Game Theory at 190mph

cameronm writes "A recent article in Slate discusses the value of NASCAR racing as a tool to study Game Theory. You can view the original study at FirstMonday."

Comments

Hard to explain to CS people...

[caferace]

There aren't a lot of people that are hardcore techs and also like NASCAR. There are even fewer that are hardcore techs, like NASCAR and also race themselves (like myself).

Racing is a weird dance between tech and mental, especially on an amateur scale where you are the mechanic, crew chief, transport driver, racer and the lunch chef.

It is indeed a HUGE mental game, but in my case (motorcycle roadracing) it is mostly played with yourself. The organization I race with (AFM) is stricly road courses, and not a lot of drafting is required but the technical challenges are many and varied during a race weekend.

Give it a shot sometimes before you knock it. Racing requires hugely varied skills and a whole boatload of maturity and perserverance.

-jim

An Economics Professor..

[ackthpt]

An economics professor goes to the track... Well, that's what sports and video games are all about, isn't it? As my econ prof put it, "economics is the study of scarcity".

Perfect. There's one one winner, so that's unique. There's 3 that place, so that's scarce. There's a handful that get points in the series, so that's common.

Video games stack up about the same, leaving physics and other sciences out of it for a moment. Feed the ego with wins or temorary need for sense of accomplishements with little tokens, like collecting rings in Sonic or a kick that sends a little blood splashing in some fighter game. Yeah, I lose games quite often, but I still try to limit the availibility of pluses to winners, even acting as a spoiler if that's all I can do (which I did very nicely today, thank you very much :-) Nice to see all the dymanics, which I already knew from other racing sports. (even engaged in a little drafting today on the end of my ride, yeah, buddy you didn't lose me, I'm right behind you going just as fast as you and you're starting to huff and puff and I'm fresh, guess what comes next...) I was considering the whole economic model of a couple games a few days ago, considering why some work and some don't. Games have economies, even single player, so a good economic model, besides just how many win, place or show, helps.

Changing Times

[lpret]

I think the most interesting thing noted in the firstmonday article was the reason for NASCAR's growth:

Baseball - a slow, serene game played with a wooden bat, a cloth ball, and cowhide mitts on a broad, grassy field - surged in popularity just when the industrial revolution was taking hold, leaving masses of urban workers and shopkeepers yearning for the pastoral peace and quiet of the fabled agricultural age. They could relive this for a day by attending a baseball game. By extension, no wonder stock-car racing - a fast, furious sport contended on a paved roadway with snarling, smelly machines operated by hand - is surging in popularity at the very time the computerized information revolution is transforming our society from top to bottom. Stock-car racing expresses the industrial age more than does any big sport in America.

I think this is interesting, because perhaps these are reasons why people are having a hard time adjusting to the "new" era.

Re:Reminds me of a physics article

[Jerf]

No, I think the article has a good point. It's challenging to come up with another popular sport where cooperation with the opponents is necessary to win. (Emphasis "popular"; yes, I too can reel off video games and odd-ball sports where that's true too, but they don't preempt Futurama to death on Fox.)

Using as a guide what the networks, including ESPN will run (even late at night): Basketball, baseball, soccer, football, tennis, golf, hockey, billiards, chess, various "slam-dunk" style contests, strongman/American Gladiator-type competitions, convention human/bicycle/boat racing, every Olympic event I can think of (though one or two may fit the bill, it's hard to remember them all), the list goes on. None of these things involve cooperation with oppenents. About the only thing I've ever seen on ESPN that might fit the bill is some wierd moves in Poker that might be based on unspoken alliances, but I'm just speculating and that's not as obvious as it is in NASCAR.

In fact I'm not a NASCAR fan but this does give me a new respect for the sport.... interestingly, based on this article I now mentally classify NASCAR as next to Poker, requiring psychological manuevering, "social capital", and some luck (in the form of good pit crews, along with traditional luck) to win. I guess only a game theorist could stick car racing and poker "closer together" then car racing and bike racing and consider it perfectly logical...

So it's a science of it's own.

[Bender Unit 22]

How often haven't we looked at things we know nothing about, thinking that it can't be that hard, or there isn't much to it.

