Donald Knuth - University life: my basketball management system (11/97)

To listen to more of Donald Knuth’s stories, go to the playlist: • Donald Knuth (Computer...
Donald Knuth (b. 1938), American computing pioneer, is known for his greatly influential multi-volume work, 'The Art of Computer Programming', his novel 'Surreal Numbers', his invention of TeX and METAFONT electronic publishing tools and his quirky sense of humour. [Listener: Dikran Karagueuzian; date recorded: 2005]
TRANSCRIPT: I believe it was the first year they had tried this, and I'm not sure how long they continued the experiment, but they called this the Honor Section, and this just meant that the 20 of us just took all our classes together, while other students would tend to mix. I don't think the other students all spent Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday the same hours, like we did. And so the classes that I had… then I think they challenged us a little more too than they challenged the other students, perhaps. Still, I had time to do, you know, to work on the school paper and to one of the important issues of going to Case at that time was to join a fraternity. Most of the interesting action on campus would be centered around the fraternity system, and so I pledged a fraternity also in my Freshman year, and I guess I can say more about that, but I had mentioned that during the spring of my Freshman year is when my Mad Magazine article came out, you know, and so that well… later on I was editor of a magazine that we founded at Case, called Engineering and Science Review, which wrote about topics in science, and I wrote an article about Potrzebie System for that publication.
I was in the music… I was manager of the basketball team at Case, and I'll say a few words about that, because after I got into computers later on, I combined that with my managing the basketball team. So I devised a strange formula that I don't believe in much anymore, but anyway, I had it at the time, where you could compute each basketball player's real contribution to the game. Not just the points that he made - the baskets that, you know, that he made - but really taking everything into account. So, for example, if you have possession of the ball in basketball, this is worth something. In fact, when you're watching a basketball game, if you sort of add one point to the score of the team who has the ball that sort of gives a more fair indication of what the real score is of the game. So possession of the ball is worth maybe one point. You can work it out after the game; you can say, really, how many times, when you had possession of the ball did you really turn over, and fumble it, or how many points did you really get during that series? And so you can work out that it is may be worth only seven-tenths of a point or something like this. But anyway, possession of the ball is worth something. So if you fumble, then you've lost your team one point, or seven-tenths of a point. So that’s a minus something for you. If you steal the ball, if you recover a fumble, you gain; your team gain possession, so you get credit for stealing the ball. If you make a basket - in those days it was only two points, you don't have the three-point shots in those days - but, okay, if you can make a basket you get two points, but your team also loses possession, the other team gets possession, so you didn't really win two points for your team when you made the basket, you made two points, but you have to subtract from that, the fact that you have to get the ball again.
So at the end, according to my formula, the sum of all the players' contributions would be the amount by which our team won or lost. But it would rate, you know, if somebody makes a shot and misses, then sometimes our team gets the rebound, sometimes the other team gets the rebound, so I, you know, so you lose a little bit for taking a shot and missing. So I calculated a huge number of statistics for every player, and I had a spotter, who would call to me, and I could write it down, every little thing, and after the game I would go and punch cards that recorded all these statistics, and fed them into a little computer program that calculated the formula and made a list for every player, what their real contribution to the game was, not just their field goals and all these traditional statistics. [...]
Read the full transcript at www.webofstorie...

[@johnhammer8668]

If any one have the link to the ibm film whic Knuth is referring to please post the link.

[@MohammedYASSINE]

was looking for it too !

[@rahulsharma9427]

ruclips.net/video/dhh8Ao4yweQ/видео.html

[@ShreevatsaR]

Here is the video he is talking about: ruclips.net/video/dhh8Ao4yweQ/видео.html