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FEBRUARY 2014 FREE WIRED.CO.UK THE DIGITAL AGE OF CURRENCY
BITCOIN What lies at the end of the chain?
DATA How it’s changing football
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contents FEATURES
083 “One biopsy from a cow can provide enough cells to create 175 million hamburgers” – Sarah Sclarsic
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8 118 Bitcoin Kickstarting Pebble
Eric Migicovsky his Bitcoin has beenand making crowdsourced the headlines smartwatch of late, but showed is a hunger where isthere it heading? for wearable tech. He tells WIRED his story
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122 The winning formula Modern manners Oncemashup scorned suspicious The ofby fashion and managers, analytics tech will notdata be pain-free, has become the latest tool says Russell Davies. And in football it’s all because we’re sentient human beings
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134 The 25 winning formula Once scorned by suspicious managers, data analytics ATLAS has been built to has become the latest tool save human lives in theone face to keep football teams of peril andof disaster step ahead their rivals
PHOTOGRAPHY (FRONT COVER): F SCOTT SCHAFER; (THIS PAGE): NICK WILSON
Hooray for Herobot
142 Lifesaving designs
26 References
In the developing world, a little smart thinking is creating products that All the details and sources are transforming health for the information for millions of people
presented in this booklet
150 Pilotless planes
examines the challenges and possibilities of flying a plane at 4,500m – while its controller is based on the ground
WIRED
Right: Astrophysicist Martin Rees at WIRED2013
Huffington Post 2013
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WHAT LIES AT THE END OF THE CHAIN? Over the past year, the cryptocurrency Bitcoin has seen dramatic growth in its recognition, popularity and worth. However this rollercoaster rise has had dips, jumps and sometimes even crashes. Bitcoin’s volatile nature is an innate and at times unfortunate characteristic of an entity trying to revolutionise an otherwise stagnant system. As an entirely digital currency, Bitcoin isn’t constrained to a country, or their financial fortunes or woes. It’s a form of payment that removes the need for a mediator such as Visa, and as a transaction is as straight forward as putting money in someone’s hand. The possibility for a stable cryptocurrency has tickled the curiosity of the online community - so much so that the current market cap is valued at over £7 billion, and rising. 0 0 8
Yet despite all its recent success, there is still much to learn. The creator is only known as Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym for the anonymous individual or group that created the core protocol of the Bitcoin network. Further, the manner in which traditional financial organisations respond to Bitcoin can have a huge knock-on effect on the entire market; in November, the currency lost almost 50% of its value overnight when BTC China (the primary Bitcoin exchange for Bitcoin to Chinese Yuan) stated they could no longer take deposits. Backers of the currency have learnt to be wary as it continues to grow and pave the way for a new type of transaction. But is an entirely digital currency a realistic and safe step in a developing digital world?
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NAT BRIDGES
n 31st November 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper detailing the idea of a new electronic cash system, based on a peer-topeer network. The most notable feature of the new currency was the removal of a mediator, enabled by allowing a network to carry out the payments, while keeping both parties anonymous. The paper was released shortly after the Lehman Brothers group filed for bankruptcy (BBC, 2008), which had dealt a heavy blow to a fragile global financial system. At a time where banks were perceived to have been irresponsible with saver’s money, many found the idea of a currency that bypassed, and replaced them with an entirely new paradigm captivating. Satoshi’s proposal explained how the network would
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Number of Coins in Circulation run on a peer-to-peer basis, sustained by the crowd sourced computing power from the people using the network. This meant that as long as the power was shared equally amongst those that were providing the computing power (miners), and no single source had more than 51%, the entire network would be beyond reach from an attack from a hacker, or someone wishing to misuse the network. This guarantee of security meant that users were willing to place their confidence in the network – essential to any successful currency. Coins are introduced in the network using the ‘Proofof-Work’ system. Building on a hashing technique similar to Adam Back’s Hashcash in 1997 (SHA256), currency is created by hashing information along
£730 Highest Recorded Value
Bitcoins Value over Time
£590 Current Value
Value of Bitcoin based on the trading rate on Mt.Gox
£354 Value Post BTC China Closure
£144
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014 Blockchain.info (2014)
with a timestamp. Adding an arbitrary random number (nonce), creates a block that needs solving before users can access the hash and change it. The currency was officially born on the 3rd January 2009 (Blockexplorer, 2009), with the first “Genesis” block, and from that point on, people were able to discover blocks, with each block containing x Bitcoins (a varying number based on the difficulty). The idea behind discovering coins (mining) is that all the initial blocks created by Satoshi must be mined, and the coins ownership is transferred to those who hashed it. Once all coins have been generated, blocks will be continually and steadily added to the chain, serving as proof of the transactions that occurred at a particular time. An actual electronic coin is defined as a chain of digital signatures, so as a coin is moved around between individuals, the previous owner’s digital signature is added to the list, thus creating a list of all previous owners that can then be used to identify the coin. When someone wishes to carry out a transaction, they digitally sign a hash of the previous transaction, and the public key of the next owner. This process allows the payee to validate the source of the coin through verification with the network. It prevents attempts to use a single coin twice, as the both the payee and the payer verify the change in ownership. Five years after its creation, the difficultly of mining
