Check out this robot arm catching things thrown at it:
Put that thing on some Segway wheels and we have an awesome robotic addition to many sports. Heck that would finally bring us a step closer to my dream world where Base Wars exists in real life.
Check out the robot arm on Engadget.
I found a whole site of charts showing some crazy correlations on data. ???? ????? Check it out:
Or perhaps this one:
I think by now you should be realizing the point of this site. If you want to see more, or even hook it into your RSS reader, check out Spurious Correlations.
Is it just me, or does it seem like sports trend of using and studying more statistics (especially newly tracked numbers) to improve your team not really affecting hockey all that much. ??? ????? ?? ???????? ????? There’s been a trend toward Finnish goaltenders who are great at not giving up rebounds and forcing the puck to the corner, but I don’t think that was due to any study of the actual numbers, just people realizing that the goaltenders coming from Finland are awesome.
Something else I’ve never understood is the whole dump and chase style of play. It just looks like a way of giving up the puck to the other team. And the people behind the delightfully nerdy named NHLNumbers.com are tracking this data on their own and coming to the obvious conclusion:
Carrying the puck in is way better than dumping it in, more than twice as good — and it’s not because of odd-man rushes or player skill or any other external factor; it’s just because having the puck in the opponent’s zone headed towards the goal is a lot better than trying to outrace the opponent to try to get the puck in the corner.
Most people don’t recognize just how big the difference is, and the data suggests that teams should be trying harder than they are to carry the puck in. If coaches are telling their third line to dump the puck, they are probably giving away scoring chances. If coaches are telling the players to dump the puck in borderline situations where they think carrying it might lead to a turnover, they are probably giving away scoring chances. ???? ????? Even regrouping and trying again might be better than dumping the puck in, especially when the team has their top line on the ice.
Of course this all needs to be taken with a grain of skepticism, as the dataset is very small and who knows what a larger amount of data will say about these preliminary conclusions. ??? ???? ?????
I’d like to start a weekly feature for boardgames up in this nerdy and sporty place. It’s not like anyone is reading this blog, so I can pretty much shout into the dark voids of the internet whatever I want. Let’s start this new feature this week with a game that almost everyone has played: Monopoly.
Monopoly is a weird game, since almost everyone has played it, we all have differing memories and opinions on the game. Now, before you go about giving me your opinion of the game, you should read the rules and realize that you played the game wrong (Was there money on free parking, or no auctions, or maybe you traded for future rent immunity – All wrong). How would you like someone judging your favorite game if they didn’t play by the rules — Football is stupid & boring, we just passed the ball back and forth until we got to the endzone untouched.
What I’m saying is that perhaps you need to look at the good parts of Monopoly. The wheeling and dealing of properties and cash between players. The game is almost completely about making the right trades and having the dice luck pay out for those trades. Hell, there’s math and statistics on the optimal strategies of the game. The thing with that being the good part of the game is that it’s also what makes the game terrible. If you’re lucky with dice, your trading skill can kill the game for you and vice versa.
In conclusion, Monopoly sucks.
Have you ever wondered how they already have a personalized jersey waiting for the first round picks as they come to the stage only moments after being selected. Is there a speed stitcher on site? Does they NFL have jerseys made for each player for each team just in case? Well, the New York Times has the answers in a story last week.
Workers from Stahls’, a company that specializes in personalizing sports gearthat is hired by Nike, then jump into action. In advance, they made nameplates for each of the 30 prospects at Radio City in the color scheme that matches each of the 32 teams’ jerseys, or 960 nameplates in all.
When the Chicago Bears make their pick, for example, a bag with nameplates for each player is retrieved. The draft pick’s nameplate is taken out of a clear bag and given to another person who has put a Bears jersey on a thermal transfer press. The cover on the press is lowered tight on the jersey and held for five seconds at 350 degrees Fahrenheit to remove any moisture or wrinkles.
The cover is then lifted and a nameplate made of polyester Perma-Twill is positioned above the number on the back and is covered with a Teflon sheet to protect the rest of the jersey. The cover is held closed for another 20 seconds so the adhesive on the back of the nameplate can stick to the jersey. After the cover is lifted, a plastic strip is peeled off the nameplate.
In all, it takes about two minutes to personalize each jersey, which is then folded and handed to a selected fan of that team, who carries it on stage to the commissioner.
If you read the whole article, you’ll notice a couple of things:
Later, Stahls’ will personalize a second jersey that is given to a trading card company that will cut it into little pieces and include them in a set of commemorative cards.
and
When a player is chosen, they check a list to find his cap size, and then pull that cap out the boxes of hats set aside for his new team.
Once the player returns from meeting the commissioner, his cap is taken away and later chopped into small pieces by the collectible card company.
Are there people out there that really want a tiny chopped up piece of a hat or shirt? How do they feel about socks, because I have a few that I’m tossing soon.
For this week’s STATurday entry, here are a few posts by nerd Matt Daniels that breakdown some lyrical accomplishments of hip hop artists. ???? ??????? ?? ????????
First up is his study on The Largest Vocabulary in Hip Hop, which breaks down the number of different words used by rappers in their songs. The East Coast wins:
Next we jump in to just one word, Shorty, and how it came to mean “a fine ass woman, or your girl,” when it started very differently.
And finally, a dive into Outkast and how these southernplayas have affected some commonly used slang.
People are always working magic with their video editing software of choice. ???? ????? And sometimes they make videos that are on the edge of believability. Here’s on such video of a perpetual baseball machine:
After watching it a bit, you can spot the fakeness, but that’s not what I care about. I start wondering if there’s a game to be made using multiple pitchbacks in some crazy configuration. Maybe some kind of Double Dare or Guts type game of getting a certain number of balls off some pitchbacks into a bucket? ???? ?????
Or what about this video that was recently played on SportsCenter because they thought it was real:
Now I want to play some basebowling. The pins would have to be much lighter to actually topple like bowling, but it could be set up… maybe a tennis ball and some plastic kids bowling pins? ???? ?????? ??? ????
Happy NFL Draft Day! Will this be your first pick?
@BurritoBrosShit Easy pick. pic.twitter.com/z6tTo4MIK4
— Matt Pannell (@FreemaninKy) May 5, 2014
In other NFL news, Wes Welker was someone who didn’t take my Kentucky Derby advice and was able to come out a big winner. Not only was he dressed like a pimp, but he won and walked out with a stack of hundreds and handed a few out to random fans on the way to the exit.
Wes Welker just handed everyone 0. ????? ????? ????? pic.twitter.com/mtU9eOMonx
— Jeff Novak II (@Jeff_Novak) May 3, 2014