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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."
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I am not a big fan of NASCAR, but I would think that the mechanics and those who design the cars have a more difficult job than the driver's themselves....
What's next? Studying Wal-Mart shoppers' habits for the cultural development of the Western world???
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
it is simply a daytime soap played out on a race track.
p.s If you don't get it then you didn't read the article
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
It's no the complexity or simplicity of the track, that is unimportant. The point is the challenge and the danger involved in NASCAR. Another reasons fans like NASCAR is because everyone drives and everyone can try to make their car faster. The final reason is that the drivers are friendly unlike other sports and aren't paid many millions of dollars for the most part.
once you are in "line" you need to stick your head out once a while otherwise your engines overheat.
I am sure that contributes to a WHOLE other dimension of it - how do you know if the guy's going out for "fresh breath" or passing?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
It is a branch of mathmatics.
4 86 251012.html
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KFG
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
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Game Theory (GT) is a mathematical field all about choices: given a set of knowledge, build a set of choices that will lead to the greatest expected outcome.
GT can be applied to games, since games generally consist of a set of choices. But the term is more often heard in economic circles: stock market, insurance calculations, portfolio planning... But don't limit it to that either. GT can be applied to most any sort of competition, such as competition for food sources between predator species, or trying to find the shortest/quickest way through the lines at a supermarket.
A number of different factors influence your choices. How much information do I know? How much information does my opponent(s) know? Do they know I know what they know? Can I influence my opponent's choices such that we both get a better outcome? All these things will change my strategy.
Usually at the Winner's Circle or whenever the driver gets some time to talk to the camera, they thank their pit crew first. If you've ever seen them change tires, or whatever it's incredibly fast. Not to mention all of the other repairs they have to do at lightning speed.
I used to absolutely abhor NASCAR. The only thing I'd ever watch were the wrecks. Now I'm the type of guy to leave some sort of sports on the teevee while tooling around online or playing games in MAME. But starting last year during a really bad cold I began to watch NASCAR. At first I was like okay this is at least as exciting as soccer. Then I watched some more and the wrecks were fricken awesome. Okay, one more race. More awesome wrecks. Then again. Next thing I knew I actually began to pay real attention (well in the same way I'd watch a BBall game) and suddenly it struck me. NASCAR is a hell of a lot smarter than I was giving it credit for.
Races play out a lot like a chess game, there is an immense amount of strategy involved. Hell there is a concerted effort going on with everyone at very high rates of reaction times... one fuckup and bam they all go down. NASCAR really gets a bum rap because of the stupid commercials, southern drawls and history. But for techies and people willing to look past it's somewhat boring motif there is a somewhat rewarding experience there.
Then again I also like any kind of car racing. Perhaps one too many hours of Gran Tourismo broked my brain.
--- I do not moderate.
Thanks for the information =)
For once, I feel slightly smarter after reading slashdot instead of feeling like someone has attempted a lobotamy on me with a vacuum cleaner.
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.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Pretty much all I'm seeing in this thread so far is a bunch of insults of the intelligence of NASCAR fans. (Of course, this is slashdot, and this is the first few posts...)
However, I think one thing that people overlook is the level of creativity the teams have to have to make their car superior to the next team's. This year, all the makes have to fit the same set of templates -- that is, the cars have to be practically the same shape, whether a Chevy, Ford, Pontiac, or Dodge. Meaning no make has a particular aerodynamic advantage over another, and teams can't tweak the shape of their car for more speed. NASCAR has strict rules on engine specifications and suspension setup. There's a lot of engineering work in these cars that, while not necessarily directly applicable to street cars the way, say, World Rally Championship technology is, still helps the automakers develop more efficient, better performing, safer cars. Teamwork matters in NASCAR -- many a race has been won or lost just because of how well the pit crew did their job.
Shhhhhhh! You're giving away my secret to +5 insightful comments!
Have you seen my stapler?
Game Theory is also often used in Political Science in conjunction with Rational Choice Theory. They use GT to produce formal models of potential choices that an individual rational actor will take when faced with a certain decision. It is often used in attempts to explain political behavior. However, Rational Choice often comes under fire as a mode of operation because of how complex these formal models tend to be. To explain a half page diagram and a good narrative, they will utilize a few pages of greek letters and mathematical formulas in a way to predict human behavior.
