Comments on: New ball points game record?

By: peterhundermark

peterhundermark — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:04:41 +0000

Boris reports today that Alan Atals recently had a team score 104. Fame is short-lived. Happily the learning from this game about empiricism is not.

By: peterhundermark

peterhundermark — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:48:57 +0000

Fascinating, Tobias. I know for myself that learning to speak less and listen more is a life-long journey! It also makes me wonder if we need to incorporate some training in listening skills into our courses? Do you know of a good game to teach this?

By: Tobias Mayer

Tobias Mayer — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:07:10 +0000

I had a different kind of record set by a team recently.

In the first round they scored 0 points.
In the second round they scored 0 points.
In the third round they scored 3 points.
This was positively the worst ever. I let them run to 8 rounds (unheard of previously) and they reached 35.

If I could analyze the problem I’d say they never strove for greatness, being happy with “better” and they wouldn’t ever stop talking and actually listen to each other. The most successful groups I have seen do this are almost completely silent by the final rounds.

By: Tobias Mayer

Tobias Mayer — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:44:29 +0000

Hi Peter. Sounds like fun. I guess the rules change from trainer to trainer. I remember Stacia once telling me that a team of hers threw the entire bag of balls around multiple times. I think they probably scored more than 103 …but I’ll let Stacia speak to that.

I have a “one ball at a time” rule, exactly to encourage throwing rather than dropping. What I have found is that when teams are using ‘drop’ instead of ‘throw’ they don’t get into the same flow state. The rhythm isn’t quite there, or something. With a team following the “one ball at a time” rule, and throwing, I have seen as high as 80. It is an extraordinary sight.

In the end, the rules don’t matter so much. What matters is the move towards self-organization and the awakening of a team to the power of an empirical process. It’s all good.

By: Boris Gloger

Boris Gloger — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:27:13 +0000

Yes – besides a story I have heard of Tobias this is the new world record. boris