标签: information

Machines can do a better job than people at making some calls in sports. Why do we hesitate to use them or embrace the information they provide?   Don't they get it in Baseball? On TV, I watch the umpire call a ball on a pitch that is clearly a strike. How do I know? Because they show in the background an automated strike zone that shows the pitch within the designated area. But the umpire's call rules. I feel frustrated by this inaccurate mechanism…using a human to decipher what a machine should be doing.   Why not adapt technology to do what it is best capable of doing and let the umpire handle judgments that technology can't? We know that eventually they will. Baseball is already trying to shorten the expanding length of the games that routinely go on for over three hours because fans—especially the young ones—have reacted by not embracing such a long drawn out event.   Baseball is one of those sports that have been most reluctant to change. In the image below, the batter struck out but none of the pitches were in the strike zone. The last pitch was called a strike but clearly, it wasn't. Sponsor video, mouseover for sound     The batter struck out without the pitcher never throwing a strike.   Frankly, today most sport events can be seen much more comfortably in front of a big TV than actually at the game. You get all the information from an overview sense. Baseball telecasts routinely cut away to other critical games, showing plays at other stadiums that affect the results. You have difficulty sitting in a ballpark with 25,000 to 50,000 people to seeing outside or inside plays. You do get the experience of the live event by being immersed in it and perhaps seeing some plays directly without alteration. But in our data fed world, that experience is becoming less relevant.   Accurate data flow from any game seems a given today. Tennis and football are just two of the sports where measurement technology has been generously adopted. Line calls in tennis, complete passes in football all rely on measurement technology to get it right. It eliminates the extended arguing and gets the contests on target.   I recently attended the first two days of the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia. The experience was beyond expectation of being there and seeing the event up close. Now how can we see much with 30,000 other folks wanting to see as well? The answer is that you can only see within your eyesight and only that which is unobstructed. Let me say it is difficult and strenuous over the beautifully manicured park-like setting.   Golf on TV is, frankly, much better. The TV networketwork uses technology extensively to show aspects of the game in player’s swing, driving length accuracy, tracking ball flight, etc. You also see the whole picture of the event, not a narrow focus on a single play in front of you. In my case, we hurriedly made the trip back home to see the last two days of the event on glorious wide screen TV.   Another aspect of technology at the Masters is that you are not permitted to bring a phone or camera to the event. It's amazing. You feel cut off from the world. All attention is on golf in front of you. Where else in today’s world do you see 30,000 folks not on their cell phones, or the Internet? It is like going back in time. But the secret of the Masters is that the event holds such great allure in this single yearly ritual that the experience wins, at least for the attendees. Of course the TV presentation, seen in real time around the world, provides the funds to strengthen this event.   As someone who sees our measurement technology used in industrial, scientific, and medical applications to the most precise specifications, it's in-roads into sports is a continuous assault to the old ways. The objective is to give better information for understanding how to compete. The nice part is that we are part of the process. In many ways we are better informed than the actual athlete.   Industry's measurement technology has played a big part in this continuing evolution/revolution. I just wish they would make it happen faster, especially in baseball!   Fred Molinari President CEO Data Translation

