Poor Mystic Marcus. The supposedly-prophetic pig who predicted that England would beat Croatia on Wednesday has been vilified on social media following England’s loss, with fans calling for him to be turned into bacon. While these are dark days for Marcus, the pig might take some solace in the fact that he’s far from alone in being completely wrong about the World Cup. Before the tournament kicked off a number of investment banks built sophisticated computer models to try and predict the future world champions via the power of data analytics. It might seem bizarre that financial institutions are competing to be ... (full story)