Still, despite the fact that its not very readable, its fairly en vogue in Political Science to either use Rat. Choice or to trash Rat. Choice.
A quick primer in ultra basic physics: Assuming all equipment is equal, two or more cars running nose to tail (starting at about 130 MPH+) can move faster than a single car with the same amount of horsepower, due to the drafting effect.
At two tracks on the NASCAR schedule (Daytona and Talladega), restrictor plates are used (I won't get into the religious war as to why the plates are used). The effect is that due to the cars being "underpowered" as (compared to the circuit's grip and traction potential), the cars do not maximize the track, they are able to negotiate the entire course without having to lift or brake. Due to the artificially enhanced draft effect, no car is able to pull away from the pack. Hence there is a continual chess game using this effect to work your way to the front, for gaining points for leading, and to be at the right spot for the last lap. Part of the chess game is teaming up to create temporary alliances to maximize the draft.
While the draft effect is a crucial part at other high speed tracks on the circuit (Michigan, Charlotte, etc), the effect is the most important aspect at Talladega and Daytona.
I am not a big racing fan and have never really understood the allure, but the section Basic Dynamics of Drafting is a fantastic read. It gives great insight into tactics used by these highly skilled drivers.
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...
Cooperation in competition to win and GT? Check out Tit-for-Tat, as well as a bunch of other things for more examples.
My favorite part was: "It takes two to pass one.""There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
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.
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.
John Nash is _not_ the originator of Game Theory. John von Neumann is. Do a google search on him.
Nash had many interesting ideas relating to all sorts of fields including economics and game theory, but he did not originate either one. Von Neumann, on the other hand, created an entirely new field of mathematics which is interrelated with economics, political science, sociology and others. If you ever get a chance to read von Neumann's books, I highly recommend it.
---
"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
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.
...but being ultra nitpicky. The draft effect can definitely be measured at those speeds, but for meaningful use during NASCAR races you only can truly utilize it at the speeds I mentioned. When truckers utilize the effect, they have the luxury of long stretches of road. NASCAR drivers have at the most, 1 mile to make use of it (at tracks other than Dega/Daytona) before having to brake. Daytona and Talladega repesent the extreme use of this effect. At the other tracks, there is more emphasis of driver skill and equipment construction. At short tracks like Bristol and Martinsville (1/2 mile total), the draft effect (however tiny and measurable it is) is never something a driver even subconciously thinks to try to utilize.
The 1969 Dodge Daytona Superbird NASCAR version went in excess of 220 MPH on the bonneville salt flats. The most powerful street version was said to be capable of 180 MPH. That is one SERIOUSLY riced up Honda. Besides, how big of a geek do you have to be to think that technology plays a hand in everything? Even if you ignore the modern suspension that these cars have, racing is against a man and his machine vs another man and his machine. Racing would be racing if they were in steam powered buggies or the latest computer controlled coil-on-plug, solenoid valve super concept cars.
Drafting is the central feature of bicycle racing, and in a different form temporary cooperation is common in running (though less for drafting and more to prevent yourself from getting jostled). It also happens in adventure racing, which is popular enough that its biggest event (the Eco-Challenge) is fairly well-known.
demi
I suspect NASCAR is not an ideal (ie: boundary pushing) example of the sorts of game theory this article talks about.
Most of all: cycling. There's more flexibility for overtaking - a limitation in track racing. Other than that, the nature of the competition is similar - slipstreaming and darfting.
Another comparison I thought of is the board game Diplomacy, because there's more time to think, and betrayal is all but inevitable: in order to win, you will have to screw your allies if you are on the path to success. This is not necesarily the case in nascar where you may be happy to lose now because it's meaningless whether you come fourteenth or fifteenth. In diplomacy, there is a status attached to mere survival. I admit, there is a path to stalemate whereby you honour your agreements. However, it is rare.
However, I found the point of the article - regarding where accidents happen - to be very interesting.
