January 2006 Archives

Visual i|o has created a decision-making application designed to answer the question on baseball coach's minds: Should I pull the pitcher?

As you set up the game situation (runners on base, strikes and balls, innings pitched, pitcher confidence, et cetera), the application fills up pieces of a pie chart. The fuller the pie, the better idea it is to put in a reliever.

It looks very whiz-bang, as you can see. Is it actually useful? That remains to be seen. It could be all Minority-Report-style smoke and mirrors. Nevertheless, I want one. For all my decisions. "Should I take out the garbage?" with parameters for how full it is, the weather outside, if anything smelly is in it, my current girlfriend favorability rating...