This often includes commentators.

While one athlete might always have a strong first day, another might be stronger on day two. This is very difficult for people to understand, and often even difficult for family members of multi-eventers to understand. This point is well illustrated by considering the Decathlon held at the 2019 World Championships: the eventual winner, Niklas Kaul, was 20th after 1 event, 11th after 6 events, and 6th with just two events to go. If you didn’t know better, you’d think this was a comeback for the ages. However, this was not a case of Kaul putting in extraordinary performances right at the end, it just so happened that his two best events come 9th and 10th.

Even then, it was only recently that World Athletics introduced a live predicted finish graphic that showed people where athletes would finish in real time, given how fast they were running in the 800m/1500m. Needless to say, the implementation of this graphic made things far more exciting and informative for viewers and commentators alike: they could see who was winning the whole event in real time.

We use a basic model to predict each athlete’s performance in each event and then update the live predicted finish leaderboard as actual results come in. To do this, our (basic) model takes each athlete’s last four performances in each event, removes the worst of the four and averages remaining three (to avoid anomalies skewing the average down). After each event, this live predicted finish leaderboard lets people see the athletes move up and down in the (predicted) standings in a way that actually means something. The question “Who is winning?”, can finally be answered at all times. Not only that, but it makes each event far more entertaining for everyone watching.

This gives people watching a good idea of an “average” mark for each athlete and allows for direct comparison during competition between each athlete and their predicted mark. The more they beat their predicted mark by, the better. The further away they are from it, the worse.

This includes showing how many points they thereby gained or lost on that event. This allows people to understand who is gaining on the competition and who is slipping. Just because one athlete threw further than everyone else, doesn’t mean that is good for them: if they were still down on their average performance, it hurts them.