A 21-year-old graduate from Nottinghamshire has conducted ground-breaking research on the maths behind penalties in football. Billy Watson, who grew up and went to school in Kimberley, has produced the thesis for his university dissertation which has now been published in Cambridge University Maths Magazine.
While he has always been a massive football fan, Billy says it wasn't until the second year of his studies that he became interested in the theory behind the sport. After receiving good grades for a module on game theory, he decided to continue down that route and returned to the subject for his final dissertation project.
Despite the technicalities and statistics behind Billy's research, the 21-year-old came to find that the answer to his thesis was much more about human emotions. "You have to consider the players' guilt and embarrassment. Billy acknowledges his research is particularly topical given the timing of the 2024 Euros where England's performance so far has been generally viewed as lacklustre. The former Kimberley School student says that based on his research, the team should be taking a different approach.
Despite the success of his research, Billy says sports theory is not his usual area of interest as he favours ethics and philosophy. In fact, academia in general is something that does not interest the graduate who is instead joining the family local estate agency.