If they'd had the margin meter at Headingley today it would have predicted a London win by 15 zillion points after 13 minutes. That's an error margin of 15 zillion and 42 points.

Agreed, I find some of the stats really interesting.

As previously mentioned, the margin metre, used properly is a great tool for summing up how the game has gone so far.

BUT...it should only be used at half and full time, to say something like "well the stats indicated that team x should be winning this game comfortably, however team y have had a few moments of magic - which we can show now"

to use it mid game is churlish,

However I am a statistician so there may be some bias in there

Good idea. I seem to recall Clarkey saying it was going to analyse stats from the season to calculate the margins (such as tries scored when the set of 6 starts in a certain place) but it started with no information on which to base the predictions, which is why (imho) it looked ridiculous.

Personally i find Clarkey a bit of a tool and hate him droning on about stats etc. Like the time when he tried to merge stats etc into a solar system talk, he rambled on about the defence being the sun going around the earth which was the attacker! He looked like he'd lost the plot totally and i lost all respect for him as a summariser and nearly the will to live! I hate gimmicks they make the game look cheap and tacky, the game does not need it. It sells itself fine as it is without all the razzamataz and in depth nonsense and how can you predict a missed tackle or a moment of brilliance on the pitch? you can't, so things like the margin meter etc really mean nothing.

I find it hard to believe they would have started it with no information - as I don't think it would be able to work that way

The way I imagine it working (please bare in mind that I haven't read up on this) is that they will have a database which includes all of the stats from previous seasons and how many tries were scored.

A model will then be created which basically works out as (greatly simplified),

territory + meters gained + tackles completed = 7 tries

This will be done for each team (and possibly extrapolated to 80 minutes - another reason why it should only be used at half and full time)

so we would have,

Team A's stats = 6 tries
Team B's stats = 4 tries

Margin Metre = 12 points to Team A

Think that's what was meant. When I said no information I meant they had little info and would build it up during the season