How do I crunch the numbers?

[bdog]

Hello All,

I keep coming up with new trading strategies (new to me), and I would like to learn how to model them using historical data.

I'm not after someone to hold my hand, just to point me in the right direction.
Can anyone suggest a good starting point? a book, software, website etc

I believe I can get historic data from data.betfair.com, and there are a few websites with all the tennis results since 2000, I just have to learn what to do with it.
I'm quite techie and not afraid to learn new things.


Thanks in advance.
Bdog

[bdog]

I found this website, which helps to get started.

It doesn't try and sell you anything, so I hope it is ok top post in here

Might help others
http://www.mypivots.com/articles/articles.aspx?artnum=40&page=1

Cheers
Bdog

[Talisman]

Hi Bdog,

There are various ways to analyse the data, excel is always useful as your link shows, however the trick may be to get dependable data to backtest any theory against. The data provided in those zip files by betfair is pretty useless, at least it used to be, a dogs breakfast.
Cheers.

[jibiko]

k02KIOUU8Hw

[jibiko]

The data provided in those zip files by betfair is pretty useless, at least it used to be, a dogs breakfast.

in the garbage dogs can find their food :)

[bdog]

@Talisman,
Cheers - I've since found csvs of all results (tennis), with the odds, since 2000.
Ideally I would like some data that has every single point played on the main tour, but I'll keep looking for that (I'll post something on tradeshark as well).

I'm after some info on how to approach testing my theories, how I can practice etc.
I'll probably be able to work it out for myself...eventually.

Cheers
Bdog

[Talisman]

You'd probably have to write a macro of some sort, if it's all in a CSV. Shouldn't be too hard, if you're willing to research it, should be lots of examples of how to traverse data in Excel and spit out some analysis.

Good luck!

[BettingSherlock]

For Tennis i'm compiling my own database, only way to go really for serious number crunching as you can do what you want. Getting the data is a bit tricky but it helps if you can do a bit of programming.

Alternatively....
for tennis have a look at oncourt : http://www.oncourt.info/point_by_point.html
they now do point-by-point match data and i find they are reasonable priced.
( if i recall correctly once you got the product you can also directly access the database in the background if you want to run your own queries but not sure right now )

[Cran]

The data provided in those zip files by betfair is pretty useless, at least it used to be, a dogs breakfast
It takes a while to get it cleaned up, but once you've done that it can provide a good starting point for narrowing down strategies to test with real time data logging.

[Keefter]

I used to crunch numbers for a living and know a little about data analysis. I've tried using the BF data and found it pretty useless on the whole