Sunday 22 June 2014

Goals and randomness at the World Cup



All those reporters theorising about the reasons for the plethora of goals in the 2014 World Cup should stop comparing only with "the last world cup" which happened to have the 2nd lowest goal per game average ever (2.27 to 1990's 2.21), and is 20% lower than the overall average. Against that overall average, 2014 is running at close to par. Admittedly the average was 4.25 from 1930-1958, and only 2.57 from 1962 on. So 2014 is running about 12% higher than the 'modern' average. (I'm getting these stats from a very nice visualisation put up by The Economist)

This could just be randomness. I just flipped a virtual coin 100 times at random.org. The first 10 flips had 8 tails & 2 heads. The last 10 had 6 heads & 2 tails.

Proving?

Sweet fanny adams. Just like all those articles.