has increased significantly, to the point where it’s no longer feasible to mine on a typical home computer. This was a key part of the architecture of the system – managed scarcity to prevent a bubble forming. Now for every 2016 blocks that are discovered, the network readjusts how long it takes to discover a block based on the original time frame set out, so that the number of coins in the network aligns with the predicted values (Bitcoin.it 2010). However with over 12,000,000 Bitcoins currently in circulation (Blockchain, 2014) it’s possible to purchase Bitcoins from various online traders, or even from other individuals. On 9th January 2014, the price of a Bitcoin was £568, a huge increase upon the price a year earlier, when Bitcoins were worth £6 in Jan 2013 (Bitcoinity, 2014), and even more so when compared to £0.0004 per Bitcoin when it was initially released in 2009 (New Liberty, 2009). The initial fast growth in the currency was a result of people investing their computing power into hashing when it was relatively easy; as more people tried to hash, the value rose based on the supply and demand of online exchanges. However the term value is interesting when it comes to Bitcoin. A large number of conventional currencies across the world are presently backed by gold through their countries central banks, where bank notes theoretically can
“BITCOIN IS A
Technological TOUR DE FORCE”
Eric Schmidt, Chairman Google, February 2012
be redeemed for their worth in gold. So without any similar guarantee, how could Bitcoin become valuable? Ultimately it comes down to faith, or what people believe something is worth. If a large number of people believe and accept the stated value of an object, they can trade amongst one another for that value. In the case of Bitcoin, confidence in the coin only serves to strengthen its value – which has been a major factor in its recent growth. If a major company was to embrace the currency as a legitimate form of payment, its value would rise and in turn create demand for it. A recent example includes the games developer Zynga, which adopted Bitcoin as a form of payment for virtual items for in game purchases on January 6th. This move saw the value of Bitcoin rise from £575 to £650 (Bitcoinity, 2014) clearly demonstrating the impact of recognition on Bitcoin’s equated worth. Countries’ reception to the currency is also key. In November, the US Senate triggered a sharp increase in the value of Bitcoin to £559 (from about £400) simply by announcing it as a “legitimate currency” (BBC, 2013). The response from governments is essential in granting the currency some security. With Bitcoin’s aim of providing online sovereignty, independent of control from the government, it would be very easy to impose legislation that stunts the growth and spread of the currency. This was seen already in November 2013 in China, where government officials decided to clamp down on the use of Bitcoin, and as a result BTC China (the biggest
Bitcoin Exchange for Bitcoins and Yuan in China) had to stop taking deposits. This caused the value of Bitcoin to drop by around 50% overnight, from £750 to around £350 (Guardian, 2013), showing how fragile the currency is in its present state, where every day decisions are being made that impact the value so drastically. Another factor affecting the value of Bitcoin is the influx of investors, treating the currency as if it were a conventional financial product. As the currency grows in popularity, many people have been buying Bitcoins as an investment with the intentions of selling at a later date in order to make profit. However, the whole network takes a hit from the individually profitable dumping of large amounts of Bitcoins - as the coins move usually to a larger trader and the value of the currency falls. Although these decreases are small in comparison to the impacts of recognition or rejection by financial or corporate institutions, it’s important to realise that a large percentage of Bitcoins are held by a small group of people, whose sole motivation may be profit. Analysis of the block chain suggests that 47 individuals hold 28.9% of all Bitcoins in existence (Business Insider 2013). Because of the network’s unique nature, it is difficult to exactly say how many people actually own Bitcoins in total; all transactions are registered to addresses, but one individual could have multiple addresses, or multiple individuals could share one address. In part the apparent hoarding may simply be because there are relatively few ways in which to spend Bitcoins – but all the same, it’s important to be wary of the volume of Bitcoins that have sat in wallets since they have been mined Bitcoin’s success has seen companies being to accept it as a form of payment, leading to more cryptocurrencies emerging: Litecoin currently has the second highest market cap sitting at around £360 million with around 25,000,000 coins in circulation (LTC Block Explorer 2014). Litecoin was based on the same principles as
