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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]

#131

Post by IanCal »

williamdclt wrote: post #127
dsaavy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I put up a giant wall of these in my home and they're incredibly useful. You can build any type of contraption and throw a cleat on the back of it and boom, just put it on the big wall. Reconfigure it every month, build new things to mount up there, it truly is simple and versatile. French cleats truly are terrific.

I like the idea. It's a bit invasive, but if you don't mind would you share a photo of what this wall looks like?

Someone else below has shared a video on the same kind of thing you might be interested in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65n9h3tFpVg

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

#132

Post by frobozz »

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…

Absolutely!

Try writing a simple calculator app with ML and you won't even have marked up enough training data by the time I have written it algorithmically. When it's finished, the ML one won't be as reliable.

I've been involved in a few projects where ML was a candidate approach. Mostly the answer was just to write down what we already know about the problem domain instead.

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

#133

Post by learnstats2 »

0-_-0 wrote: post #119
avilay wrote: post #14

That was a pretty cool video! I loved how he used 3D Monte-Carlo and side-stepped all the complicated math. I wonder if he was using a Physics engine like Bullet or ODE to calculate the simulated trajectories. Also, a good intermediate step might've been to build the backboard in something like Unity and shoot some hoops to catch the radius error before actually machining it out.

> complicated math Is it though? Isn't the final shape just a paraboloid, like a parabolic antenna with the hoop in the focal point?

The video justifies that it isn't: that paraboloids work to focus straight lines but not parabolic basketball trajectories.

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

#134

Post by Cogito »

justinator wrote: post #74
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

We used them a lot when hanging up art work.

Yeah it sounds a lot like a picture rail[0], the main difference is that the picture rail runs around the whole wall while this is more specific.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molding_(decorative)#Picture_r...

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

#136

Post by paul_f »

IgorPartola wrote: post #84
Taek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common trap in tech is to reach for the fanciest tool instead of the simplest. The best engineering often comes from mastery of the simple tools, and the most beautiful engineering is the one that makes you say 'that's so obvious, why didn't anyone ever come up with that before?'

One of my favorite software solutions that I came up with was “human learning” powered. A few years ago I was working as the engineering manager at a small company. I had 8 other people who I was in charge of and we had moved to a new office in the middle of this. Our team took up two rooms in the office and I had to figure out who would be sitting where. I had some preconceived notions of who would be productive tog…

Is this how sports schedules, NFL, NBA, etc are made?

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

#139

Post by Mulpze15 »

candeira wrote: post #135

I wonder if Greg Egan reads HN or whether he learnt about this in some other way, but this was his analysis of the same problem from five hours ago: https://twitter.com/gregeganSF/status/1251390966356795392

He credits the video as his inspiration in his 2/2 tweet.

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

#140

Post by perlgeek »

avilay wrote: post #14

That was a pretty cool video! I loved how he used 3D Monte-Carlo and side-stepped all the complicated math. I wonder if he was using a Physics engine like Bullet or ODE to calculate the simulated trajectories. Also, a good intermediate step might've been to build the backboard in something like Unity and shoot some hoops to catch the radius error before actually machining it out.

He scrolled over the code pretty quickly, but it looks like python + numpy, didn't see any references to other major tools (could've easily missed them though).
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