IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v316y2002i1p615-624.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Football goal distributions and extremal statistics

Author

Listed:
  • Greenhough, J
  • Birch, P.C
  • Chapman, S.C
  • Rowlands, G

Abstract

We analyse the distributions of the number of goals scored by home teams, away teams, and the total scored in the match, in domestic football games from 169 countries between 1999 and 2001. The probability density functions (PDFs) of goals scored are too heavy-tailed to be fitted over their entire ranges by Poisson or negative binomial distributions which would be expected for uncorrelated processes. Log-normal distributions cannot include zero scores and here we find that the PDFs are consistent with those arising from extremal statistics. In addition, we show that it is sufficient to model English top division and FA Cup matches in the seasons of 1970/71–2000/01 on Poisson or negative binomial distributions, as reported in analyses of earlier seasons, and that these are not consistent with extremal statistics.

Suggested Citation

  • Greenhough, J & Birch, P.C & Chapman, S.C & Rowlands, G, 2002. "Football goal distributions and extremal statistics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 316(1), pages 615-624.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:316:y:2002:i:1:p:615-624
    DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(02)01030-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437102010300
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/S0378-4371(02)01030-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mueller-Langer Frank & Andreoli-Versbach Patrick, 2017. "Leading-Effect, Risk-Taking and Sabotage in Two-Stage Tournaments: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 237(1), pages 1-28, February.
    2. Martín-González, Juan Manuel & de Saá Guerra, Yves & García-Manso, Juan Manuel & Arriaza, Enrique & Valverde-Estévez, Teresa, 2016. "The Poisson model limits in NBA basketball: Complexity in team sports," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 464(C), pages 182-190.
    3. Mueller-Langer, Frank & Andreoli-Versbach, Patrick, 2013. "Leading-effect vs. Risk-taking in Dynamic Tournaments: Evidence from a Real-life Randomized Experiment," Discussion Papers in Economics 15452, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    4. Narizuka, Takuma & Yamamoto, Ken & Yamazaki, Yoshihiro, 2014. "Statistical properties of position-dependent ball-passing networks in football games," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 412(C), pages 157-168.
    5. Jeon, Gyuhyeon & Park, Juyong, 2021. "Characterizing patterns of scoring and ties in competitive sports," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 565(C).
    6. A D Fitt & C J Howls & M Kabelka, 2006. "Valuation of soccer spread bets," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 57(8), pages 975-985, August.
    7. G. K. Skinner & G. H. Freeman, 2009. "Soccer matches as experiments: how often does the 'best' team win?," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(10), pages 1087-1095.
    8. Loek Groot, 2009. "Competitive Balance in Team Sports: The Scoring Context, Referees, and Overtime," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 165(3), pages 384-400, September.
    9. S Lessmann & M-C Sung & J E V Johnson, 2011. "Towards a methodology for measuring the true degree of efficiency in a speculative market," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 62(12), pages 2120-2132, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Football; Extremal statistics;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:316:y:2002:i:1:p:615-624. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.