When videocameras became a household item, we all thought that it would be easy to make quality vacation movies only to discover that watching hours of TV and movies does not give you the skills. As they say in France "pouvez vous avoir la grande honte pour traduire ceci", he who thinks he knows everything, knows nothing.

In the case of Nascar there's is also added a lot of "padding/filling" to make the broadcasts more interesting. This is done in many programs so that people who don't know about the "rules/mechanics/physics" about the actual driving, can be entertained too.

Pro cycling is similar

[kma]

Most North American sports fans I know assume cycling is just a test of physical fitness, comparable to competitive marathon or track and field. Not so. Drafting in cycling is crucial; at the speeds the pros race, sitting on another rider's wheel saves about 40% in power compared to riding into the wind. Team strategy and tactics more often determine winners than raw fitness.

It's funny that NASCAR and pro cycling occupy almost opposite public images in the North American gestalt: hirsute, homegrown, working class sport vs. effete, Euro, vaguely yuppie-ish sport. But the sports' underlying structures (strategy, tactics, etc.) are surjective.

Re: Pro cycling is similar

[Patoski]

Now I wouldn't say that one sport is more difficult or intricate than the other but everythign you've mentioned here has a parallel in NASCAR.

Let me give some examples of how cyclng is more intricate than NASCAR:
- The person in front of a group is putting in more effort than the rest of the group. Therefore everybody takes turns at the front of the group and the group is constantly rotating ("cycling").

This is also often done in NASCAR although its not planned. If you run at the front of the pack all day long unless you have an absolutely peerless car you're going to ruin your car for the end of the race. You won't have anything left for the end of the race and you'll likely end up further back in the pack. Often times drivers will wave other drivers by and let them pass so they'll have something for the mad scamble at the end of the race.

- Although the wind-effect is levelling the field, there are still people who are better (are fitter) than others. As said in the article, the differences between nascars are minimal. Also there are specialists in every team: Sprinters, Climbers, Loners, Rain-people, Coblle, etc.

To say that there aren't many differences between cars ignores the tens of thousands of man hours (not to mention the billions of dollars spent yearly on a single car) setting up, experimenting with and tuning these cars. There are also specialists who only drive road courses and other drivers who do well at superspeedways etc. Everyone has their strengths.

- In a burst effort, you can get clear of your group. But you can only do that a few times, therefore you have to play your cards right.

If you burst free from the pack at a superspeedway the other cars behind you begin drafting. The "train" of cars will gain momentum and blow by you. After that no one will let you back in the draft and you're left there wondering how you've suddenly gone from 1st to 20th place in the space of a few laps.

- Not to mention team tactics. Cyclist who are designated as a "helper" (in Dutch "knecht") is obliged to put effort into getting his teammate into a good position, an action which removes all chances of him winning. Sometimes that means thaking the front position in a group. This often escalates to an entire team (about 7 persons) at the front of the pack; racing like mad.

These types of things happen all the time in NASCAR with people on the same team. Also, many times drivers will make temporary alliances with each other to help one another advance their position. This makes for interesting pit road politics at times.

Again, neither sport is better or harder than the other but... That said there are lots of things a NASCAR driver has to endure that a cyclist will never see. Strapped to a 200mph rocket for two hours at Talladega (Florida) in the summer when the temperature outside can touch 100deg F and engine temperatures run about 300-350deg F and you begin to know the meaning of the word heat inside the car. Drivers have to wear fire suits, helmets and other saftey equiment in this heat. A driver's foot is seperated from the engine only by inches and at the end of the day he/she can have 2nd and 3rd degree burns on their feet when the heat of the engine eventually burns through their fire retardant boots. Thay my friend is hot.

Anyone who's played enough of the game NASCAR 200x will know that there is more to the sport than throwing back Buds and "hollerin'." A winning NASCAR team is a dance of technology, skill, hard work and just plain luck at times. I could go on and on about the many facets of NASCAR but all most /.ers will ever do or know is make redneck jokes. Isn't it a tad ironic that most /.ers are just as close minded in their own way as the rednecks they poke fun of?

Re:NASCAR just more dumbing down of America

[praksys]

NASCAR racing, along with 'professional' 'wrestling,' country 'music,' and insipid reality shows like "American Idol," "Joe Millionaire," and "Survivor," are the three greatest contributors to the horrific plummeting of the average American's IQ.

