Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Assignment 7: BONESAW IS READY! (Kyle Barron)

A community in which I consider myself an active member is the Bowling Club. Every Monday is league play, which is competitive in that we keep score, but everyone still has fun. Helen Newman lanes is still the only bowling alley I have seen to this day that does not use electronic scoring. All the scoring is done by hand.... human hand... The vice president of the club is in charge of collecting the scorecards, compiling the scores for the day, then posting the week's results via the bowling club e-list. If I hadn't made it clear before, I would like to restate that the lanes are quite old. Sometimes the sweep feels like clearing the pins after one roll. Although it may sound peculiar, it happens more often than one would think. If this is the situation, instead of bothering the lane staff who have better things to do than set up pins by hand at a lane with automatic pin-setting, we just let whoever is bowling aim at the spot to pick up the spare. If we judge that it was good, then we'll give them the spare. I've outlined three scenarios in which trust matters. If we did not trust, then the club would be having much less fun.

Let's look at the first situation: scoring by hand. Each week, any given team of three will play another team of three for three games. At the end of the games, the captains from each time sign the scorecard to verify that the other team's scores are correct. I have not seen any scorecards signed because people trust each other. The vice president could alter the scores, but she chooses not to because it only takes one person to notice their score has been recorded improperly. Right now, there is a pretty solid system of checks and balances. 

A system we could implement would be to install electronic scoring, but that's not exciting. A system still involving people would be to have the captains actually sign the scorecards. This will at least make them take a glance at the sheet to make sure no one put down 300 for their score for one game. This scheme is unfortunately susceptible to corruption, bribery, and interactions of the like. A better scheme would be to establish an average at lanes with electronic scoring, so that when they return to Helen Newman, the whole league will know what is considered average.
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3 comments:

  1. enduroApril 1, 2009 at 6:28 PM

    I'm a little curious about how far the 'reputation' in your hand-scoring system really extends. It seems, as you describe it right now, that only the VP gets to see the scores of everyone else, but that means your reputation is known basically only to that one officer. Is there a posting of cumulative scores at intervals? Then, your reputation would be visible to other members of the team as well. In other words, the concern is: how visible is your actual reputation in this system?

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  2. Eric DialApril 1, 2009 at 7:30 PM

    First of all, bowling is awesome. Your right though, this community does involve a lot of trust. I would imagine it is easy to notice out of the ordinary scores. If someone jumps from a 90 to a 213, that would definitely be something to look at. I like your second system that you could implement. You could even expand it by posting the players average score, but that's a lot of scores to keep track of. Interesting to think of though....

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  3. Kyle Liam BarronApril 1, 2009 at 9:49 PM

    enduro,

    All the members in the club get to see the scores from each week, as I stated in the post. That way, each member can look at their scores and ensure that the correct scores were recorded. I guess it would be an extremely untrustworthy system if only the VP saw the scores and no one else until the end of the year. Thanks for the comment.

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