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Letter: Small-score sports

Published 1 February 2006

From Shyly Amarasinghe

You list the most exciting games, defined as those that most often have unexpected outcomes, as soccer followed by baseball, hockey, basketball and American football (7 January, p 13). With the exception of the final two, these are the sports with the lowest scores at the end of the game.

Could it simply be that in lower-scoring games there is a greater chance of a statistical outlier (or, in sport-speak, an underdog), coming out ahead? When the typical expected score is 2-3 it takes only one point to get a tie. In a high-scoring game there is more opportunity for the score to correct itself.

New York city, US

Issue no. 2537 published 4 February 2006

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