a little late-night simulation in #rstats for those following the #fifaworldcup . The 48 teams are arranged in 12 groups of 4; the top 2 in each group plus the 8 best third-place teams go on to the knockout stage. I was wondering what the chances were of qualifying as a 3rd-place team based on how many points you got. My simulation gave:

5 or 6 points: certain
4 points: 99.4%
3 points: 59%
2 points: 3%
1 point: 0%

So 3 points plus a decent goal difference should do it.

I'll be writing a blog post about this, maybe tomorrow, with the probably unrealistic assumptions I made.