The best case study I've ever heard is Tescos. Apparently they were a downmarket British retailer in the early 1990s. They teamed up wit a statistical consultancy called dunnhumby and now they're the third biggest retailer in the world.

Apparently one per cent of marketing mail is opened, while 98 per cent of Tesco mailouts are opened (because they offer people targetted discounts). No surprise large retailers and grocery chains are rushing the adding significant ML capabilities.

I'm told the 2012 comp will involve predicting the predictions of predictions.

Cool site!

Thanks a bunch! Great HN username, btw :-)

Good point on the 30 international games.

From what I gather, these people aren't using Elo rating alone - it's just an "ingredient" in their model.

Out of interest, did you enter the competition?

No I didn't enter the competition

I tried the different approaches on for predicting 10.000's of club matches and 1.000's of national team matches