While recently reading The Information: a history, a theory, a flood , (Harper Collins, 2013) by James Gleick, I was reminded of something that I had almost forgotten: April 30 would have been Claude Shannon's 99th birthday (he was born in 1916), the father of modern information theory. It is a day that should be more widely noted given his contributions, and I had promised myself I would not forget it.   James Gleick's book chronicles the emergence of information theory and the role of Claude Shannon and others have had in its development. (Source: Harper Collins)   I went back to Gleick’s book to use it as an antidote to all the recent blah-blah and attention in the media to yet another just-graduated college kid being called a genius because he had one bright idea and the good luck to be noticed and funded by venture capitalists.   Reading about Shannon's life reminds me of what true genius is all about. With one exception - building a training computer to be sold to business men who wanted to learn more about them - Shannon never founded any companies and never made the obscene amounts of money some of today's "one trick ponies" have made. But he was rich in ideas that have fundamentally affected not only computers and communications but our understanding of how our world in general works, such as in molecular genetics.   Claude Shannon (Source: http://history-computer.com/ )   Much of Shannon's fame in electronics and communications has to do with his seminal work in a 1949 paper "Mathematical Theory of Communication." It dealt with the fundamental limits on signal processing as it relates to compressing data and reliably storing and communicating it. But Shannon's impact was much broader. Indeed almost every aspect of modern computing and communications has felt the influence of his ideas. I first became familiar with Shannon and his work in undergraduate classes in electrical engineering and computer science at about the time of the introduction of the Intel 4040 while I was working at the California Institute of Technology. Then most of our attention was trying to get our heads around how to use his noisy channel coding theorem to figure out the best possible error-correcting methods and level of compression to apply to a signal before whatever information in it was indistinguishable from noise.   But until I read Gleick's book I did not realize how widespread the impact of information theory and what a major role Shannon played in the development of natural language processing, cryptography, neurobiology, molecular genetics, quantum computing, and pattern detection, to name a few. Shannon’s ideas did not just trigger others to look the impact of information theory on these new areas. He was there in the middle of the fray, generating key papers in all of them. One key paper he wrote, for example, explained the role information theory played in how DNA replicates without too many mistakes in its coding of gene sequences.   Before he started his life's work on information theory in the late '40s and early '50s, even his graduate school studies in the 1930s foreshadowed much of what modern computing is all about. His work then has served as the foundation of today’s practical digital circuit design techniques. A paper based on his master's thesis at the age of 23 was on the use of Boolean logic in computers and communications and was awarded the American Institute of American Engineers Award in 1939.   There was also much in his life that would make him a hero to today's DIYers. As a teenager, when the telegraph was still the primary means of long distance communications, he built radio-controlled model airplanes and even a wireless telegraph system to a friend's house, at a time when wired communications was the norm. Later in life for his own amusement he built such things as a rocket-powered flying disc, a motorized pogo stick, a flame-throwing trumpet and a calculator for doing arithmetic using Roman numerals (I, II, ...V…X…) that he called THROBAC I.   This and much more about Shannon and information theory is in Gleick's 525-page book. However, although Shannon and his ideas are in almost every chapter, he is only one many people Gleick writes about. "The Information" is actually the biography of an idea, intermixing difficult technical topics with the stories of the various researchers struggling with them.   Reading about Shannon and other like-minded researchers got me thinking about the environment in which they did their work and how different it is from today. Given those differences, maybe I have been too hard on the “one trick pony” geniuses that seem to be so common these days.   In Shannon’s day, research was heavily funded by corporations, including both basic research with no apparent short term benefits as well as applied research with well-defined clear near term results. Now most of them do little at all and most of that is applied, not basic. Also, researchers in Shannon’s time were on long leashes, left to pursue their own interests, not constantly badgered to justify their work to the accountants. There was more tolerance for those who, like Shannon, were at their most productive when they worked in isolation. And, unlike our age of smartphones, emails and twitter messages constantly grabbing our attention, it was possible to think through things alone and undisturbed when it was necessary.   Given all that, if Shannon were doing his work today I suspect that he would not have been nearly as focused and productive as he was then. Now, he would be lucky to take to fruition just one of his many world changing ideas. At most companies, I do not think he would have been given a chance. And, from personal experience, in our constantly connected world - little of which is under our direct control - it is much harder to find the isolation needed to take a thought to completion.   For Shannon, it wasn't about achieving fame or making money. It was about solving problems.   Next year I am resolved to not forget Claude Shannon's birthday. I will celebrate not only the fact that he existed but also the fact that he was born then and not now. I have just put a note in my Google Calendar for April 30, 2016 with the following reminder to myself: "Today is Claude's birthday. To celebrate, go out and come up with some ideas that will change the world." And despite all the distractions that the connected environment imposes on my attention, I will dedicate myself to working on at least one new idea, world-changing or not.

I'm currently reading Dean Buonomano's very interesting book. It's called Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives. As it says on the back cover: "To a degree that is difficult for most of us to imagine, much less understand, our successes and failures, joys and sufferings, are the product of protein interactions and electrical changes taking place inside our heads." I don't want to give too much away at the moment (I will be sure to write a full review when I've finished); suffice it to say that I'm learning a whole lot of stuff I'd never even dreamt of before (which always makes me happy). The thing is that, reading this book reminded me of something that happened to me long ago. Have you ever had a stressful experience – such as being involved in a car crash – during which everything seemed to slow right down? People who have not experienced this tend to find it difficult to visualize, but I've talked to quite a few people who say "I know just what you mean!" This happened to me once when I was a young lad somewhere around 8 or 10 years old. I was racing down the road on my pedal bike when the front wheel hit a rock and I was catapulted over the handlebars. I really must have been travelling at quite some speed because I think I flew about 6 meters before gravity decided to make its feelings known and I became rudely reacquainted with the ground.   Sorry – no points for style! The picture above isn't me I hasten to add – it's just an image to illustrate a point. As I recall, I was much more graceful as I glided through the air – I can imagine a row of judges sitting at the side of the road awarding points for grace and style.   Max wows the judges! But we digress... To this day, I recall how the world seemed to switch over into some sort of slow-motion mode. The few seconds I was in the air seemed to take minutes. I could observe all sorts of details about my surroundings, but I was incapable of actually doing anything to mitigate the inevitable end to my flight. Recently (by which I mean sometime in the last couple of years), I was surprised to discover that, although this effect had been widely reported, no one was 100% sure as to the underlying cause. I had instinctively assumed that in my moment of crisis (perhaps aided by a boost of adrenaline) my brain had entered a "super-charged mode". It seems, however, that there was an alternate hypothesis, which was based on the fact that in my moment of terror, my brain simply "blanked out" and I was essentially unconscious throughout my flight. The idea here is that immediately after I'd hit the ground and everything had settled down, my brain reconstructed what it "thought" had happened – and that this process essentially took place on a "frame-by-frame" basis, which would explain the slow-down effect. The reason I say "there was an alternate hypothesis" is that this question was eventually laid to rest. A few years ago, a neurobiologist called David Eagleman based at the University of Texas at Houston came up with an interesting experiment. First, he built a small display that flashed a sequence of numbers too quickly for anyone to see what was going on. Next, he attached this display to the wrist of a volunteer. Finally, he attached a bungee cord to his volunteer's legs and pushed the poor soul off the top of a 150-foot tower. David repeated the experiment with additional test subjects (this is obviously a man of whom one should be wary). The result? To everyone's surprise, the volunteers discovered that – while plunging towards the ground – they could read the flashing numbers and recall them later. Thus, it appears that – when under stress – our brains (and their associated visual systems) are capable of switching to a higher-level of information-processing activity; so much so that time appears to slow down. This is one of those experiments that I would love to replicate myself. Not that I wish to hurl myself off the top of a tall tower, you understand – I see myself more in the role of the person doing the pushing, which means I'm looking for volunteers...