Is it wise to use previous competition results as a SEA Games selection criteria?
It is quite common to want to utilize the analysis of past results to predict the future. Singapore uses the third placing result of each track and field event as a selection criterion for the next SEA games. Some countries in South East Asia do the same but are there benefits in using this selection criterion. Economist who subscribes to the "Efficient Market Hypothesis" believes that future market prices cannot be predicted using past price information. Similarly, as one will see, data from past SEA games is not a good predictor of results for the next SEA games. I have compiled the SEA games results for the top 3 placings for 36 track and field events in the SEA games since 1959 (it was then known as the SEAP games). The data was obtained from the souvenir programme given out during the 2017 SEA Games (Courtesy of Akid Chong) and also from Wikipedia. I wrote the codes to create charts from data across all the years on my website. You can click on the following link t