Sport score is a statistic used to measure the amount of points won by a team or player in a game. This can be done in a variety of ways depending on the sport. It can also be used to measure how well a student is doing in a subject.

Basket and net sports usually count a point when the ball enters the team’s basket or net, while most combat sports count a win when an opponent is knocked out. These differences introduce ambiguity in how scoring is measured, and it is difficult to compare the results of different studies. The studies reviewed had a wide range of aims, focuses, and measurement tools, which reduced the scope for synthesis and meta-analysis. Many studies had small sample sizes, which decreased the likelihood of achieving statistical significance or p values 0.05.

Across college football (CFB), professional football (NFL and NBA), and NHL games, the tempo and balance of scoring events share a common pattern. The timing of scoring events can be effectively approximated by a Poisson process in which each second on the game clock produces a probability independent of previous events. The resulting model explains the observed evolution of lead-sizes and makes highly accurate predictions of game outcomes despite knowing nothing about teams or players.

The model also accounts for the sharp, but short-duration dip in scoring rate at the beginning of each period. This can be interpreted as the onset of the ‘warm-up phase,’ in which teams and players are establishing advantageous positional configurations and experimenting with their tactics.