ECM Seminar: Settling Scores and Gambling on Goals
In the latest run of the Early Career Mathematicians Seminar Series, we will be joined by the winners of the 2023 Graham Hoare Prize.

Details

When? Thursday 7 August 2025, 16:00 to 17:00
Where? Online via Zoom

The Graham Hoare Prize is awarded annually to Early Career Mathematicians for a brilliant Mathematics Today article. The prize was named after Graham for his valuable contribution to the IMA and the wider mathematics community especially in encouraging young mathematicians. He was head of mathematics at Dr Challoner's Grammar School and has actively supported the UK Mathematics Trust the Ri Masterclasses programme the Bletchley Park Education Department the Mathematical Association and the IMA. Graham responded to letters in a characteristically erudite and jocular style for 20 years as Mathematics Today Letters Editor. In 2023, the winners were 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.

Bios

Matthew Cotton (AMIMA), University of Oxford

Matthew recently finished his PhD and is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Cambridge. In his research he tries to describe how proteins interact and how this can lead to function or disfunction. Outside of work he likes to run and play badminton.

Brady Metherall (AMIMA), University of Oxford

(Awaiting Bio)