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Australia's Technological World Cup Advantage
hotsauce writes "The BBC has a piece about how Australia is using software to gain an advantage in the World Cup. The Socceroos are running software that looks for patterns in attacks of the opposing team. It also shows the effectiveness of different response strategies by recording where attacks fail when countered. This is the first time Australia has reached the World Cup in 30 years, but a real test of the technology will come today when Australia must take on five-time and current world champions Brasil. The Socceroos talk about specific strategies for that game, also."
Technology Quarterly
Sounds good?
Jun 8th 2006
From The Economist print edition
Software: “Music intelligence” systems that can distinguish hits from misses could change the way pop music is made and marketed
IMAGE
THE versificator, a machine described in George Orwell’s novel “1984”, automatically generated music for the hapless masses. The idea of removing humans from the creative process of making music, an art form so able to stir the soul, made for a good joke when the book was published in 1949. But today, computer programmers working in a new field called “music intelligence” are developing software capable of predicting which songs will become hits. This surprisingly accurate technology could profoundly change the way pop music is created.
The software uses a process called “spectral deconvolution” to isolate and analyse around 30 parameters that define a piece of music, including such things as sonic brilliance, octave, cadence, frequency range, fullness of sound, chord progression, timbre and “bend” (variations in pitch at the beginning and end of the same note). “Songs conform to a limited number of mathematical equations,” says Mike McCready of Platinum Blue, a music-intelligence company based in New York, that he founded last December. Platinum Blue has compiled a database of more than 3m successful musical arrangements, including data on their popularity in different markets.
To the human ear, music has changed a lot over the years. Music-intelligence software, however, can reveal striking similarities in the underlying parameters of two songs from different eras that, even to a trained ear, seem unrelated. According to Platinum Blue’s software, called Music Science, for example, a number of hit songs by U2 have a close kinship to some of Beethoven’ s compositions. If a song written today has parameters similar to those of a number of past hits, it could well be a hit too.
Carlos Quintero, a producer and remixer at Orixa Producciones in Madrid, recently tried out another music-intelligence system, called Hit Song Science (HSS). “It practically left me in shock, it’s stunning,” he says. Mr Quintero’s production company now has the most promising demo songs it receives from aspiring musicians evaluated by Polyphonic HMI, the Barcelona-based developer of HSS and Platinum Blue’s only serious competitor. (Both companies perform analyses in-house, rather than selling software.) The results—consisting of a graph, numerical scores, computer-generated comments and suggested changes—help Orixa’s managers decide which songs to produce. Then, during the recording and post-production phases, Orixa uses HSS to reanalyse successive versions of each track for fine-tuning.
Belief in music intelligence is spreading, as Polyphonic HMI and Platinum Blue rack up bull’s-eye predictions of success, including “Candy Shop” by 50 Cent, “Be the Girl” by Aslyn, “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield, “She Says” by Howie Day, and “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt. Still, labels that use music intelligence generally prefer to keep quiet about it, so non-disclosure agreements are common. “No one wants people to think their decisions are coming from a box,” says Ric Wake, an American producer of two Grammy-winning acts who routinely employs Music Science. Even so, the names of many customers have leaked out. They include Capitol Records, Universal Music Group, Sony Music, EMI and Casablanca Records. Labels sometimes don’t tell even their established artists when they use music intelligence to help decide which singles to promote.
Revenues at Polyphonic HMI will exce
The extreme centre is the paper's historical position. --Geoffrey Crowther
I *DOES* help strategy, NFL teams have been using similar techniques for years to analyze what their opponents might do in a given situation. This is especially critical in American Football, where the defenses don't have time to react to what is actually happening in that instant the ball is hiked. Its the difference between stopping a play in the backfield or giving up a 6 yard play. In soccer, being able to anticipate where a play is going could reduce the amount of running a team has to do, keeping players fresher and getting them into position sooner. This would yield a pretty good advantage, but probably not enough to overcome the gap between a great team and a mediocre one. More to the point, its more likely the great team is already doing similar analysis, and just not chatting about it.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Australia, ranked 88th in the world of football, played Brazil, ranked 1st in the world of football, almost to a standstill in the first half.
