University research field of Predictions

[BenGooGa]

I was wondering if there is a field in scientific research (offered in universities) that studies sports or market predictions. I personally believe there should be a branch that looks at how well predictions can be made, but i can't find find the field name or the department where this might be taught (Math, economics or computer science).

Does anybody know something about the academics of sport predictions?

[daneblazer]

Good luck finding a University that is going to offer a class on sports betting. You can probably find classes here and there in Statistics, Business or Economics departments and tie them into sports betting. Different schools have different names for their departments though.

You're better off buying a book on it.

[Deuce]

Take a statistics class and figure it out yourself.

[Darkside Magick]

Only place i know where they are doing real research in this is Sloan Institute @MIT

[BenGooGa]

Interesting to know why universities don't offer programs to study such markets !!! Is it a religion related reason?

[daneblazer]

Most universities are public or state run and there's already a movement to curb gambling amongst students/young people so they aren't going to want to offer a class that encourages gambling.

MIT is a private school though, so they can offer whatever the hell they want

[BenGooGa]

Most universities are public or state run and there's already a movement to curb gambling amongst students/young people so they aren't going to want to offer a class that encourages gambling.

MIT is a private school though, so they can offer whatever the hell they want

Good to know. I was expecting UNLV to be leading in this field but not much material from them

[daneblazer]

The fact that it's illegal in most states means that most universities don't want anything to do with it. That's like expecting UTEP to offer a drug smuggling class

[Vegas39]

The fact that it's illegal in most states means that most universities don't want anything to do with it. That's like expecting UTEP to offer a drug smuggling class

[Darkside Magick]

UNLV....LMAOO....even people who live here dont go there!!!!

[BenGooGa]

UNLV....LMAOO....even people who live here dont go there!!!!

Well, i bet if they open a new department called "Sport betting department", UNLV could have a bait to attract gamblers (and we know it's a huge population).

[Vegas39]

Well, i bet if they open a new department called "Sport betting department", UNLV could have a bait to attract gamblers (and we know it's a huge population).

Never happen it's not a private as Dane said.

[Darkside Magick]

Sports betting department?????....lmaoooooooo....."hey everybody I got a B.Sc. in sports betting"....y'all nuts

[BenGooGa]

Vergin, Roger and Sosik, John, 1999, No Place Like Home: An Examination of the Home Field Advantage in Gambling Strategies in NFL Football, Journal of Economics and Business (1999), 51 (January-February), 21-31It seems that there are some people working on this. This is a journal paper about gambling strategies (It's from an economics department indeed).And besides, i don't think multi-millions betting firms are conducting business based on some capers predictions (no mutter how good they are)!!! I strongly believe that there are some sound scientific theories behind the betting industry.

[BenGooGa]

Never happen it's not a private as Dane said.

There is that concept of academic freedom, where a faculty has the freedom to research whatever he/she wants. But am not sure if that freedom extends to such topic, considering that it's illegal to gamble in most states.

[BenGooGa]

Sports betting department?????....lmaoooooooo....."hey everybody I got a B.Sc. in sports betting"....y'all nuts

I would be actually interested to study something like that.

[Darkside Magick]

There are papers online where it has discussed as a topic ....but a full blown course ....nada

[BenGooGa]

Center for Gambling Research, Australian National University (ACT)

• The Center for Gambling Research is funded by the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission. Its research priorities are the gambling industry, social and economic impacts of gambling, prevention strategy development and harm minimization, gambling regulation and consumer education.

[BenGooGa]

There are papers online where it has discussed as a topic ....but a full blown course ....nada

Too bad.

[BenGooGa]

Center for Gambling Research, Australian National University (ACT)

• The Center for Gambling Research is funded by the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission. Its research priorities are the gambling industry, social and economic impacts of gambling, prevention strategy development and harm minimization, gambling regulation and consumer education.

No just disregard these guys. It's a social studies department dealing with effects of gambling. Not what's intended.

[newguy]

Richard Thaler at university of Chicago used to incorporate a lot of sports themes into his courses. It was the hardest class to get into each year. I didn't get to take it, but know he talked about it, just not overtly. His research definitely makes it appear that he tries to predict outcomes.

[BenGooGa]

I found it guys It's in the UK

The Betting Research Unit (BRU) at Nottingham Business School

[BenGooGa]

Richard Thaler at university of Chicago used to incorporate a lot of sports themes into his courses. It was the hardest class to get into each year. I didn't get to take it, but know he talked about it, just not overtly. His research definitely makes it appear that he tries to predict outcomes.

Thanks Man, very useful post.

[Darkside Magick]

Look..all this is really low level and old paradigm .....it is about quantum wave and hyperinfinity if you know what I'm talking about. also study schrodinger's cat

[BenGooGa]

Look..all this is really low level and old paradigm .....it is about quantum wave and hyperinfinity if you know what I'm talking about. also study schrodinger's cat

No, i didn't get what you meant, can you explain

[Darkside Magick]

Awhile back there was a group of people who remote view and using the information to win on sports bets at a 85% clip..the sportsbooks found out and was trying to hire them to set lines since they knew the outcomes but the government came in and took them to work for CIA and such.


What I'm saying is time is a illusion.. past present future is the same...if u collaspe the quantum wave you have the results for game

[BenGooGa]

Awhile back there was a group of people who remote view and using the information to win on sports bets at a 85% clip..the sportsbooks found out and was trying to hire them to set lines since they knew the outcomes but the government came in and took them to work for CIA and such.


What I'm saying is time is a illusion.. past present future is the same...if u collaspe the quantum wave you have the results for game

I see, very interesting indeed.

[yolo]

lol

[brooks85]

closest thing would be actuary sciences

[BenGooGa]

closest thing would be actuary sciences

I see that it is mainly applied in the financial market, but not much in sport betting.

[bihon]

Sports betting department?????....lmaoooooooo....."hey everybody I got a B.Sc. in sports betting"....y'all nuts

Actually sports gambling has more sense and return than financial gambling which is considered as a respectable discipline.

[William Shaftner]

UNLV's International Gaming Institute is actually very well known and respected. I will be taking a tour of it when i'm back in Vegas about a month. Whoever talking non sense about UNLV in the previous post's is a moron. Keep on laughing because those guys are going to keep on taking your money.

[manny24]

Shafty we are keeping an eye on you

Shafty nice bump

[peacebyinches]

I am not aware of actual accredited PhD/MS/BS programs since having a whole major on such a specific thing really doesn't make sense.

HOWEVER....

You would be surprised to know that researchers in various fields actual do spend a lot of there career working on sports 'gambling', or as they would refer to it, 'analytics' or something less degenerate-sounding. Here's an actual yearly 'academic' conference held at MIT like someone mentioned above:

http://www.sloansportsconference.com/

Just looking through some of the papers and presentations, I can tell the research methods seem to range from academics involved in advanced statistics and computational modeling, to random people business people who just want to see the guest speakers (a good bit are celebrities in the sports or finance world).

For example here's a paper written by some kids at Stanford where they use machine learning and SVM kernels to predict NFL games.

http://cs229.stanford.edu/proj2010/LiuLai-BeatingTheNCAAFootballPointSpread.pdf

What I've seen personally (I'm in academia) is that your not going to build your whole career around sports gambling methodologies, there are a variety of fields that people can use their interest in sports handicapping as part of their research. Fields like economics, business, computer science, mathematics, statistics and psychology are definitely areas to look into, since they share many of the same concepts that go into pure sports handicapping.

[jjgold]

Just take a few courses in statistics and go from there.

It's your best bet