Believe with me, my saplings.
Can someone else confirm or deny this?
I've read about 3 papers from that 'peer reviewed' journal and they just seem like little soapboxes for the authors; I could read through the linked paper, it was reading like an editorial....
I thought it was just the author of the papers I was reading but I am begining to think its' encouraged by the journal..
A quick scan of the paper doesn't really show any data..I see words like 'agents' and 'complexity' but not much data...unless someone can give a convincing arguments otherwise I stand by my assertion that it's just a load of bunk.
The most common complaint from NASCAR drivers:
Just once, can't we turn right?
I suppose they can relate to derek zoolander.
to email me: take my
The real world must be a lot simpler than I have always believed, or perhaps they should be studying a sport like european bicycle road racing, which shares the cooperation/competition thing, but has nine or ten guys per team in scenarios where, because of terrain or the type of race, certain teams/riders can excel and have a real chance to win one day, but not the next, and everyone knows what everyone else's strengths and weaknesses are. Also, things like national loyalty, even between riders on different teams, often plays into things, as well as riders "thanking" other teams for giving them a nice contract for the upcoming season, and blowing off their current team.
It's a heartless sport really, much like life.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
If you want to see cars which bear some resemblance to production race, it's either a production car category like Porsche Cup, or group N rally (the World Rally cars are very heavily modified).
My favourite racing categories are actually motocross bikes or dirt speedway racing, which in terms of spectator entertainment crap all over the open-wheel categories, NASCAR, Touring Cars, and even rallies (you don't get to see enough of the course in a rally, sadly). The other nice thing about supercross is that you can actually buy the bikes the pros use (well, not quite, but very, very close).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
As someone studying political science with a strong interest in game theory, complexity theory, and computational modeling, I have only one thing to say: please don't make me watch--much less analyze--NASCAR!
That thing about cooperation sometimes being necessary in competition... isn't that one of John Nash's discoveries? I forgot.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
It is kind of frustrating to read articles like this because the action seen in the Daytona 500 is not indicative of NASCAR racing in general. Since the Daytona 500 is by far the biggest race and thus picks up the most casual viewers, there are many people getting to see true NASCAR action, but the very ugly restrictor place bastardization instead.
There are 36 races in the NASCAR season. Four of them, including the Daytona 500, are run with restrictor plates on the carburetors (which limits the horsepower). The effects that these plates have on the cars and the race are many, but the net effect is that they equalize the cars to a ridiculous degree. What this means is that the draft becomes the only away to get an advantage on another car and so you absolutely need a 'buddy' to run with you if you want to make a pass. This is the phenomenon that is explored in the Slate article.
Now, there are some interesting things that go on during a NASCAR restrictor plate race: the cooperation with opponents, the constant need of strategy, the frequent teamwork, etc. And hey, the game theory applications in the referenced articles are pretty neat. It is indeed a high-speed chess game. But as someone else already said here, one thing is it NOT, is racing.
Rest assured that most of the races in the NASCAR season still boil down to a good old fashioned "run the car as fast as you can, the best man wins". For sure, drafting strategy still comes into play in some of the other races on the larger tracks, but it's not the one and only thing that determines every position on the track. In this poster's opinion, it's a shame that the great Daytona 500 is sullied by restrictor plates.
Note: Restrictor plates were mandated by NASCAR as a safety measure, but the way they equalize everybody's speed causes extremely congested groups of cars, and that has led to some really huge crashes. One could argue that Dale Earnhardt's death is partly attributable to the restrictor plate rule. It's a very controversial issue.
204mph civic. That was with two seconds of googling.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I don't see how you could do worse than use Walmart as a study basis for sociality theories. Just like Sears made some pretty profound implications for social change with their mail order business, the fact that Walmart has been basically transforming many rural areas they're part of by a flood of mass produced mid-quality goods has got to have some implications as well. Before Walmart many rural areas had to depend on untrustowrthy local distributors and access to urban centers, now they too can get cheaply made crap from around the world exactly like everyone else. In many ways they're like homogenized corporate flea markets.
