GOOOAAAAALLL!

As World Cup fever is on the rise, Nature comments on a paper about the distribution of goals scored in a soccer match. One might think that a team has a certain probability of scoring during a game and this probability remains roughly the same throughout the game. The resulting distribution of scores would be a normal bell-curve.

However, researchers looking at thousands of games have found that the goal scoring distribution is skewed towards high scores. Using a formula for which the probability of scoring goals is increased every goal scored, the researchers matched the skewed distribution. Anecdotally this might make sense, once a team scores it gains confidence and produces one GOOOAAALLLL! after another.