Analyzing Variable Importance in CFB Machine Learning Models

As always with machine learning models, a common question that comes up is “Why?”. Why did the model choose this team to win vs. the other? What variables are the most and least influential in a given predictive model? Time to take a deep dive.

CFBD: Using machine learning to predict game outcomes and spreads

Predictive models for college football are a great application of machine learning techniques. Today, we'll look at one technique called gradient boosted decision trees using the LightGBM and NGBoost libraries.