Mathematicians from the Alan Turing Institute called Brazil the favorite for the World Cup

Employees of the Alan Turing Institute presented a computer model that calculated the most likely winners of the World Cup starting in Qatar. The main favorite was Brazil, and the chances of Belgium and Argentina are also high, according to NewScientist.

Attempts to predict the future winner are now being made by everyone, from bookmakers to analysts, but all these calculations, as a rule, are carried out behind closed doors. Scientists from the Alan Turing Institute have developed an open source model that anyone can run on their computer.

In total, the researchers "played" 100,000 possible matches. Brazil won 25% of the time, and closest rivals Belgium and Argentina had 19% and 13% chances to win, respectively.

The main criteria by which the computer calculated the chances of different teams were the scores of the game in defense and in attack. The researchers tested their model at past championships to see how well its predictions matched the real result, and adjusted it based on the results.

The predictions of the British scientists match those of the University of Innsbruck, who created their computer algorithm and found that Brazil was the most likely winner with a score of 15%.

There are other opinions as well. So, the insurance company Lloyd's calculated the winner based on the collective insured value of the team's players and predicted that England would beat Brazil in the final. This model correctly predicted the victory of Germany in the 2014 World Cup and France in 2018.

In turn, staff at Oxford University consider Belgium the most likely champion. Their forecast is also worth listening to, given that Oxford scientists have guessed six of the eight quarter-finalists and the winner of Euro 2020 - the Italian team.