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How Don Knuth's computer skills helped his college basketball team

46 points| charrington | 15 years ago |adafruit.com | reply

14 comments

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[+] mrud|15 years ago|reply
best part:

fed to an ibm computer, capable of making 50k calculations per _minute_

[+] scrrr|15 years ago|reply
I think nowadays such analysis plays a big part in sports. For example when Germany's football team beat Argentina in this year's World Cup I couldn't help but think that the German coach knows something the other coach (legendary Diego Maradona) doesn't.
[+] dpapathanasiou|15 years ago|reply
"For example when Germany's football team beat Argentina in this year's World Cup I couldn't help but think that the German coach knows something the other coach (legendary Diego Maradona) doesn't."

I agree with you in general, but that's not the best example you could have used there.

Maradona spent most of the tournament boasting about not needing a gameplan, and saying things things like: "Nobody ever told me where to play. So I shouldn't have to tell Messi where to play, either".

[+] spinchange|15 years ago|reply
I lack specific examples or links, but had heard a few years ago that U.S. pro sports franchises like the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots, to think of two, use a lot of "Quant" analysis in addition to traditional coaching methods. I'm sure everyone is doing it across pro sports now.
[+] eru|15 years ago|reply
Interestingly the German coach was never an extra-ordinary player himself. But he is very well respected as a coach in Germany.
[+] nocman|15 years ago|reply
Jerry Lucas used his own memory system and his personal collection of data on opponents to his advantage during his extremely successful basketball career.

The video at the following link discusses it briefly. At the moment I can't find any more detailed discussion of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK6yf3qaT4A

[+] zackattack|15 years ago|reply
Knuth seems very tall. I wonder if he plays basketball as a hobby.