Science goes football!!

An article on today's Clarín newspaper mentions a recent paper analyzing statistics on football games played in high altitudes. The researchers found formal evidences of what was already (but anecdotally, to put it in Shaun's terms) known: games played in high altitude tend to be favorable to the home team. That happens mainly with Bolivia (but also with Ecuador and Colombia) where games are played at 4000 m.a.s.l.
(if you happen to read the article in Clarín, see how stupid the comments from Milton Melgar are. He didn't understand what the whole thing was about).

This made me remember of another article (and a following commentary) published in Nature a few years ago, about the inevitable optical effects causing linesmen making mistakes in judging the offside rule.

I'll leave it here because I have to go playing lunchtime football and think about my next paper!

chau!

JP (en orsai)