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Google Cloud Platform predicts the World Cup (and so can you!)
July 11, 2014
In 2010, we had
Paul the Octopus
. This year, there’s
Google Cloud Platform
. For the past couple weeks, we’ve been using Cloud Platform to make predictions for the World Cup—analyzing data, building a statistical model and using machine learning to predict outcomes of each match since the group round. So far, we’ve gotten 13 out of 14 games correct. But with the finals ahead this weekend, we’re not only ready to make our prediction, but we’re doing something a little extra for you data geeks out there. We’re giving you the keys to our prediction model so you can make your own model and run your own predictions.
A little background
Using data from
Opta
covering multiple seasons of professional soccer leagues as well as the group stage of the World Cup, we were able to examine how activity in previous games predicted performance in subsequent ones. We combined this modeling with a power ranking of relative team strength developed by one of our engineers, as well as a metric to stand in for hometeam advantage based on fan enthusiasm and the number of fans who had traveled to Brazil. We used a whole bunch of Google Cloud Platform products to build this model, including
Google Cloud Dataflow
to import all the data and
Google BigQuery
to analyze it. So far, we’ve only been wrong on one match (we underestimated Germany when they faced France in the quarterfinals).
Watch
+Jordan Tigani
and
Felipe Hoffa
from the BigQuery team talk about the project in
this video from Google I/O
, or look at our
quarterfinals
and
semifinals
blog posts to learn more.
A narrow win for Germany in the final
Drumroll please… Though we think it’s going to be close, Germany has the edge: our model gives them a 55 percent chance of defeating Argentina. Both teams have had excellent tournaments so far, but the model favors Germany for a number of factors. Thus far in the tournament, they’ve had better passing in the attacking half of their field, a higher number of shots (64 vs. 61) and a higher number of goals scored (17 vs. 8).
(Oh, and we think Brazil has a tiny advantage in the third place game. They may have had a disappointing defeat on Tuesday, but their numbers still look good.)
Channel your inner data nerd
Now it’s your turn. We’ve put together a step-by-step guide (warning: code ahead) showing how we built our model and used it for predictions. You could try different statistical techniques or adding in your own data, like player salaries or team travel distance. Even though we’ve been right 92.86 percent of the time, we’re sure there’s room for improvement.
The model works for other hypothetical situations, and it includes data going back to the 2006 World Cup, three years of English Barclays Premier League, two seasons of Spanish La Liga, and two seasons of U.S. MLS. So, you could try modeling how the USA would have done against Argentina if their game against Belgium had gone differently, or pit this year’s German team against the unstoppable Spanish team of 2010. The world (er, dataset) is your oyster.
Ready to kick things off? Read our post on the
Cloud Platform blog
to learn more (or, if you’re familiar with all the technology, you can jump right over to
GitHub
and start crunching numbers for yourself).
Posted by Benjamin Bechtolsheim, Product Marketing Manager, Google Cloud Platform
GoogleServe 2014: More opportunities to give back globally
July 10, 2014
In June, we celebrated the seventh annual GoogleServe, where employees come together and volunteer in our communities. This year, we doubled GoogleServe from one to two weeks so we could involve more volunteers and serve more community organizations. And it paid off—more than 12,000 Googlers from 70+ offices participated in 800+ projects, making this our biggest GoogleServe to date. Here’s a look at how we gave back to our communities this year:
Making tech more accessible
At our Mountain View headquarters and in Hyderabad, India, Googlers volunteered in three
SocialCoding4Good
events. Googlers participated in an Accessibility Code Sprint with
Benetech's Global Literacy Program
to improve
Go Read
, a free mobile app for people with visual impairments and reading disabilities. A team of Googlers also worked with
Bookshare
to write descriptions for nearly 1,400 images in five STEM textbooks, making charts, graphs, and diagrams more accessible to blind and visually impaired students.
Helping veterans build their resumes
Googlers helped 475 veterans build their resumes as part of our “Help a Hero Get Hired” workshops in 14 cities: Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Austin, Boulder, Cambridge, Chicago, Kansas City, Moncks Corner, Mountain View, New York City, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. This was our fourth year partnering with
Student Veterans of America
to help veterans take the next steps in their careers.
