Category Games

HOW IS MATHS USED IN FOOTBALL?

You see the player advancing towards the goal, clearly trying to score. But the goalkeeper doesn’t stand his ground. He runs towards the player instead of staying on the post. Why would he do that? The reason is maths!

Football is often referred to as “O jogo bonito”, Portuguese for The beautiful game’ – a nickname popularised by the Brazilian great, Pele. And rightly so.

Just like any other beautiful movement, football requires rhythm, coordination, and balance. And at the same time, it also requires skill. However, just being a master at tackling, shooting or goalkeeping does not necessarily make you a great player.

Some of the best football players on the field today are also terrific mathematicians, who use maths in football. The instinctive understanding of the concepts of geometry, speed-distance-time, and calculus which they utilise isn’t determined by the ability to solve equations on a blackboard. And this application itself gives them the edge over other players. If you’ve watched the popular television show Ted Lasso, you will probably understand this claim by watching the coaches and players strategising how to tackle their opponents So, how is maths used in football? Let’s look at calculations used by players for some of the most common goals and defence strategies in this beautiful game:

United we stand! Tiki taka football strategy

A great example of real-time use of geometry to create space and beat defenders is the tiki taka-a popular method that became the talk of town when Spain claimed the Euro Cup and the World Cup in 2008 and 2010. This is a systematic approach to football founded upon team unity and a comprehensive understanding in the geometry of space on a football field.

How do players perform tiki taka?

The football players try to form triangles all around the pitch to maintain the ball possession, making it difficult for the opponent to obtain the ball and organise their game. Tiki taka has proven to be very successful as a football strategy.

Eyes on the prize. Goalkeeper’s one on one

One of the best examples where football and maths go hand in hand is distracting a striker. The goal is to create a larger obstruction to reduce the space available to score, hence lowering the probability of a goal

Often when a striker is in a one-on-one situation with the goalkeeper (like in our introduction), the latter charges towards the striker rapidly to close the space thereby reducing the angle and space available to strike the ball. This is another successful ideology of mathematical football.

How to hit a chip shot?

One of the most beautiful moves in football is chipping a charging goalkeeper. As the space reduces, the cool minded striker notices the increase in space to score. A 3-dimensional view allows the striker to kick over the charging goalkeepers head, and into the goalpost.

The chip shot, which is quite popular among both fans and players, doesn’t require power, rather a deft touch that follows a perfect parabola into the net.

Know thy enemy! Save thy penalties

Teams these days are aware of the past penalties taken by players. Most players follow a pattern in their penalty shots and this analysis of the previous shots puts the keeper in a much better situation to predict the next shot.

Goal posts: to go square or to go round?

The goalposts we see now are circular and have an elliptical cross-section. The goalposts before 1987 had the square cross-section. This invariably meant that most of the shots that hit the posts, came out instead of going in which brought unnecessary disappointment to the teams.

Does football strategy need data analysts and mathematicians?

While football maths was initially used for strategising the buying and selling of players, it is now integrated to what it can also do on the tactical analysis of the game.

Believe it or not, almost every football team today has a team of mathematicians or statisticians who help the coach define football strategies based on data. A huge amount of data is collected and analysed to understand opposing teams game-play, strengths and weaknesses of players, and to define tactics.

For example, if two players pass the ball 300 times to each other on average in a game, what kind of advantage can the opposition gain by reducing their total number of passes to 100?

Football tessellation

One very obvious example of mathematical football is the shape of the ball itself. The most familiar spherical polyhedron is the ball used in football, thought of as a spherical truncated icosahedron.

What does football tessellation mean?

The football is usually made of white hexagon shapes and black pentagon shapes – this is an example of a tessellation figure.

WHAT IS FOUR LETTERS GAME?

