Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Part of the Early Career Mathematicians Seminar Series.
On 7 August 2025, ECMs were joined by the winners of the 2023 Graham Hoare Prize winners Matthew Cotton (Oxford) and Brady Metherall (Oxford) for their joint article on Settling Scores and Gambling on Goals.
Abstract
Do you expect a football match to end with an odd or even number of goals? Or perhaps a total that is a multiple of three? In this talk, we will explore how to answer these questions mathematically by modelling goal-scoring as a Poisson process. We discuss some of the interesting things we learnt and discuss whether the assumptions behind our models align with the realities of real-world data.
Part of the Early Career Mathematicians Seminar Series.
On 7 August 2025, ECMs were joined by the winners of the 2023 Graham Hoare Prize winners Matthew Cotton (Oxford) and Brady Metherall (Oxford) for their joint article on Settling Scores and Gambling on Goals.
Abstract
Do you expect a football match to end with an odd or even number of goals? Or perhaps a total that is a multiple of three? In this talk, we will explore how to answer these questions mathematically by modelling goal-scoring as a Poisson process. We discuss some of the interesting things we learnt and discuss whether the assumptions behind our models align with the realities of real-world data.
