What is the Dixon–Coles model?

Dixon–Coles is a statistical model for football scores published in 1997 by Mark Dixon and Stuart Coles. It builds on the idea (Maher, 1982) that each team's goals follow a Poisson distribution driven by its attacking strength, the opponent's defensive strength and a home-advantage factor. Dixon and Coles added two things. First, a correction (often written ρ) for low-scoring results — 0–0, 1–0, 0–1 and 1–1 — which a plain independent-Poisson model gets slightly wrong. Second, time-decay weighting, so recent matches count more than old ones. From the predicted chance of every scoreline you can add up home-win, draw and away-win probabilities. Limits: the model sees results, not injuries, line-ups or motivation, and newly promoted teams need special handling (WinSight uses a cold-start treatment). See /how-it-works. Dixon, M. J. & Coles, S. G. (1997), Applied Statistics.