Question: when is a supercomputer not a supercomputer?
Answer: when it's being used to predict the outcome of the Premier League season.
Of the many micro-industries to have popped in the past few years while desperately holding on to the coat-tails of the runaway football behemoth, those taking a punt at guessing what's going to happen in the future are doing a roaring trade.
READ MORE: Liverpool 18-year-old wonderkid steals the show as dressing room whispers proved right
Or at least that appears to be the case given the plethora of electronic pundits spewing out their latest version of what might be.
The latest to stick their motherboard above the parapet can be found over at Football Web Pages. And those easily irked by the strangely sizeable stock placed in such pronouncements will surely be apoplectic at the predictions.
Arsenal, the current leaders, are going to win the Premier League. But it will be an almighty tussle with only four points separating the top four of Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and, er, Brighton and Hove Albion.
At the other end of the table, it's bad news for the East Midlands with both Nottingham Forest and Leicester City dropping out of the top flight, the latter while conceding a whopping 110 goals.
Mind you, at least their games will be more enjoyable to watch than those of rock bottom West Ham United, who will see only 41 goals in their 38 games - of which only five will be scored by the Londoners, the fewest amount of goals scored by any team in the history of English league football.
On Merseyside, Liverpool will finish fifth, unbeaten at Anfield but, for the first time ever, not winning a single away game. And Everton will avoid the drop by five points, winning just four games but drawing 21 - and scoring only 11 times.
To be fair, clearly the table - which is updated after every Premier League game - uses the season's results to compute a projection, and doesn't take into consideration anything other than the pure statistical analysis of what has gone on before. Nowhere, for example, is it factored in that Brighton have lost the man who guided them through their fine start, with Graham Potter now manager of Chelsea.
And with some teams having played just six games this term, the sample size is hardly generous. That, though, doesn't make the findings any less ridiculous.
That can been seen be drilling down into the individual match predictions that make up the projected final table. Poor Bournemouth are regularly on the end of tonkings, beaten 10-1 by Brentford who also reach double figures in seeing off Leicester. Later on the same April weekend, the hapless Bournemouth and Leicester concede 10 goals again without reply against Tottenham and Manchester City respectively. Match of the Day will be essential viewing that evening.
But a closer inspection of Liverpool's proposed 10-0 win over Leicester on New Year's Eve reveals an anomaly that features throughout the findings. The computer regards Leicester having a 0% chance of winning with there similarly a 0% chance of a draw. Yet the chance of a home win is, um, 23.9%.
Now, even those with only a rudimentary understanding of both football and mathematics knows that if there are only three possible outcomes to an event, and the first two outcomes total 0%, the third must surely equal a 100% certainty. So where is the other 76.1%? What else is this electronic beast imagining? Should we be concerned? We should be told.
Supercomputer? Pah. By relying purely on mathematical trends and statistical analysis, the latest prediction - like so many others - ignores the nuances of the beautiful game that keep us coming back time and time again despite, well, knowing there's usually a 0% chance of our team winning anything worthwhile this season.
You'd probably stand a chance of obtaining a more accurate prediction by conjuring up the spirit of the much-missed Paul the Octopus, the Germany-based animal oracle who gave impressive pointers during the 2010 World Cup.
Actually, that's offensive to the late Paul. As a highly-intelligent mollusc, at least he knew what he was on about.