If you’re looking for a game with lightning fast rounds that you can play anywhere, Four Letters is for you. Your challenge is to make as many words as you can using just four letters. The letters keep changing as you create words, and the more words you make, the faster your remaining time decreases. When the clock runs out, check out the dictionary to see the words you missed. Four Letters offers stats including seconds spent spelling, word spelled the fastest, number of unique words spelled, and how many words spelled out of all possible four letter combinations. Free for iOS and Android.

Picture Credit : Google

What is Xbox console?

The Xbox is a home video game console. You knew that already, didn’t you? When it was launched a little over 20 years ago in November 2001, it was a gamble for Microsoft as it was a piece of hardware from a company known more for its software.

As a product that blurred the lines between a gaming machine and an entertainment device, the original Xbox was highly successful and continues to have devotees till this day. If this device had been running long enough without active usage, then it is likely that the owners of the Xbox might have heard some eerie chit chat that almost feels like it is from outer space.

That, in fact, is the truth. In a tweet in 2014, Lawrence Hryb, Director of Programming for the Microsoft gaming network Xbox Live and known commonly by his Xbox Live Gamertag “Major Nelson”, revealed that the ambient sounds in the original Xbox were actually from NASA! Hryb added that the background sounds were created by tweaking public domain audio from NASA transmissions during the Apollo days. How cool is that?

When Sony Computer Entertainment first announced the PlayStation 2 in 1999, the company had positioned the console as a centerpiece for home entertainment, as it not only would play video games, but also could play audio CDs and video DVDs. Microsoft, whose business had been primarily in supporting the personal computer (PC) business with its Windows operating system, software, and games, saw the PlayStation 2 as a threat to the personal computer.

Four engineers from Microsoft’s DirectX team—Kevin Bachus, Seamus Blackley, Ted Hase and DirectX team leader Otto Berkes, began to envision what a Microsoft console to compete against the PlayStation 2 would be like. They designed a system that would use many hardware components in common with PCs, effectively running a version of Windows and DirectX to power the games on the console.This approach would make it easy for developers on Windows to build games for their new system, differentiating itself from the custom hardware solutions of most consoles. Numerous names were suggested for this console, including “Direct X Box”, and the “Windows Entertainment Project”. Microsoft’s marketing team conducted consumer surveys of the name, using the name “Xbox” as a control believing this would be least desirable, but found that this had the highest preference from their tests, and was selected as the name of the console.

Credit : Wikipedia 

Picture Credit : Google 

What is special in Orixo game?

Orixo is a relaxing, minimalist brain game with over 320 hand-crafted levels to help sharpen your mind. A melodic soundtrack accompanies you on the levels, all of which are free to play and vary in difficulty. Fill the grid by dragging your finger over cells with a number inside of it. The number represents the number of cells it will fill in one of four directions. The direction you choose counts. Orixo saves your game progress automatically and hints are available in case you get stuck on any level. A simple game to play for a few minutes to take a breather from your busy life. Free for iOS and Android.

The organization of ideas and things are both important to this game. The player has to be able to think through and organize which number should be swiped first, second, etc. They also need to organize the placement, or direction, of the swipe. If they don’t take the time to organize both aspects of this game, they will be unable to complete a level and unlock new ones.

 

Picture Credit : Google

What is the Olympic torch relay?

The delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics is started for July 23, 2021, amidst mounting opposition in Japan as COVID-19 cases surge. The nation-wide Olympic Torch Relay, involving thousands of runners, is likely to start in March. What is the torch relay? What is the tradition behind it? Let’s see.

The Olympic flame is an integral part of the Olympic Games. Symbolising hope and peace, the flame is lit months before the Games, using a parabolic mirror, fuel-filled torch and the heat from the rays of the sun, in Olympia, Greece. Did you know it was in Olympia that the ancient Olympic Games originated?

Tradition of Olympic flame

The tradition of the flame dates back thousands of years to ancient Greece where a sacred fire was kept burning at the altar of Goddess Hestia throughout the conduct of the Olympics. Fire had divine connotations in Greek mythology and the flame was kindled using the sun’s rays, to ensure its purity, and a skaphia, a type of crucible (container).

