Why Do Hockey Players Score More than Soccer Players?

Julien Blondeau, who researches thermodynamics and fluid dynamics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, writes us about his most unusual research project: I can now perfectly explain why, for instance, field hockey players score more than football players, although the fields have approximately the same size, the number of players is exactly the same, the goals […]

Goal Scoring and Birth Control

The search continues, to find timely meaning in soccer (football) and childbirth: “More Goals, Fewer Babies? On National Teams’ Performance and Birth Rates,” Luca Fumarco and Francesco Principe, IZA DP No. 14448, June 2021 The authors, at Tulane University, IZA, the Tinbergen Institute, and ECASE, explain: “Does national team performance boost birth rates? We compiled […]

Referee Height Influences Decision Making in British Football Leagues

Do referees who are short punish players more than referees who are not so short do? A new study by Ig Nobel Prize winner Minna Lyons and colleagues probes that question. The study is: “Referee Height Influences Decision Making in British Football Leagues,” Dane McCarrick, Gayle Brewer, Minna Lyons, Thomas V. Pollet, and Nick Neave, […]

Professional Football Player by Day, Spectral Graph Theorist by Night

John Urschel is not your ordinary National Football League offensive lineman. He may be a professional football player by day, but by night he is a spectral graph theorist (and numerical linear algebraist). His latest paper has now been accepted for publication in Journal of Computational Mathematics. Urschel announced via Twitter that his paper had […]