I'm not saying that Walmart is good or bad. The way they use controls over their distribution and those implications of control are pretty nasty, but on the other hand I can't see how many places in rural America would be better off if there hadn't been a Walmart. It simply gives rural America better access to consumer goods than main street type small businesses could possibly afford to, covering goods that might not otherwise make it into smaller markets.
John Nash - as well as John Von Neuman and abunch of others. The came up with Game theory. As see prisoner dilemma problem.
Frisbees. Rambo III. Soul Train. The Twist. Landscape Seating. Horse Shoes. Phrenology. Axe Throwing. Radio Ventriloquism. Cowboys 'n Indians. Baseball. Hula Hoops.
BTW, was the original poster trying to be funny when he claimed that NASCAR racing, professional wrestling, country music, and reality shows were the three greatest contributors to the plummeting American IQ? He should add the level of mathematics in public schools to that list, and bring it up to a round seven.
The ______ Agenda
Hmm, let's see:
:) :)
Fat, beer drinking, rabid fans.
Might be a NASCAR race...
Might be a Linux convention.
Seriously, being a devoted NASCAR fan AND a Systems Engineer, I obviously fall into a small demographic. But as several posters have noted earlier, NASCAR is SO much more than hicks in fast cars doing silly beer commercials. The crew chiefs, mechanics and fabricators that work on these cars are "hackers" in the true sense of the word, much more than most of us will ever be. Team work, dedication, commitment, attention to detail, creativity... I image any of these terms will be familiar to coding teams or engineering teams no matter whether you live in the southeastern US, or southeastern India. F1 and Rally Racing are technically challenging and exciting to watch, but if nothing else, NASCAR racing is just plain fun. Envite some friends over, fire up the grill, open up a cold one, put on that Harvick t-shirt and spend 4 hours watching a Bristol or Richmond night race. If nothing else, maybe it will get your mind off coding for a few hours and help improve your social skills all at the same time
Then again, maybe I'm just weird. I'm from Kentucky and I'm a "rabid" NHL fan, also
who enjoys a good stock car race (or, more accurately, I like watching darned near anything race...) I'd like to add in a few notes:
1) Stock car racing isn't always like this; this is the norm at Daytona or Talladega, but smaller tracks have different dynamics. Also, simply saying this is "NASCAR" is also misleading; the "NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series" is just as much NASCAR as the "NASCAR Winston Cup Series" they're talking about here, and the trucks run differently, even at Daytona. (The trucks have unrestricted motors, and instead rely on the fact that they have to punch a bigger hole in the air to keep them at "safe" speeds. This leaves sufficient power to bring back one-on-one moves like a slingshot)
2) NASCAR drivers aren't all "he". Shawna Robinson, Deborah Renshaw, and Tina Gordon would probably argue that point.
3) The comment that racers get more aggressive when they're worried about losing more so than winning is questionable-- it seems more to me that the agressiveness level is a function of how many laps are left, and not position on the track. The reason backmarkers tend to wreck more often is their car isn't handling as well, which is why they're back there in the first place...
On the other hand, the game theory aspect is pretty spot-on, and it gets even better than what the article noted: Many race teams field more than one car. So there are some cars out there that a driver can trust more so than the others, since they're teammates. Finishing second to your teammate isn't nearly as painful as finishing second to somebody else-- pays the same, but if you didn't win, it's much better to have not won by helping your teammate do so. The game mechanics are notably more complex than the article notes, and may even be as complex as the auto mechanics...
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.
You and the parent poster obviously know nothing about NASCAR.
NASCAR tracks vary in size (.5 mile to 2.5 mile), shape (oval, road courses, D), surfaces ( different asphalt compounds) and degree of banking (36 at Daytona, approx 0 at Martinsville).
Watching the engineering changes for each track is quite cool.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
...I was reading about this exact same subject, as it related to bicycle racing at least 5 years ago, if not more. And it's for the same reasons -- two competitors will need to take turns drafting off one another to get to the finish line before the peleton.
To make matters more complex, those two racers have to have enough guile to draft longer than they pull...so that they have more energy for the sprint against each other for the win.
