Thursday 28 October 2010

Decision Time

I have fourteen possible hops to new grounds on Saturday in the FA Trophy.  I would quite like to hop in the general direction of Offa's Dyke this week because there is some tasty Welsh Premier league action in the borders on Sunday, so the odds for individual matches today will be biased towards North and Midlands using an on-screen digital clock.  The choice will be decided simply by the number that I see in the SECONDS column when I remove the high-tech masking device covering the screen.  To ensure that this itself occurs at a random moment, I am not allowed to do this until I roll a six on a low-tech die.  Die is the correct singular form of dice and I am sticking to it.  Got that?  Good, here we go.

The cup-ties, and their links to the seconds display are as shown below:

Home
KO
Away
Seconds
Curzon Ashton
15:00
FC Halifax Town
00 to 08
Rushall Olympic
15:00
Stourbridge
09 to 17
Mossley AFC
15:00
Nantwich Town
18 to 26
Radcliffe Borough
15:00
Witton Albion
27 to 35
Chorley
15:00
Marine
36 to 41
Whitby Town
15:00
Clitheroe
42 or 43
Stocksbridge Park Steels
15:00
Rugby Town
44 or 45
Tonbridge Angels
15:00
Enfield Town
46 or 47
AFC Sudbury
15:00
Hendon
48 or 49
Truro City
15:00
Horsham
50 or 51
Folkestone Invicta
15:00
Thamesmead Town
52 or 53
Bognor Regis Town
15:00
Godalming Town
54 or 55
Bideford
15:00
Dulwich Hamlet
56 or 57
AFC Totton
15:00
Romford
 58 or 59

By the way, this methodology is quite respectable for decision-making.  A very good (and possibly optimal) strategy for penalty takers is to base the decision about where to place the penalty on the second hand of the stadium clock at the moment the kick is awarded.  Say, anything from 0 to 20 means hit it Left, 21 to 40 is Right, 41 to 50 is straight down the middle.  These intervals could be subdivided for low/high variants (e.g. 0-10 is high left, 11-20 is low left), or perhaps given different weightings so they are not equally likely.  It would be important that only the penalty taker and perhaps the coach know the code.  It means that the stress of the decision is removed from the attacker, the attacker cannot be blamed if the keeper guesses right, and the keeper has no chance of guessing from looking at the taker's previous penalty history.  If the stadium clock has no second hand, then the coach’s wristwatch could do the job.  It’s this sort of thing that makes life interesting, even if I'm not.

So, where am I going? Die, camera, action …


2 comments:

  1. Love the total randomness of your selection - I must try this myslef! It's all fate! I assume you have read The Dice Man by Luke Rhinhart? I bet you're glad you didn't get Truro! Enjoy your trip to Mossley, I'm off to Bognor Regis....

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  2. Ollers, you are the second person to recommend that book to me this week! I'd heard of it, but have not read it yet. *Adds to must-read list*

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