The Math Behind Basketball's Wildest Moves | Rajiv Maheswaran | TED Talks

Basketball is a fast-moving game of improvisation, contact and, ahem, spatio-temporal pattern recognition. Rajiv Maheswaran and his colleagues are analyzing the movements behind the key plays of the game, to help coaches and players combine intuition with new data. Bonus: What they're learning could help us understand how humans move everywhere.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.

[chriscaughey]

"This game is not about spaciotemporal patterns in kinesiology or any of that. It's about feel. And buckets. It will always be about buckets." - Uncle Drew

[MindYourDecisions]

Very interesting. I think the description buries the most fascinating points: most NBA playoff teams were using this software, and the Ray Allen shot in game 6 of the 2013 NBA finals only had a 9 percent chance of happening.

[Huntracony]

He keeps coming very close to teaching me something, and then backs off like he's afraid that we'd actually learn something.

[AHG]

Imaging an android Basketball coach with the AI mind of Gregg Poppovich...yes it's RoboPop.

(Cue groan and eye roll)

[KenJee_ds]

As someone that works in the sports analytics field, videos like these are always interesting! It still seems like many teams are slow to integrate findings like these into practice and play. If your'e interested in learning about how to get into the sports analytics field, I have a few videos on my channel that complement this one nicely!

[TheTariqibnziyad]

we already have a machine in the NBA, its called Greg Popovitch

[PrHoN]

This is not a TED-talk, this is a sales pitch.

[Bloodbane]

The thing I noticed was that because the info can tell you players who can shoot well but take bad shots they are worth more as training people to take good shots is much easier than training people to shoot better

[rosskraszewski]

As a fan and sports statistics maniac, this is great. As a coach, this is a bit threatening. As a human being, it's frightening.

[meechisminners]

It's always nice to see a Ted Talk about the science and mathematics in sports.

[iStylesOG]

I didn’t realize this was uploaded 3 years ago and the first thing I thought of when I saw the bubble chart was that orange bubble at the bottom was Ben Simmons 😂😂😂

[ugie]

give this to charles barkley. he reject it in a heartbeat

[CusterDawg]

So what does one do with the data involved in this? Predictive algorithms. I'm sure some element of this program is involved in the auto-driving cars.

Unfortunately I see this program getting military application. Not only does this apply to missile defense, it could be a "tracking" technology that changes how wars can be fought on every level of battle (infantry, navy, air, space?).

[daugbret]

Good talk and presenter. Thanks for posting.

[stupidjeloinc]

Thats a good point in his closing statement about how this could help design buildings and cities with better traffic flow

[TheGerogero]

Football... Or the other football.

So, football and handegg. Gotcha.

[isaacadams]

Questionable recreation, Ray Allen was fading away with a defender in his face

[musiceon]

Who cares about basketball I want the math behind women's wildest emotions pls

[jsmak]

go easy on the haterode people! granted, the talk doesn't actually delve into the math. rather it presents a high level description of machine learning. don't blame him for the fact that you already know something about this stuff, i bet you many people who watched this video got something out of it, i certainly enjoyed it :)
of course, it really is a really fancy presentation, but that does not in any way take away from the fact, that for example a key problems of machine learning (prediction) is explained lucidly and illustrated vividly by example of spatio temporal pattern recognition in basketball (to find 'good' features to predict the correct 'class' of pick and roll).
if you look for something deeper and less lofty, take a MOOC on this topic, read papers or textbooks but don't watch a TED talk!!

[VanichShProts]

It would be interesting to learn how exactly they calculate the probability of a shot. It strongly depends on player's movements and skills besides defenders positions and their angles. Obviously, LeBron James and myself have different probability of making a good shot in a fixed game configuration.