What would be the justification for removing the discounting term for subsequent goals in the Elo model he mentions?<p>Silver mentions that it was the lopsidedness of the score that made the game so surprising, and that the Elo model discounts increasingly lopsided games. As a consequence, this game would not be the "most surprising" game in the history of the world cup. Thus he removes the discounting term, re-runs the model, and <i>poof</i> this is now the most surprising game in World Cup history.<p>That just smacks of attempting to fit a model to one's intuitions. Was it any more "shocking" that Germany won 7-1 than that they were up 5-0 at halftime? I would presume that the "lopsidedness" discount is intended precisely to address the idea that once a team is winning by an overwhelming score the subsequent goals aren't really that surprising.<p>Really, though, a measure of "shockingness", at least as described in this piece, suggests more about what the Elo model cannot capture than it does about the subjective way that any one game was perceived.