Can maths tell us how to win at Fantasy Football?

Can maths tell us how to win at Fantasy Football?

Fantasy Football is an online game played by millions of people every year, in which players attempt to predict the outcome of football matches over the course of a season.

To the surprise of everyone (including himself), Josh Bull was lucky enough to be crowned the winner of the 2019-20 Fantasy Premier League, one of the largest competitions in the UK. As a researcher in Mathematical Oncology at the University of Oxford, people have asked him whether he used maths to win – while he followed some strategies at the time, he didn’t have any proof that they were in some sense mathematically optimal.

However, mathematical modelling is a tool which is capable of exploring exactly these kinds of questions: how can we identify the best strategies to tackle complex problems? What types of data are important to consider, and how should we use them to inform our decisions?

In this talk, Josh analyse how different quantitative approaches can be used to tackle key questions in Fantasy Football, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of these frameworks. Finally, he will address the question: Can maths tell us how to win at Fantasy Football?

Speaker

Josh Bull, University of Oxford

How to attend

If not a member of the Dept. Mathematical Science at the University of Essex, you can register your interest in attending the seminar and request the Zoom’s meeting password by emailing Dr Osama Mahmoud.