The Stocky, which is short for stochastic simulation, is a Monte Carlo simulation of the season using Elo modelling to work out what the outcome of that season might be.

The basic premise of a Monte Carlo simulation is that if you have a few pieces of the puzzle, an idea of how they relate and then throw enough random numbers at it, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what the puzzle picture is.

Let’s say you have a circle inside a square with sides the same length as the circle’s diameter. Then throw a bunch of sand onto the square/circle combination and count how many grains of sand end up in the circle. If you know the length of the square’s side and the proportion of sand that ends up in the circle, you can work out a value for π.

(You want more detail? Fine: the side of the square can be used to calculate the area of the square, multiply that by the proportion of sand inside the circle will give you an estimate of the circle’s area, divide the circle’s area by square of half the square’s length and you will get an estimate of π).

The more grains of sand you throw at the square/circle, the closer the estimate will be to the actual answer.

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