spain, Germany have an extremely high SPI, Brazil’s Hype nudges them ahead in this model. Based on these statistics, my prediction for the winners of the 2018 World Cup is Brazil.