The Olympic flame has become part of the modern Olympics ever since it first appeared at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. The flame-lighting ceremony marks the start of the Olympic torch relay. The flame is carried around the host nation for over a hundred days before being transported to the venue of the Games to light the Olympic cauldron (a large, round structure) at the opening ceremony. The flame will continue to burn for the entire duration of the Games before being put out during the closing ceremony.

The torch relay

How did the torch relay come to be associated with the Games? While the flame had ancient Greek connection, the torch relay had its origins in Nazi Germany. For the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Carl Diem, chief of the organising committee, came up with the idea for the first-ever torch relay from Olympia to Berlin. The relay brought people together to celebrate the spirit of the Olympic movement and is continued to this day. The torch relay, which passes the flame from one torch to the next, has become a symbol of peace and unity ever since it was introduced. The flame will be carried by thousands of people from Olympia to the host country. The relay comes to an end with the last torch-bearer lighting the cauldron at the stadium during the Opening Ceremony of the Games.

The Tokyo Olympic flame

Amid coronavirus fears, the Olympic Torch Relay for Tokyo 2020 began with the lighting of the Olympic flame at a small ceremony sans spectators in front of the ruins of the Temple of Hera, in Olympia, on March 12, 2020, before it was transported by a special jet to Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. Following the postponement of the Games, the Olympic flame is spending a record amount of time in the host country. A torch relay is expected to be conducted before the Opening Ceremony, in March.

Quick facts

  • The first person to set off on the modem Olympic Torch Relay on July 20, 1936 from Olympia was Greek athlete Konstantin Kondylis.
  • Greek actress Xanthi Georgiou, playing the role of the High Priestess, lit the torch of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games on March 12, 2020.
  • Greek shooting Olympic champion Anna Korakaki was the first torch-bearer during the flame lighting ceremony at Olympia, Greece, in March 2020.
  • The Greek leg of the torch relay was scrapped one day after the lighting ceremony in Olympia to avoid crowding.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Which are the games that are fun to play through Google Search?

Soccer

A football fanatic or not this interactive Google Doodle game is fun and easy to play. Head to Google Search and type Soccer google doodle and dick on the first link that appears. The game is simple – you are a goalkeeper who needs to stop the striker from scoring a goal. You have three chances to save as many goals as you can.

To move your player left and right, you can use the arrow keys on the keyboard or move the mouse. To make your goalie jump and save a shot, either hit the spacebar or the left click on the mouse. As you keep saving goals, the game gets faster.

Score maximum points and ask your friends to try out the game and see how much they score.

Coding Rabbit

This is an interesting Google Doodle that celebrates coding for kids. Type ‘Coding Rabbit Google doodle’ on Google Search to get started. When you start the game, you will find a rabbit and blocks with carrots on them. You need to get the rabbit to eat all the carrots in each round. To move the rabbit, you need to place appropriate tiles in the given space at the bottom of the playing window. Based on the tiles you place, the rabbit will move. If the rabbit finishes all the carrots in one round, you progress to the next. As you move ahead, you will find many challenges. But don’t worry, the game has tutorials for each stage to make it easy for you to understand and play.

Quick, Draw!

If you like playing Pictionary or any other drawing and guessing game but do not have anyone else to play with this game is just for you. Head to Google Search and type out “Quick Draw”. You should find a link to the game in the top search results. The game is simple – you have six rounds in total and 20 seconds for each round. You need to draw the word assigned for a particular round and Google’s neural network will try to guess what you are drawing. You can use your mouse to draw. Whether or not the neural network guesses what you have drawn, the game will move to the next round.

At the end of the game, you can see the words guessed and not guessed by the neural network. If you click on the ones that the network failed to guess, Google will show you what the neural network thought your drawing might have resembled and will offer you suggestions on what you could draw should that word appear again.