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oh boy, glad to see those thoughts are on HN, but it barely scratched the surface of the problem. It's a special topic of interest for me, as I'm currently tryi

by divan 5y ago

oh boy, glad to see those thoughts are on HN, but it barely scratched the surface of the problem. It's a special topic of interest for me, as I'm currently trying to reform sports in my country (figure skating in particular) and involved with number of projects (software and hardware) for sports. The main point I want to praise this article for is that sport should be designed. Most sport are not, they just emerged from free play activities and for the last 70+ years are mostly being changed reactively as a response to professionalization, tragic events and TV requirements (as TV rights are the major source of revenue for many international federations). There is no book or theory on how to design the sport. How to choose tradeoffs to satisfy different stakeholders. The closest thing I could find is actually body of knowledge from computer game designers – how to keep users engaged, how to ensure the incentive structure is aligned, how to fit into requirements of the game/tournaments etc. Because of this I suspect eSports will outperform many traditional sports soon in terms of member base by a lot. In traditional sport if you want to know how a smallest change in rules will alter the whole game – you out of luck. The only way is just to push hard for the change and watch. Here is a great read about cascading changes in hockey provoked by tiny changes of the equipment regulations. [1] Or how suboptimal incentive structure in Badminton tournament resulted in weird incentives to loose [2] But sports officials and decision makers are often ex-athletes themselves. They carry too much burden of attachement to particular styles or traditions, and very few are trained in system design or math or economics. Sports industry is very conservative. Take athletics pole vault mentioned in the article. How does it differ from long jump? Long and high jump/pole vault are jumps and the goal is find "the best jumper". But historically it was easy to measure distance and hard to measure height. So high jump/pole vault uses this progressive system, and long jump does not. Why? Tradition, even though progressive system is suboptimal, because athlete becomes more and more tired towards increasing the height (and doesn't show their true best). Also the winner is always the one who failed last, which is a bit disappointing but might be more engaging for the audience. I'm not even starting with figure skating judging. In a 100 years it moved from literally voting for style to measuring individual elements. The problem is that for measuring it uses biological sensors called "humans". As with many imperfect sensors they use sensor fusion approaches (7-9 judges in a row + trimmed mean), but the nature of the error and bias still makes a lot of room for subjective judging and building coalitions (especially from judges in ex-Soviet bloc). Japanese IceScope system is one step forward to start augmenting judges with objective numbers but it's really primitive (2 4K cameras measuring skaters' jump as a pixel movement and only can assess length and speed of a jump). Olympics used FreeD system, which is impressive but way out of price range for most federations in the world. Anyway, this topic is huge. Would be grateful for any links or papers that you think might be relevant to sports design. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/02/hockey-goalies-are-too-big-now/618021/ https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/02/hockey-g... [2] https://agtb.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/olympic-badminton-is-not-incentive-compatible-6/ https://agtb.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/olympic-badminton-is-n...

bradtemp 5y ago
While computer camera/laser judged pole vault/high jump would certainly be possible, and much quicker, they would be different in that the visible bar clearly creates a target in the mind of the athlete. It also has the advantage I talked about -- the spectator can immediately see, with no clock, judge or computer to aid them, if they cleared the bar. As I wrote, not all sports should be for the spectator. But if the purpose of the competition is to be watched, as is the case in the Olympics, that is what to design for.
- divan 5y ago
  Right, but that's also true for the long jump. Why not use progressive approach for the distance? (I'm not advocating, just raising question to show that there is no design involved, mostly tradition) Television emerged much later than most of Olympic sports, but affect many sports a lot, especially the one where international federation rips the TV rights fees (some sports delegate it to the local organizing federations and care less). For example, compulsory figures disappeared from figure skating largely because they didn't "sell" on TV and wasn't exciting to watch. Or table tennis ball got bigger to slow down the game and make it more appealing for TV. And yet I'd love to see some research on theory of sports where spectators engagement was part of the model. For example in track cycling there is a weird discipline of individual sprint, where, as name suggests, the one who gets faster to the finish line wins. But here is the catch – they don't care about time, only about who crosses the line first. Given that airpressure behind fast-moving rider is low and saves around 30% of energy, it creates an incentive to be the second most of the time. Which leads to the weird interplay between cyclists where the literally stand still sometimes instead of rushing to the finish line. The even weirdest part is that this moment of suspension and speeding up like crazy after standing still – most exciting moment for spectators. If we could have a framework to plug in all the requirements and constraints of the specific sport, and choose the trade-offs we want (including interest for viewers as you mentioned) based on model and not just intuition or loudest voice in the federation...
  - bradtemp 5y ago
    Strategy is valued by a lot of viewers, myself included. As I pointed out the victory by the mathematician Anna Kiesenhofer in cycling was amazing to see, even though there was no dramatic race, because she used more math and strategy than the others. But it was still better because it was a race, and you could see how far behind the others were. But a nerd is going to love that race. It's just not the same when they race with the clock, and of course it takes a long longer. It is the most fair, which is what you want from the standard of making an academic measurement of athletics, and that is valuable. But in terms of spectator excitement per unit time, it's just too far down the list.

by divan 5y ago

bradtemp 5y ago

While computer camera/laser judged pole vault/high jump would certainly be possible, and much quicker, they would be different in that the visible bar clearly creates a target in the mind of the athlete. It also has the advantage I talked about -- the spectator can immediately see, with no clock, judge or computer to aid them, if they cleared the bar. As I wrote, not all sports should be for the spectator. But if the purpose of the competition is to be watched, as is the case in the Olympics, that is what to design for.

divan 5y ago
Right, but that's also true for the long jump. Why not use progressive approach for the distance? (I'm not advocating, just raising question to show that there is no design involved, mostly tradition) Television emerged much later than most of Olympic sports, but affect many sports a lot, especially the one where international federation rips the TV rights fees (some sports delegate it to the local organizing federations and care less). For example, compulsory figures disappeared from figure skating largely because they didn't "sell" on TV and wasn't exciting to watch. Or table tennis ball got bigger to slow down the game and make it more appealing for TV. And yet I'd love to see some research on theory of sports where spectators engagement was part of the model. For example in track cycling there is a weird discipline of individual sprint, where, as name suggests, the one who gets faster to the finish line wins. But here is the catch – they don't care about time, only about who crosses the line first. Given that airpressure behind fast-moving rider is low and saves around 30% of energy, it creates an incentive to be the second most of the time. Which leads to the weird interplay between cyclists where the literally stand still sometimes instead of rushing to the finish line. The even weirdest part is that this moment of suspension and speeding up like crazy after standing still – most exciting moment for spectators. If we could have a framework to plug in all the requirements and constraints of the specific sport, and choose the trade-offs we want (including interest for viewers as you mentioned) based on model and not just intuition or loudest voice in the federation...
- bradtemp 5y ago
  Strategy is valued by a lot of viewers, myself included. As I pointed out the victory by the mathematician Anna Kiesenhofer in cycling was amazing to see, even though there was no dramatic race, because she used more math and strategy than the others. But it was still better because it was a race, and you could see how far behind the others were. But a nerd is going to love that race. It's just not the same when they race with the clock, and of course it takes a long longer. It is the most fair, which is what you want from the standard of making an academic measurement of athletics, and that is valuable. But in terms of spectator excitement per unit time, it's just too far down the list.