Volunteering at local schools and community centers
In Oakland, volunteers canvassed the community with
Hack the Hood
, a
Bay Area Impact Challenge winner
that trains youth from Oakland's low-income communities to build mobile-friendly websites. In San Francisco, Googlers visited the
Presidio YMCA
, where they repaired picnic tables, cleaned toys and organized closets, and worked with the YMCA’s marketing specialists to redesign their corporate partnerships materials. In Kampala, Uganda, Googlers painted a nursery at
Sanyu Babies’ Home
, helping brighten the living space of the Home’s young residents.
Building houses and preparing meals
Googlers in Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Valparaiso, Chile, partnered with
Techo
to build houses for low-income families, while volunteers in Singapore prepared, cooked, and distributed 3,000 meals at
Willing Hearts Soup Kitchen
. In Milan and Mountain View, Googlers packaged 16,500 meals with
Stop Hunger Now
, a nonprofit that ships food to schools, orphanages and clinics in more than 70 countries.
Protecting the environment
A group of Googlers in Auckland, New Zealand, cleared three kilometers of coastline at
Tahuna Torea Nature Reserve
, and Ann Arbor Googlers collected trash as they paddled down the Huron River with the
Huron River Watershed Council
. And volunteers in San Jose, Calif., mulched, weeded and cleared leaves in the beautiful gardens of the
Guadalupe River Park Conservancy
.
Click the image below for photos from this year’s GoogleServe.
GoogleServe is part of our larger commitment to giving and volunteering throughout the year; employees have 20 hours of work time a year to volunteer with approved charitable organizations. In 2013, Googlers volunteered 130,000 hours with 1,390 nonprofits around the world. If you want to learn how you can give back to your community, visit
All for Good
or
VolunteerMatch
.
Posted by Seth Marbin, on behalf of the GoogleServe & GooglersGive Teams
Google Ventures invests in Europe
July 9, 2014
Wander through the excellent
Science Museum
in London, and you’ll see inventions that transformed history. Like
Puffing Billy
, one of the world’s first steam locomotives; or Charles Babbage’s
difference engine
, a Victorian predecessor to the modern computer; or
penicillin
, the wonder drug that revolutionized the treatment of disease. These marvels from the past still influence our lives today, and are tangible examples of how fearless exploration and entrepreneurship can literally change the world.
To help support the next generation of European entrepreneurs, today
Google Ventures
is launching a new venture fund, with initial funding of $100 million. Our goal is simple: we want to invest in the best ideas from the best European entrepreneurs, and help them bring those ideas to life.
When we
launched
Google Ventures in 2009, we set out to be a very different type of venture fund. Startups need more than just capital to succeed: they also benefit from engineering support, design expertise, and guidance with recruiting, marketing and product management. Five years later, we’re working with
more than 250 portfolio companies
, tackling challenges across a host of industries. For example, the team at
Flatiron Health
is improving the way doctors and patients approach cancer care,
SynapDx
is developing a blood test for the early detection of Autism in children, and
Clean Power Finance
is making solar energy affordable for homeowners.
We believe Europe’s startup scene has enormous potential. We’ve seen compelling new companies emerge from places like London, Paris, Berlin, the Nordic region and beyond—SoundCloud, Spotify, Supercell and many others.
We can’t predict the kinds of inventions the Science Museum might showcase 10+ years from now, but we do know European startups will be essential to this future, and we can’t wait to see what they create.
Posted by Bill Maris, Managing Partner, Google Ventures
Meet the five Giving through Glass winners
July 9, 2014
We believe technology can help nonprofits make a difference more easily, and connect people to the causes they care about. It's with this in mind that we launched Giving through Glass—a contest for U.S. nonprofits to share ideas for how Google Glass can support the impact they're having every day.
Today, we’re announcing the five winners:
3000 Miles to a Cure
,
Classroom Champions
,
The Hearing and Speech Agency
,
Mark Morris Dance Group
and
Women's Audio Mission
. The winners were selected from more than 1,300 proposals, and each will take home a pair of Glass, a $25,000 grant, a trip to Google for training, and access to Glass developers who can help make their projects a reality.
