Macquarie Research Equities last week turned its quantitative firepower on Saturday's Rugby World Cup clash in Sydney and predicted that Australia will defeat arch rivals England. In the research report, Why the Wallabies will win?, Macquarie's propeller heads weighed the likely impact of factors such as momentum, consensus recommendations and the weather. The authors of the report in Sydney could not be reached for comment. A spokeswoman was unable to comment by press time.
According to the report: "Historically, Australia have won over 82% of games played at home (this is significant at a 99% confidence level using a binomial test)."
The Macquarie report, however, focused on historical data and, as any good fund manager will testify, past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Indeed, Paul Crouch, former head of equity derivatives trading at Lehman Brothers in London, forecasts an England victory on the basis of a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, a methodology borrowed from particle physics. Crouch, ceo at Direct-Issue, used the goal difference in recent victories as a substitute for the movement of energy particles in his analysis and concluded that England will triumph by five-points. A regression analysis of recent games also points to an England victory, he added.
As DW was going to press Friday--the day before the match--online betting Web site Blue Square.com was quoting odds of 4/7 for an England victory.
