Money Ball!

1) What was the “Money Ball”approach that Billy Beane and Peter Brandt applied to the Oakland Athletics 2002 season? Was it an “art” or a “science”? What single statistic did they boil their value consideration down to? (In class research/discussion)
Peter Brandt told Billy Beane that the Athletics need players to get on base, even if it was on first. So Billy Beane went out to find people who got similar OBP to Giambi and Pena. I believe that the tactics that the Oakland Athletics did was an art and a science. They went to OBP for consideration if the player should be on the team or not.

2) What is the equation used to calculate OBP? (In class research/discussion)

• H = Hits
• BB = Bases on Balls (Walks)
• HBP = times Hit By a Pitch
• AB = At bats
• SF = Sacrifice Flies

3) What is design? (In class research/discussion)
Design is roadmap or a strategic approach for someone to achieve a unique expectation.

4) Describe 3 situations where movie characters (intentionally or not) applied a step from the PLTW 12 Step Design Process. Explain both the (a) situation as well as (b) how the step is relevant:
1 - Billy Beane defined the problem with the A's. Three of his best players were leaving and he need to figure how to win championships
2 - Beane developed an plan to get players on base, he then took it to the scouts.
3 - Finally, he started to test his ideas by putting the players on the field and his ideas worked.


5) What is “Leadership”? (In class research/discussion)

1 - Direction
2 - Alignment
3 - Commitment


6) Describe 3 circumstances from the story where a character exercised effective leadership:
1 - At the scouting meeting Billy Beane was having the scouts look at the important things in a player.

2 - Billy Beane shows alignment when he starts to sit down with his team and let them know what they need to do.

3 - Billy Beane was committed to the Oakland A's even after there 2002 season. He got an offer from the Baltimore Red Socks that was very substantial, but he ended up turning it down.



7) According to the movie, what was the A’s record at the start of their winning streak? 68 : 51
8) What does this ratio simplify to (roughly)? 1.33 : 1

9) How long was the A’s record setting winning streak? _20_ games won.

10) Given the A’s win/loss ratio at the start of the streak (listed two questions above), what are the odds of winning 20 games in a row? Run the numbers. (In class research/discussion)
 The odds of winning 20 games in a row are .000013:1.


11) Based on your calculation, do you think the A’s got lucky or was there something to the Moneyball approach?
I believe the A's didn't have luck I believe Moneyball had something to do with their winning streak.


12) Did Billy Beane strictly apply the “science” of Moneyball to his management approach? Was there an “art” to his efforts as well? Describe a circumstance where he broke from the Moneyball approach to make a positive change for the team.
At first moneyball was all about the science, but i believe Billy Beane definitely changed his attitude to a art. After he recruited all the players he started to sit down and let them know what and how they need to do something. When before he barely knew the players.






Bonus Question (look into this if you’ve finished ahead of the class):
Money Ball was originally a book. What author wrote the book? What other books has this author written? Is there a theme to his writing?
Michael Lewis wrote Money Ball, he has also written The Blind Side. There is a theme to his writing, he writes many intense sport movies.


It's "Oscar Season", will Moneyball win the Oscar for any of the categories it's up for?
It is now after the Oscars, and they didnt win any Oscars. Though, I honestly thought the movie was going to win a few Oscars.

Airplane Extravaganza!

1) Provide a breif description of the activity. Who did you work with? What did you build? What challenges did you overcome to succesfully craft your aircraft?
Today was the day Shana and I flew our Balsa Wood Airplane! It was about a 24 step process. It took a while but we learned a lot through the steps. We reached some difficulty when the our propeller wasn't serving its purpose. But we worked hard to fix it, and make a rather successful airplane.

2) Describe how you tested your aircraft and tuned its flight characteristics.

Shana and I took our airplane out for a run before the competition. We had to make a few adjustments to the propeller after that test run.

5) Describe how well your aircraft flew in our competition. Did you win any events (furthest distance, longest time aloft)? Were you competative in our best decorated flier competition?

Ours didn't go the furthest or was in the air the longest but it did fly for sometime. Shanas and I's plane was very creative I thought. We had glitter on the balsa wood which made everything sparkly.

6) Pick three steps from the PLTW 12 step design process and describe how your team worked through these during the course of this experience.

The design part of the project was rater simple because we just worked throught the steps that were on the project plan.

When we started to actually make the design we worked hard to make sure everything was on track, was properlly fixed on the airplane.

Finally, we had to refine the plane because our propeller wasnt exactly working properlly. It would drag on the frusalage causing the prop not to spin.