Here’s what our winners are planning to do with Glass:
Classroom Champions
will give students in
high-needs schools
a look through the eyes of Paralympic athletes as they train and compete, helping kids build empathy and learn to see ability where others too often see only disability. Bay Area-based
Women’s Audio Mission
will give instructors Glass to use in its music and media-based Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math training program for women and girls, creating a more immersive lab experience for students online and in person.
U.S. Paralympic Gold Medalist Josh Sweeney visits a Waller, Texas school
as part of a Classroom Champions program
Two programs focus on using Glass in therapeutic settings. The
Hearing and Speech Agency
will use Glass to pilot new ways to improve communication access for people who have speech language challenges, hearing loss and autism—and support those who teach and care for them. And the
Mark Morris Dance Group
will create a Glass app that will build on their award-winning
Dance for PD®
initiative to help people with Parkinson’s disease remember and trigger body movements in their daily lives.
Finally, Glass will head across the U.S. by bicycle to help raise money and increase awareness for brain cancer research. For the first time, supporters of participants in the
3000 Miles to a Cure Race
Across America will be able to see and experience it through a racer’s eyes and the racer will be alerted to every message of encouragement and donation supporters send.
Developers are already working with these inspiring groups, and next week these five nonprofits will descend on Google Glass' Base Camp in San Francisco for training, and to connect with their Google mentors. Stay tuned for updates on how the projects unfold!
Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org
Build the best summer ever at Maker Camp 2014
July 7, 2014
This post comes to us from Dale Dougherty, founder and publisher of
MAKE: magazine
and
Maker Faire
. For the third straight year, Google and Make have come together to put on Maker Camp, a free, online summer camp for teens on Google+. Building on 2 million past participants, Maker Camp 2014 officially kicks off today at 11 a.m. PDT / 2 p.m. EDT today with a
Hangout
featuring NASA and Buzz Aldrin. -
Ed.
We’ve always believed that everyone, especially young people, should be able to feel the joy that comes from imagining and creating something that didn’t exist before.
Nine years ago, we hosted our very first Bay Area Maker Faire, an all-ages gathering of tech enthusiasts, crafters, hobbyists and artists. The event was partly inspired by the idea that the special creative energy produced by kids is even stronger when they’re brought together. Since that first get-together, it has grown globally with more than 100 events in places like Tokyo, Rome, Santiago and Oslo. Recently, a man in Atlanta told me that “making” changed his son’s life—by inspiring self-confidence through the joys of engineering, design and music. And just last weekend, a family drove eight hours to reach a Maker Faire because their 14-year-old son, Daniel, was so excited about meeting other makers.
But eight hours is a long way to drive to connect with other creative kids. So to make sure that inspiration and community are more accessible to young makers—no matter where they are—we teamed up with Google to create
Maker Camp
, now back for its third summer. Through Google+, Maker Camp connects young makers from across the globe as they create, invent and build projects like
soda bottle rocket fireworks
,
glowing bikes
, and
LED shoe clips
(our version of arts and crafts). In addition to the daily projects, campers will join epic virtual Friday field trips to places like
+NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center, Google [x] and
+LEGO
Education.
Camp is available to anyone with an Internet connection and an imagination—and kids who’d rather gather together around the digital campfire can visit one of Maker Camp’s
500 local “campsites”
hosted by libraries and community centers, in locations ranging from Australia to Jordan.
So roll up your virtual sleeping bag and come join us at Maker Camp this summer! To get started, simply follow
+Make on Google+
.
Posted by Dale Dougherty, CEO of Maker Media Inc.
DevArt: Art, made with code, opens at London’s Barbican
July 2, 2014
Though it can look like gobbledygook to the average person, code is the backbone of how we express ourselves, share and search online. We’ve always tried to push the limits of what code can do—from products like Chrome and Hangouts to tools that developers use to build incredible apps and games. Now, we’re showing off another side of code with
DevArt
, a series of digital art installations made with code, at the Barbican’s
Digital Revolution Exhibition
.
(Photos - Andrew Meredith)
DevArt celebrates developers who use technology as their canvas and code as their paintbrush to make art that explores and challenges the creative and technical limits of code. With the Barbican, we commissioned three interactive artists to create pieces for Digital Revolution.
Karsten Schmidt
’s
Co(de) Factory
empowers anyone to be an artist with an online design tool that creates 3D digital sculptures that may be showcased in the exhibition.
