It's Stochastic!

While I was working in the lab today, I overheard the following conversation about soccer from some people nearby:

"You know, usually the purpose of sports is to determine which is the better team. But in soccer, if you score a goal, it's really just stochastic."

"So a score like 1-0 really doesn't give you any conclusive information."

"Yes. Yeah, I know, you have to have some skill, but it all seems to come down to a stochastic process, in the statistical mechanics way. The ball just diffuses across the field, and if it happens to diffuse into a net, you score."

"Yes, I see what you mean. Maybe if the field were shorter, or they played for a longer period of time, it would mean something, but as it is, it's just stochastic."

Yes, soccer is actually just Brownian motion on a large scale. World Cup fanatics, sorry to break it to you.

-Philip