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Spot the Ball

projects.nytimes.com

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Re: Spot the Ball

#61

Post by _alastair »

Serow225 wrote: post #37
_alastair wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, it doesn't render all clicks (I dread to think how browsers would react if I tried) - all the results are put through a k-means cluster analysis at regular intervals to produce approximately 30 visible results. The percentages are calculated relative to all the clicks, though.

Nifty. So do each of the guesses shown account for a roughly equal number of clustered clicks, or do some of them aggregate more clicks than others?

I hate to throw to Wikipedia but I won't be able to do a better description than they do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-means_clustering

Re: Spot the Ball

#62

Post by anigbrowl »

smackfu wrote: post #16

Neat idea, but is this something you can actually be skilled at? Even if you know the game, and can figure out what trajectory the ball was on, it seems very hard to figure out exactly where on that trajectory it was when the photo was taken, given the high speed of the ball.

As I have mostly scores in the vicinity of 95-99%, yes indeed you can. In the UK and I think many other countries where soccer is popular, 'spot the ball' games have been a popular newspaper and prize competition entertainment for many years, probably long than I've been alive. It also helps to have played a lot as a kid and have a basic intuition of how the game is played.

following the eyeline of players (and sometimes background observers) is the most basic clue, but it's also important to remember that in soccer you're not allowed to touch the ball with your arms or hands if you can possibly avoid it, so when you see a player's stiffened arm you can often guess that they're fighting to avoid an accidental contact that would result in play being interrupted by the referee.

It's not a very useful skill but I hope that soccer gets much more popular in the US as I might be able to win some easy prize money if spot-the-ball competitions become popular. Or for a small fee, I will be happy to provide individual tuition in this potentially lucrative derivative sport :)

Re: Spot the Ball

#63

Post by _puk »

Good fun!

My understanding of the UK version of this was that the ball was actually placed by a group of pundits[0], rather than being in the original location, so even if you found a freeze frame of the original match you'd still not be able to cheat the system.

Would be fun to crowd source a position taken from wrong guesses to provide some variance.

0: http://www.theguardian.com/football/shortcuts/2015/jan/14/ho...

Re: Spot the Ball

#64

Post by rattray »

_alastair wrote: post #2

I'm one of the people that made this interactive - funny to see it on Hacker News! If anyone has any questions about it, let me know.

I wanted to ask how long it took to make this, but that's an impossible thing to answer - so how much lead time did you (and the team) have before the first version went live?

Re: Spot the Ball

#65

Post by Zenst »

phaemon wrote: post #46
bherms wrote: post #9

reminds me of bestofthebest's car raffle... since you can't really gamble in the UK, they do a skill based game that is exactly this... you buy guesses and then click where you think the ball is... the person each week with the closest guess to where a group of judges says the ball is wins the car of their choice

> since you can't really gamble in the UK Of course you can really gamble in the UK - that's what the bookies are for. However, the regulations are a lot tighter for gambling, so it's easier to make it a "skill based game" which has much looser rules. Bingo and raffles have their own rules which, again, are a lot easier to comply with.

Indeed I recall Spot the Ball compititions in the national papers in my youth and nicely covered here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spot_the_ball in much better detail than I. So somewhat nostalgic seeing the new edition. Though recall it's demise in newspapers was down to the worry of technology enabling analysis of the picture reducing the human level of skill involved and with it being money related prizes then they moved on.

Re: Spot the Ball

#66

Post by oska »

jessaustin wrote: post #60
smeyer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But won't the players have moved roughly as much as the ball from photo to photo (since they're moving at about the same speed)? I suppose as long as the players haven't moved into the space where the ball used to be you could still trivially use that space to replace the ball in an earlier image.

This is a guess but maybe if they have multiple moving objects they just figure out which one is shaped like a ball?

First, let's assume the ball is shaped like a sphere...

Re: Spot the Ball

#67

Post by dzhiurgis »

_alastair wrote: post #2

I'm one of the people that made this interactive - funny to see it on Hacker News! If anyone has any questions about it, let me know.

Are you going to share analytical results?

Like, does countries who adore football, score higher.

Do IPs who regularly read NY Times sports section score better?

Or people who actually seen the game on TV, do they score better?

Re: Spot the Ball

#68

Post by pvg »

_alastair wrote: post #44
pervycreeper wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the concept behind this, and what is interesting about it?

Thanks for the question, pervycreeper! The concept is not new at all - Spot the Ball is a competition that ran in UK (and possible other) newspapers going back at least as far as the 70s. It was a cash prize competition and was pretty popular, though it's died out in recent years. I wanted to bring it back to get people to interact a little more with a highlights photo gallery - it's a lot more fun that way. IMO, it'…

Here's a mention of it in the 40s in VS Naipaul's autobiographical fiction.

https://books.google.com/books?id=A2bTQbKZRf0C&lpg=PA110&ots...

Re: Spot the Ball

#69

Post by biot »

_alastair wrote: post #35
smackfu wrote: post #16

Neat idea, but is this something you can actually be skilled at? Even if you know the game, and can figure out what trajectory the ball was on, it seems very hard to figure out exactly where on that trajectory it was when the photo was taken, given the high speed of the ball.

...sort of? That's kind of the genius of puzzles like these (we can't take credit for inventing it - Spot the Ball has existed for a long time in the analog world) is that it's a mix of skill and luck, so you can fool yourself into thinking you're amazing at it, when in reality the next photo might trip you up completely.

I can relate. I mostly ended up around 55% overall per round (only slightly above average) but I did get a 100% score on one photo which made up for some spectacular fails.

Re: Spot the Ball

#70

Post by plucas »

oska wrote: post #66
jessaustin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a guess but maybe if they have multiple moving objects they just figure out which one is shaped like a ball?

First, let's assume the ball is shaped like a sphere...

What is its radius in meters? Can I assume it is a unit sphere?
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