And Squiggle is ready to track every part of it.
Over on Live Squiggle, we’re getting bullish on Port Adelaide and expecting the Crows to remain a force.
The Cats and Giants still have a bit to prove, though, after accumulating quite a few close wins in 2017, which is always suspicious. So while those two teams are contenders, they’re a tier below the top 4 prospects of Adelaide, Port, Richmond, and Sydney.
The Bombers are a good chance to make finals for the second year running, and the Saints lead a pack of clubs vying for a place likely to be vacated by West Coast.
In 2018, Squiggle is powered by a new algorithm! The main differences to last year’s model are:
- Squiggle 2.0 is much more sensitive in the early rounds, so surprising results will cause a lot of chart movement. This better captures the substantial form change that can occur over an off-season.
- Squiggle 2.0 considers goalkicking accuracy: It slightly discounts scores that were the result of unusually high accuracy (i.e. kicking many more goals than behinds), and is forgiving of scores that were the result of unusually low accuracy, as this tends to be non-reproducible.
We’ll see if this is enough to move up the Computer Model Leaderboard! Of course, it would be hard not to. 2017 was not a kind year.
I hope to have all the usual gang of Squiggle friends on board again, bringing you the best of online AFL analysis from around the web, and perhaps a couple of new additions.
Thank you for following Squiggle 2018!