They had two clear chances to equalize Brazil's first goal, but couldn't quite get there.
Then, late in the game, Brazil helped themselves to a freakish goal off a goalpost rebound, which made the score 2:0.
Australia losing to Brazil ONLY 2:0 is a testament to the Aussie's coach, Gus Hiddink, fearless play, and, very probably, the software that you're saying "didn't do it".
Look, I know you don't really understand "soccer" but this is as if, off the back of a crushing Superbowl victory, the best team in the NFL played the wooden-spooners, and ONLY won by one touchdown...
I'm sure there are quite a few football clubs (and even countries) who are employing software analysis for their games preperations. I once saw this video about Rafael Benitez (manager of Liverpool FC) employing this software and spoke highly of it. UEFA Champions League and the European Supercup in 2005 and the FA Cup in 2006 speaks for itself.
It appears to me that American Football is basically a start-stop game, and could probably view it in a similar way to chess openings.
Football is a more flowing game. There are a few set plays that get played out, they make up an extremely small part of the game due to the dynamic nature.
Therefore I would suggest that Football it is far more difficult problem domain than NFL for analysis to an arbitrary level of confidence.
First goal was scored by a player who can only hit the ball with his left foot, the defender didn't force him onto his right, didn't close down and Brazil scored. Everyone in the world knows Adriano is only left footed, you would have thought the technology would have stressed this a little more.
And yesterday the US (by any reasonable ranking system about the same level as Australia) played Italy to a standstill and a draw with one less player on the park.
Technology helps in coaching, but what really helped the Australians and the US was guts and effort from the players.
As one commentator said today
"Imagine the talent of Brazil with Australia's work ethic"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Not the only one.
Make one guess why Norway with its 4.5 million inhabitants and gulf-stream warmed climate is among the best (if not the best) winter-sports nations in the world :)
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
It would seem to me that evaluating the effectiveness of this software vs Brazil would be a rather pointless exercise. Brazil is known for having a extraordinarily creative approach to the game, and marvelous individual talent, almost beyond what could be expected from human performance. The result of their approach is extreme unpredictability. When it works it is astonishing in its results, and it generates acutally beauty and grace, when it doesn't work it results in surprisingly uninspired play. It is almost chaotic.
Nobody would normally expect the "Socceroos", a team of mediocre skills to be able to compete with Brazil. They are totally outmanned respect in every respect, talent, culture, skill and tradition. The evaluation of this softwware needs to be done at a different level, looking at its predictions and result. And more likely the predictions should be made examining a different data set than what a match against Brazil would provide.
And finally, thanks to your comment, I have an opportunity to rant on my disbelief in statistics. Because, as seen today, Brazil won not because it was better on the field as the statistics and patterns might show. Brazil won due to their incredible luck. Not their technique, not their tactics. Australia had a more convincing game attitude throughout the entire match, effectively neutralized Brazil's attack and midfielders. Ronaldo had another crappy game, along with Adriano, and the entire team has a very hard time trying to play as an ensemble instead of sparse players forced to wear the same team colors.
Statistics won't capture the immense disbelief in the Brazilian coach, Parreira. He's an exceedingly stubborn man and will likely refuse to change the initial lineup for the next match against Japan. Statistics make it look like Brazil is a favorite for the cup, but my money right now is on Argentina (did someone watch their amazing 6-0?).
Therefore, I my point is that soccer is a sport of outliers. Averages and frequencies actually mean little given all the variables around the game (referees that do not have a clear view of a controversial play, players who use malice to fool all referees, etc.) The possibility of outliers is at the heart of soccer, that's why FIFA refuses to give a, say, US football treatment on the game of soccer. Perhaps a better treatment of soccer will make use of Bayesian statistics or some Montecarlo thingie. We'll see.
DISCLAIMER: I live on Brazil and followed through all classifying matches and am afraid that Brazil won't make to the end due to the immense hubris Parreira might bring on us.
