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.

 



Halloween!

Happy Halloween everybody! Here is a "homemade" pumpkin I made from Inventor.

Cardboard Canoe Challenge

Yay! Today, our group has finished our Cardboard Canoe. We are hoping that it will float on Wednesday. Here are some pictures that show our canoe progressing.

We earned 9 achievements. :)

 

Achievements

• Define the Problem and Brainstorm Solutions - State the problem you are designing a solution for. List at least 20 ideas you have regarding your solution.

Criteria and Constarints: On this specific assignment the biggest constraint is we could only use carboard and duct tape. We were only issued two rolls of duct tape, but thankfully we had some people from the group bring more duct tape. Some also brought some extra cardboard also.



This picture is the beginning of our designs. 

Notice the oar on the side of the boat. This would help the boat move along.

This shows the outrigger on the side of the boat. The outrigger could be used to stablized

 This design we went for the flat back but still the dip on the sides for a canoe.

Building

Build Achievements:• Build It! - Build your watercraft. Document it with a presentable photo.

 The beginning of the real canoe.

 The beginning of the shape.

 Here we have taped the sides and patched up the wholes, finally we have inserted a flat back.

 Captain Chris is trying out the new boat.

         

Duct taping the entire out side canoe.

Test Achievements:

• Videographer - Take video of the challenge and post to your blog.

A great video taken by Shana our camerawomen!

Reflection Achievements:• Feedback: +: our canoe actually moved pretty well with manpower and the v-shape front. Change:
I would change the high sides. I believe that made the canoe prone to tipping. ?: How else could we stabalize the canoe? !: we should add a keel next time
• How Low Did You Go?: Our canoe didn't drop that low into the water. I was very astonished, i thought the water would go very high. It was helpful that our rider didn't weigh all that much. The boat may have only gone a few inches into the water.
• Redesign- if we were to redesign the boat I would mention to bring down the sides of the boat by about 1 foot or so. I would also try to add something to stablized it, like the outrigger in the previous picture.

Make your own Achievement- Best Harnessed Man Power: Even though our team did not win the fastest or longest floating canoe achievement, we think we had a good use of manpower by attaching a braided duct tape rope to the front of our canoe.

Inventor Basics: Assembly Challenge

I completed 7 Achievements.

Achievement 1:

 Achievement 2:

 Achievement 3:

 Achievement 4:

Achievement 5:



Achievement 6: I helped Mikayla with her assembly. She wanted to find out how things extruded.

Achievement 7: I asked Shana for help. I was wondering how I uploaded certain pictures to the blog.

Product Evolution: Running Shoes

This past week our class got a chance to chose a topic and research the evolution of the product. Since I am into running I decided to chose running shoes.

Emergency Prepardness

In class we had to create our own Emergency Preparedness Supply List and get feedback from family members. The list was a assignment in class after we had a massive blackout.