I have a terrible habit of blogging about topics long after they go out of fashion. If I were a journalist, I’d probably get fired because I’d always be reporting news 3 weeks too late.

So in true cheerfulegg style, we’re gonna talk about football this week (because the World Cup just ended. Whoops). First of all, I’m not a huge football fan. In an attempt to make conversation, many people ask me, “Which team do you support?” And I go, “I don’t really watch football.” And then they’ll give me weird looks and back away re-e-e-a-ll-y slowly. I can only imagine that they must be marvelling at my admirable independence from mainstream media.

So let’s talk about football. The first chapter of Think Like a Freak by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (the authors of Freakonomics) has a fascinating analysis of penalty kicks.

Let’s ...