Right... and the Euro Championships in 2002 had Italy, England, Portugal, etc... and was won by Greece, a highly unfancied team. The beauty of football is that any one team can beat any other team, on their day.
> ...and you need to read it again and realize that if there are two alternatively theories presented (hence the words "rival explanation" in your quote), then arbitrarily picking one of them and presenting it as fact, makes you look like an idiot.
I agree partly. My intention was to mention both theories and strongly stating the one I think is right, for the reasons stated in the external link and all the information we have at hand. I don't think that makes me look like an idiot. I didn't hide any information, by quoting some sentences and linking you to both articles. The grandparent went on a rant with inaccurate information and still got modded "Insightful". Our discussion thread is already there, so you can get the picture and see what (s?)he is about.
I'm not sure whether you think the AIS is good or bad from your post. Yes, we have a goverment sponsored research institution into sport. But I don't see this as very different to say the US model with universities having a big emphasis on sports, or having corporate sponsorship of good athletes in certain games. The Australian model is clearly better bang for buck, and so if I'm going to pay for sports research I'd rather do it as efficiently as possible.
The Americans have a state subsidized dept. of defense which has no other goal but to "make our guys win".
I do think Australians are a little parochial about sport, and I do wish that more australians would play than watch on TV. Australians are on average, quite unhealthy. I also wish more money would be spent on other research, but perhaps not at the expense of sports research. (Less money on defence instead?) I think the drive for being good at sport is perhaps a little bit of arrogance, we like to think we're better than average, but in fact we're pretty much on target for an economy of our size.
Disclosure: I trained at the AIS, and my nephew is currently training for the australian swim team.
While the OP is modded as funny, there's actually a grain of truth here.
(Full disclosure: I work in this area. In Australia. For the AIS. I'm currently working on two software/firmware projects involving rowing and boxing, in fact.)
Let's suppose you're some researcher who has a new technology (picking an example at random from our group) that they want developed into something useful. Let's further suppose that it could have a number of applications. For example, let's suppose it could have uses in health care, in sports science (which is kind of like health care), or in the military.
If this researcher were located in the US, they would go straight to the Department of Defense. A lot of that huge military budget that people like to complain about is spent on precisely this sort of thing. Someone has a new technology, they see a military application, so they go to defense to get it developed.
If this researcher were located in Australia, Defence (with a "c", thankyou very much) is still an option. However, if you want to deal with less bureaucracy, sport is a real competitor. Again, there's an insane amount of money spent on sport, but a lot of it goes to this kind of research project.
Once the sport or defence application has been developed, that's when you start looking at health. You'll need clinical trials etc, but by then, the technology will have already been proven, so the insane amount of money it takes to trial something for health won't be mis-spent on something that might not work.
Now thinking about this from the point of view of a non-politically-aligned academic, for a moment, you can see the choice. Do I invest my time in possibly hurting people or possibly making them fitter? On politically tricky wars, or on politically uncontroversial-yet-high-profile gold medals?
So now you understand the difference between science in the US and science in Australia.
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The reason there is more scoring in American football is that the games last much longer.
You don't get it. Players often don't play in their home countries, that's all. They still all have to have the nationality of the country they play for. And once they played for one country, they can't change their minds. So your argument is void.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Anyone who knows anything about football (or soccer as some of you will incorrectly call it) will be well aware of how well prepared the players are. DVD's detailing your opposing player\team are common place these days, and computer software being used is not revolutionary either.
For example - Premiership football teams have been using Pro-Zone software to help them in tehir play for a good few years now. Australia are by no-means leaders in this field.
From what I understand of Pro-Zone, it analyses your own teams play. It analyzes and shows things such as how much area a player covered per game (fitness levels), whether they stuck to their positions (strategy) and various scenarios i.e. if Attacker A had run here, Defender B would have been forced to mark Attacker A, leaving Attacker B open to shoot.
Obviously using these results you can analyze different areas \ styles \ fitness of particular players.
I'm sure it does plenty of other things (our football manager used to rave on about how good it was), whether this includes analyzing the other team or not I'm not sure.