I'm not a fan of any of those entertainments, but really they do not strike me as any more insipid or stupid than past popular entertainments. Time tends to filter the stuff we see from past decades - only the (relatively) good stuff survives. If you think back to earlier decades (or visit a museum if you are not old enough to remember more than one or two past decades) then you will see that most entertainment has always been moronic.

Re:A more interesting study...

[istartedi]

Well, why aren't there more White basketball players? Or, early in the 20th century you might have asked "why are so many basketball players Jewish?". That's right. Jewish.

It's because basketball started in Springfield, MA and took hold first in Northeastern cities that were populated by Jewish immigrants at the time. When that demographic became successful, the inner city became more Black, but the basketball infrastructure (hoops, gyms, cold winters, confined spaces) remained. The Blacks took to it.

Same deal with NASCAR, except that it sprang out of moonshiners outrunning the revenuers. Moonshiners were mostly white, so NASCAR drivers were mostly white. Originally, racism certainly played a part in it too, but probably not as much as we might imagine.

Asking this question is a bit like asking why there are so many Asian guys who like to do martial arts, while so few of them are to be found at quilting bees. It's just part of the culture.

Have you tried F1?

[lpret]

All the qualities of NASCAR that you mentioned, importance of crews, technical detail, gas/air consumption, etc. are even more important in Formula One. If you want to look simply at the cars, F1 has allowed greater flexibility to the design and power of the car, allowing the drivers to have different advantages.

The BMW engine is much better in the straightaway, however the McLaren is better at the corners, and Ferrari are the best at tight spaces. It really makes it multi-dimensional compared to the Ford, Chevy, and Dodge cars that are the only allowed types on the field. NASCAR emphasises the driver, while F1 (any formula racing for that matter) focuses on the car. The nerd will go for F1 any day, while the Sociologist will watch NASCAR.

Stock Cars vs Open Wheel

[Amata]

One reason that I prefer stock cars over their many open-wheeled cousins is that you get the door-bangin'. They can bounce off each other, plant a couple donuts, and still be okay. Which makes for more entertainment, IMO. Also, with NASCAR rules the way they are, the makes have to be manufactured in the US. Which lends the sport a bit of patriotic 100% American-ness. Ok, so that could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it.

Restrictor Plate Safety

[DG]

Before you go getting all bent out of shape over restrictor plates and safety, consider the following:

1) Daytona and Talledega are LONG

2) Daytona and Talledega are HIGHLY BANKED

That combination of the length of the track and especially the high banking (which provides gobs of extra cornering force) means that the cars can sustain astronomical top speeds without needing major revolutions in tire technology or wing-and-undertray levels of downforce. It's the banking that lets 'em run flat out.

NASCAR was running over 200 MPH at Daytona in the 60's, back when the cars really were production based and had stones for tires. With modern (for NASCAR) tires and suspensions, that banking could probably support speeds in excess of 260 MPH before the cars got cornering-force limited and had to slow down on corner entry.

Now with the frontal area that they have, no NASCAR car is going to be turning 260 with even unrestricted engines. The power consumed by aero drag is a function of the square of the speed, so it takes more power for the same delta v the faster you go. There's a limit to how much power you can squeeze out of even an unrestricted motor, so the real top speed would probably be somewhere in the 235 area.

But note that the guy who makes 5 HP more than his neighbor is only going to make a small fraction of a MPH more in terminal velocity.

So guess what pulling the restrictor plates off did? You get the EXACT SAME scenario as you had with the plates on, except now the speeds are 30-50 MPH faster. And kinetic energy (that must be dissipated in a crash) is a function of the square of velocity squared as well....

As bad as a Big Wreck at a buck ninety is, that pales in comparision to the same wreck at 230. And these aren't 1500lb Champ cars, these are 3600lb locomotives.

The problem with restrictor plates isn't that they cause the tight grouping of cars and the inability to pass unassisted - that's the fault of the banking. The big issue with the restrictor plate is that it takes a tremendous amount of engineering to try and coax extra air through that plate, and to get the engine to run in the odd environment the plate creates in the intake manifold. R&D costs for a 'plate engine run easily 10 times higher than a short track motor.

What NASCAR should do is make the actual engine displacement for the superspeedways smaller. Make 'em run a 3 litre V6. That'd bring costs way down while still preserving the safety.

DG