New Site, New Me.

This project has been simmering for some time. About a year ago I started a complete refactor to move to a more abstracted framework, and while it took a while it was successful. I now have my rugby predictions running on a server at a reliable cadence, I have automated posting of most of that content, and I have achieved some accuracies that I’m happy with.

Now I get to decide what I do with it next. I set out to be able to predict any match in URBA or the PWR as well as I could Le Crunch or the Bledisloe Cup, so intentionally limited my inputs to this model to just the two teams involved and the final score. I wanted to add to the coverage of the sport, not just on those matches that were already being covered.

I’ve acomplished that with my club model, then developed a player-based model that only requires teamsheets to be added but allows for player and club rankings. Now I have predictions being made for every professional match that I can find data for, and can dig into the best ways to share out my data and visualize what I’ve developed. That’s what this new site is for.

But right now, finding the BEST visulizations feels more like banging my head against the wall than a fun coding project. I’ve got some ideas for things like in-match win probabilities, player history pages, or match interest ratings, but those are on hold for a while while I take a bit of a break. If you’ve got something you’d like to see from my rugby data, toss me the idea.

And Now Some Non-Rugby Things

Here’s the pivot bit. In doing all this, I’ve also made a pretty flexible framework for multiplayer competitions, which can be applied to some other sports. This feels more fun/engaging to me right now - I have some experimental applications to other sports I watch, and they’ve got a bit of a different tack. While I intentially limited my input features for rugby, I have some more data-intensive applications in mind. My hope is that playing in those spaces may lead to some learnings I can apply back to the rugby stuff, and vice versa. Ideally I can find a fun wrinkle for each application. More to come on those later.

This is entirely separate from my actual paying job, however, so don’t expect any firm roadmaps. If you’re invested in this continuing or expanding, let me know. If you’re instead looking for some predictive help for your problems, reach out here for some consulting. I ramble a lot less in that work.