Paul the Octopus Amazingly, Paul the German Octopus accurately predicted the outcome of all of Germany’s World Cup matches in 2010 (Shenker, 2010). By the championship game, he was famous, with a BBC News headline announcing: “German ‘psychic’ octopus predicts victory for Spain.” Before each match, Paul was presented with two boxes of food, each marked by a national flag. His picks were the boxes from which he chose food first. Paul was famous because he did so well with his picks; he wouldn’t have been in the news otherwise! But once he was famous, people focused only on his successes, not his failures. Indeed, he only correctly picked four of Germany’s six matches in the earlier Euro 2008 tournament—just one more correct pick than chance would predict. Moreover, it’s not at all surprising that there will occasionally be an animal with a lucky string like this. As University of Cambridge statistics professor David Spiegelharter pointed out to the BBC News, Paul’s feat is not that remarkable if you consider all of the animals who have tried and failed to predict sports wins over the years.

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