Still...that racing where drafting is involved (motorsports, cycling, whatever) is extremely complex from a game theory perspective is nothing new...
blog |
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
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
"sea of Confederate flags"
I have been to many NASCAR races (both up North and down South) and I have never seen anyone waving a Confederate flag. I *think* I may have seen a sticker of a Confederate flag on a window in TN at a NASCAR event.
NASCAR fans are NOT all southern rednecks. It is a mainstream sport with fans of all races, sexes, and monetary backgrounds.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
I'm both a software designer by profession and a licensed auto racer (I race sportscars, but NASCAR has many similarities, and even runs on road courses several times per year). We largely agree about 'professional wrestling' and insipid reality shows, which are merely semi-scripted morality plays, not actual sports.
However, auto racing, even NASCAR, is ENORMOUSLY complex, making SW engineering look trivial. Don't take my word for it, take that of Joe Gibbs, a NASCAR team owner and former NFL head coach. He took only three years to win a Super Bowl championship with the Washington Redskins, but over nine in his second career as a team owner to win a Winston Cup championship. Or ask Dodge, which fielded several factory teams two years ago and doesn't yet have a championship.
Working within a strict set of rules designed to keep things as fair as practical, teams must design a vehicle that is safe (can take a hit and come back another day), reliable (gets to the finish line despitet enormous stresses), fast (can put torque and HP to the wheels), and quick (is balanced and turns and brakes well). These involve thousands of devilishly complex tradeoffs; more downforce creates more drag, bigger brakes work better but add unsprung weight, stickier tires wear out quicker, and so forth. The top teams all have fully traind engineers on staff (not like CART teams which may have 20+ engineers, of F1, with 100+, but this is no 'dumb' exercise).
Then, they need to come to each track, run through as many tests as they can in a few hours to get the thing to work on the current track layout, surface, and weather conditions. The data can come off these cars at megabytes per minute, and must be analyzed in hours. Then, the data feed is removed during the race (rules to prevent feedback loops). To see a hint of this complexity, set your Tivo or Replay TV to find the the Speed Channel show called Nascar Tech -- it only scratches the surface.
The driver needs to maintain concentration in an environment that ranges between 120F and 190F, dressed in a three-layer fireproof suit and helmet, with over 100db noise, pulling several Gs of force, just inches from the other competitors, going up to going 190+mph. Aside from all the split-second racing and tactical judgements, he needs to track many operational parameters so he can tell the crew what corrections to make on the next stop. How many tires to change, change tire pressure, add or remove wing or camber, etc...
The fact is: anyone who gets even casually involved with this sport will become involved in an educational process that cannot be completed in one lifetime. Your lumping this in with scripted shows merely displays your lack of knowledge on this topic.
I used to have some similarly snobby attitudes, looking down on this populist form of the sport, but as soon as I looked more closely, I adjusted my attitude. I've also been frequently surprised with the knowledge of some of the 'bubbas' I've encountered. You might want to take a closer look also.
No one will read this post (seeing as how it is so late in the game on /. - at the bottom of the page, with almost 400 other posts ahead of it), but I'd like to add my opinion to the mix all the same.
I just spent about an hour reading the paper that Slate reported on here. Likewise, I just spent fifteen minutes reading the +5 posts here. Almost nobody who got moderated up has anything worthwhile to say about the actual paper or topic. Posts are either "Nascar sux0rz" or "a primer in game thoery" (from a mouth breathing k5-er no doubt).
David Ronfeldt (the paper's author) appears to be a well read, and well researched writer on the topic of game theory. He also appears to be a knowledgeable fan of NASCAR racing. I just wish that he had put his modified prisoner's dilemma diagram at the front of his paper! This "main point" was a long time coming in the paper. Having read my fair share of Game Theory papers, I can vouch for the value that readers place on brevity. Likewise, it would have been helpful if the "draft-line" metaphor had been more thoroughly threshed out mathematically.
Looking at his diagram, it seems as though Ronfeldt may have found a metaphor sufficient for explaining the outcomes and impulses of actors in this modified Prisoner's Dilemma. I don't feel that there is much more value than that in this paper.