Dog-Human Tennis-Ball-Based Internet Communicator

The quest to more often communicate with one’s dog, if one has a dog, takes a big bounce forward with the invention of a tennis-ball-based dog-to-human internet communication system. A new study offers detail on how, and how well, it works: “Forming the Dog Internet: Prototyping a Dog-to-Human Video Call Device,” Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, Roosa Piitulainen, […]

Postulating a mathematical definition of excitement (study)

Can there be a mathematical definition of excitement? Within the realm of sports at least (particularly tennis) an attempt has been made to find out. Dr Graham Pollard BSc, MSC, PhD of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Canberra, Australia, has written, in the Journal of Sports Analytics, regarding ‘Measuring excitement in sport’. […]

How to ‘cheat’ at sport without really ‘cheating’ – part 3: Grunting

Our previous Improbable article in this series examined the use of placebos – we now look at grunting. Though several sports tolerate (or even encourage) grunting as part of normal play, some have complained that it can be used as a deliberate and unfair distraction of one’s opponent(s). With regard to tennis for example, see: […]