Zach Lieberman
’s
Play the World
uses code to find musical notes from hundreds of live radio stations around the world. When a visitor plays the piano at the centre of the piece, each note is precisely matched to one of those radio sounds, and played back via 360-degree speakers to create a uniquely global piece of music. And duo
Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet
’s
Wishing Wall
lets you whisper a wish, see your words projected in front of you, then transformed into a butterfly that (virtually) lands on your hand.
We also put out a
global call
to undiscovered interactive artists for the opportunity to be commissioned by Google and Barbican, and exhibited alongside the DevArt artists. There were hundreds of entries, including a giant map (using Google Maps API) where
children can explore fantasy and reality
, a
group-play haptic musical instrument
that visualizes sound using Android, and
maps of dreams
as they move through the brain (using Google+ APIs). In the end, the DevArt judges chose
Les Métamorphoses de Mr. Kalia
, by Cyril Diagne and Beatrice Lartigue, which allows you to use your body's movements to control a larger-than-life animated character, transforming basic movement into a powerful visual performance.
(Photos - Andrew Meredith)
We want to inspire a new generation of coders and artists to see what they can create with technology as their canvas. Soon, we’ll kick off our
DevArt Young Creators
program, a set of workshops hosted by DevArt artists for students aged 9-13 years who have never tried coding before. Each workshop will be developed into lesson plans in line with the U.K.’s new national computing curriculum, and distributed to educators by arts and technology organizations.
DevArt and the Digital Revolution exhibition will be at the Barbican in London until September 15, and after that will tour the world for up to five years. If you can’t make it in person, you can see all this
incredible art online
or watch our launch film to learn more:
Posted by Steve Vranakis, Executive Creative Director, Google Creative Lab
Through the Google lens: long live football
June 27, 2014
With more than 1.2 billion searches and counting, World Cup fever continues in Brazil and around the world. This week, we’re taking a special look at the
top search trends
from throughout the tournament so far. Keep up with all of our insights from search at our World Cup
hub
.
Gym, tan, football
We know Cristiano Ronaldo can strut his stuff on the football pitch—and in the occasional Armani ad—but he’s taking it to new heights on the search charts. Topping longtime rival Lionel Messi and rising icon Neymar, Ronaldo proves all you need to win in search is serious dribbling skills, a chiseled jawline and a unique haircut (although the reason behind his hairstyle may be pretty
heartwarming
… if true).
Look ma—no hands!
A World Cup is only as good as its
goals
—and we’ve seen a couple of doozies this time around. Robin Van Persie’s leaping header made him an overnight
Internet
sensation, while people were excited to see that Messi got his groove back after scoring his first World Cup goal in eight years. And if you blinked, you might have missed Clint Dempsey’s goal in the U.S.A’s 2-1 victory over Ghana. Clocking in at 32 seconds after the start of the match, Dempsey scored the fastest American goal in World Cup history. That feat, however, couldn’t save the United States as they fell victim to the latest goal in World Cup history off the head of Silvestre Varela.
A pitched battle
Do you take your fish and chips with pasta? Searchers were eager to watch England and Italy’s clash for Group D dominance (spoiler alert: both teams got the boot) while the U.S.A.’s match against Ghana took second place in search. Rounding out the top three, we’re pretty sure Guillermo Ochoa’s stellar performance and totally convincing impression of a
wall
was what made the Brazil vs. Mexico match a hot one.
Time to bust a move
It was a
dance-off
on the trends charts as Daniel Sturridge's wave won over the crowd ahead of Neymar’s funky jig. But our personal favorite has to be the Ghanaian national team’s collaborative routine after star striker Asamoah Gyan scored a goal to take the lead in their match against Germany. We just love an ensemble!
Long hair, don’t care
It’s not really about football unless you mention WAGs (“wives and girlfriends” of players). Amongst leading ladies, Colombian singer Shakira steals the search show. And after her partner, Spanish defender Gerard Pique, and his team suffered a World Cup collapse, it just might be a good thing she’s the center of attention.
Posted by Jenise Araujo, Communications Associate, who searched for the [hulk] and [super mario] and still couldn’t escape [world cup] mania.
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