4 ms·

As an outsider, baseball appears to be a very rigid game. (Not sure if rigid is the right word.) What I mean is that almost everything that can happen on the fi

by eCa 12y ago

As an outsider, baseball appears to be a very rigid game. (Not sure if rigid is the right word.) What I mean is that almost everything that can happen on the field is possible to keep track of statistically, that is, everything happens within a given set of actions (and usually in more-or-less distinct order). This easily leads to agreement about what is important to keep track of. The example for baseball could be described in three lines of text. The example for tennis, otoh, seem mostly to describe that there is little agreement on what is important (or on which level to keep notes). Some are happy to basically keep the score (the actual game score) by hand, while others describes details about each point (or even stroke). It also seems like the big four American sports are much more obsessed with statistics than "European" sports, that might also have something to do with it.

superuser2 12y ago
When we first learned about finite state machines in computer science, baseball came to mind. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to draw the state diagram for a baseball game just like you could with a regex.
aidenn0 12y ago
I think that the existant baseball score-keeping leaves out some important information as well; it's not uncommon to see people extend the basic notation. A fly-out to 4 is very different if there is a major defensive shift on, for example. (Certain hitters favor hitting to one side of the field or another, and when they are particularly dominant hitters, the defense will move highly out-of-position; moving the defense from the standard position in general is called a "shift").
cafard 12y ago
What you say makes a good deal of sense to me. Baseball has a discrete start to each "play" when a pitch is thrown, football has its snap. In watching the World Cup, I can see that you have time of possession, touches, take-aways, assists, and so on, but I should still think less for the statistician to use. I believe that the Dodgers' first statistician got his start in hockey.

by eCa 12y ago

superuser2 12y ago

When we first learned about finite state machines in computer science, baseball came to mind. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to draw the state diagram for a baseball game just like you could with a regex.

aidenn0 12y ago

I think that the existant baseball score-keeping leaves out some important information as well; it's not uncommon to see people extend the basic notation. A fly-out to 4 is very different if there is a major defensive shift on, for example. (Certain hitters favor hitting to one side of the field or another, and when they are particularly dominant hitters, the defense will move highly out-of-position; moving the defense from the standard position in general is called a "shift").

cafard 12y ago

What you say makes a good deal of sense to me. Baseball has a discrete start to each "play" when a pitch is thrown, football has its snap. In watching the World Cup, I can see that you have time of possession, touches, take-aways, assists, and so on, but I should still think less for the statistician to use. I believe that the Dodgers' first statistician got his start in hockey.