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Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]

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Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]

#101

Post by thebean11 »

wtallis wrote: post #75
Gravyness wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While interfacing a physics engine is hard, I feel like it would be hard to forget to add the radius in a physics simulation, making mistakes like this rather difficult. So yeah, you can reinvent the wheel but using specialized tools gets the job done too, usually with less painful mistakes, but that's the price to pay for the lack of learning you get with the tool.

Would a physics engine actually make it any easier to solve this inverse problem? Simulating where the ball ends up relative to the hoop after bouncing off the board is the kind of forward problem that I tend to think of physics engines as designed for, but the problem here is to (repeatedly) determine what angle of board would yield the desired post-bounce trajectory. Does something like Bullet have a flexible enoug…

I'm guessing a brute force approach wouldn't take that long for this problem

Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]

#103

Post by aj7 »

Red Auerbach knew something in real life. If you bend the whole rim downward, even a little bit, it becomes a “sewer,” pro just-miss shots start going in. He would check the baskets, before each game, to make sure this wasn’t being used against the Celtics.

Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]

#104

Post by aj7 »

mywittyname wrote: post #41
milesvp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun story. I was in college taking differential equations. And I was faithfully attempting to apply what I'd learned in class, and having a somewhat hard time at it (this was before I realized how useful matlab was). When I was doing some research on the side, and I learned that the vast majority of differential equations are unsolvable, you can only approximate an answer. After that, I was thouroughly annoyed at was…

This should be solvable without differential equations, since it is basically a parabolic antenna with an off-axis feed.

No it’s not. Parabolic antennas work well for a single particular parallel input beam. That’s why they’re on gimbals, and directed at the anticipated direction, or scanned back and forth. Here, he is attempting to image many different parabolic paths onto a small circle in the plane of the rim.

Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]

#106

Post by zimpenfish »

jhncls wrote: post #27

Did other people also wonder what a French cleat might be? It is a molding with a 30–45 degree slope used to hang cabinets or other objects. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_cleat

I probably wouldn't have known if I hadn't wandered into woodworking YouTube - it's a common device for workshop walls, etc., for easily switchable configurations of shelves and whatnots[1].

[1] e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65n9h3tFpVg

Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]

#107

Post by remarkEon »

Aside from the Apollo 13 in Real Time website, this is the coolest thing I've seen on the internet in the last 3 months.

Sent this to my brother, which of course precipitated a huge sibling argument about which player would've benefited more from this assuming we're talking about players that tend to shoot jump shots. I'll let you guys know who wins.

Edit: We mostly disagree on the type of shot that certain players make and which would be more advantageous here. And credit to the creator, he alludes to this early in the video where he talks about "line drive" vs "arc" shots.

Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]

#109

Post by remarkEon »

ericvolp12 wrote: post #93

This was really well explained and interesting. Funnily enough I'm pretty sure this is a really similar method to urinal design, so if this whole basketball thing doesn't work out for ya, you could always work for American Standard...

Upvoted this because I'm tired of peeing on urinals in bars and restaurants that have flat walls, and every time I do I think "gosh don't these guys have any engineers on their payroll?".

Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]

#110

Post by pinkfoot »

hliyan wrote: post #69

Really impressed with the use of Monte Carlo method. A while back I ran into some resistance trying to advocate simpler statistical methods to solve a problem domain similar to this, while the team in question repeatedly wanted to reach for a machine learning solution. I'd love to know if I was wrong here. In my mind, when an algorithmic or heuristic path to a solution is available, we should attempt it first before…

He wants a ML project on his résumé.
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