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Animated!

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The winner of this week’s edition of WHO WANTS TO DROP A CRUCIAL GAME? is Hawthorn. Congratulations! You have won 3 weeks of gnawing uncertainty.

In fact let’s skip ahead to the ladder predictor, since that’s what’s most interesting at the moment:

[​IMG]But this disguises the fact that the ladder is pretty well bedded down except for total chaos in the top 5. As better illustrated here:

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Basically we get to play WHO WANTS TO DROP A CRUCIAL GAME? for the rest of the season, where all games involving the top 5 are crucial ones. If you drop one, you miss Top 4. Unless someone else also drops one.And since those teams don’t play each other, we’re looking for upsets! It’s tempting to think nobody will lose one, since the top 5 will be favourites against lower-ranked teams, and therefore the ladder should stay the same. But that’s very unlikely. With 15 games, even if every top-5 team has a 95% chance of winning each individual game, it’s more likely than not that someone will drop one.

This is why Geelong are predicted to finish so high, even though they’re currently 5th.

But it also means it’s near-impossible to predict. The top 4 will be whoever doesn’t lose games they shouldn’t.

In other news, Brisbane and Sydney both exited the chart, in opposite directions, so I bit the bullet and expanded the axis. So now we have a fat squiggle chart.

The squiggle tipped Adelaide by 94 points and was still well short, which pushed the Crows further into the ideal zone. Sydney had an excellent week, too, thrashing Port, even though they still haven’t demonstrated a lot of scoring power.

Flagpole! Sydney shot up into 2nd place, which is especially impressive given that this algorithm cares a lot about scoring, which the Swans don’t really do.

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