Bitcoin, but uses a different hashing function named Scrypt. The current issue with Bitcoin’s mining is that the SHA256 function has reached a point that supersedes the capabilities of CPUs and GPUs, meaning dedicated ASIC miners are being used to mine, and access to Bitcoin mining is becoming more and more exclusive. With only half the Bitcoins actually found and it becoming exponentially harder, a large investment into ASIC miner from a single source would centralize the entire mining network for Bitcoin. In comparison, Scrypt doesn’t just rely on pure arithmetic capabilities in order to hash, but also the memory capacity of the system. This means any dedicated miners made for Litecoin would require more components and ultimately be more expensive, resulting in more CPU and GPU mining, and arguably a more dispersed, egalitarian network spread out. Another advantage is that the Litecoin network actually generates blocks 4 times faster, meaning quicker transaction times (Litecoin, 2014). Because of this, and the fact that the overall value is lower, Litecoin is sometimes called the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. Another more comical currency is Dogecoin, based on the Doge internet meme. A light-hearted alternative to the other currencies out there Dogecoin has its roots in Litecoin. However with an estimated 100 Billion coins in the future, a single coin is worth considerably less (estimated at $0.00025 (Dogecoin, 2014) based on conversion with other cryptocurrencies). The reason for Dogecoin’s growth is ironically down to the lack of concern about its wealth. As put by the creator Jackson Palmer,“money doesn’t matter”. The majority of Dogecoin’s usage has been in the form of tipping, where individuals online show appreciation to one another through giving Dogecoin. With the coin actually having such little value, it’s the action of tipping someone for their contribution which is creates the value. Dogecoin even made the headlines recently, thanks to
the generosity of the community behind it. For the first time since 2002, the Jamaican bobsleigh team qualified for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia, yet they lacked the funds for their training estimated at $40,000. With the popular 90’s film “Cool Running’s” in mind, Liam Butler, founder of the Dogecoin Foundation rallied the community to donate small amounts, collectively raising over $25,000. Whilst there are a number of other currencies available, ultimately Bitcoin has always been on top. The advantages of the other currencies haven’t managed to draw in as many people. Given that there is so much currently invested in Bitcoin, and it has gained such recognition, it seems likely that it will remain the strongest of the cryptocurrencies for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, the fact that the coin has such a high exchange rate and is the closest to reaching its cap, all eyes remain on Bitcoin as the front runner for cryptocurrencies. Given that the discovery of blocks is an exponential process, it is estimated that the final block will be discovered around 2140 (Stack Exchange, 2013). However at that point, the difficulty will have
increased so much that only 0.00000168 Bitcoin will be discovered per day (Stack Exchange, 2013). So with close to 90% of Bitcoins being discovered in the next 10 years, and more and more companies adopting Bitcoin payments, it looks like a relatively stable digital currency is here. And we’ve already begun to see the support for the cryptocurrency spread, with a number of small businesses that accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. The most notable company to accept the cryptocurrency was the website based shop Overstock.com. Prior to 2014, CEO Patrick Byrne publicly stated the website’s intentions to adopt Bitcoin as a payment (Financial Times 2013). At the time, onlookers were sceptical about the announcement, with many suggesting it was a publicity stunt. Despite cynicism from some quarters, on 9th January Overstock.com held true to their word and opened the option for Bitcoin payments, using Coinbase to handle the transactions. In their first day of trading, they saw $130,000 in sales from 840 orders (The Verge, 2014). Although these numbers are small in comparison to the company’s overall revenue (estimated at $3,000,000 a day),
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the fact that they had success in being the first major retailer to adopt it creates hope for the currency. Realistically, the most appealing motivation for major retails to accept Bitcoins is the lack of a mediator. If customers chose to pay with Bitcoin, the business would no longer have to factor in card charges deducted from the revenue stream by financial providers. Debit cards have an average transaction fee of 0.2%, with credit cards typically costing 0.9% of the trade (BBC, 2013). As small a percentage as this may seem, when applied to the large volume of trade some retailers deal in, this can amount to a considerable sum, especially where businesses have equally small profit margins. Among other benefits such as instantaneous transactions, Bitcoin can be a seriously enticing prospect for larger retailers, shifting the shopping experience into an entirely digital age. However, Bitcoins naturally anarchistic roots have seen the currency associated with more sinister motives, demonstrating the darker side of a digital currency. The “Silk Road” was the name of the infamous online black marketplace, where visitors could among other things purchase illegal drugs or criminal services from independent sellers. The website could only be exclusively accessed by the Tor browser, a form of proxy that would ensure visitors would remain anonymous whilst browsing. Bitcoin was the only usable currency on the site essentially because it enabled the traders to remain unidentifiable. With the transactions registered to digital addresses, and with no other identifying information, Bitcoin provided a safe and secure form of payment for the users. The site had a review system so that members could leave feedback on reliable sellers, ensuring that the users of the site would have a sense of security. With the popularity that the Silk Road had begun to achieve, it was inevitable that the trade of illegal substances would catch the eye of the US government, leading to the closure of the site.
% of types of drugs users bought on Silk Road MDMA Marijuana LSD 2C Prescription Drugs Ketamine
56%
51%
29%
23%
18% 17%
Quartz (2013)
The anonymity provided by Bitcoin was essential for Silk Road to function, and this throws into sharp relief one of the more controversial problems with digital currency: with no regulator of the money, and no way to identify participants in transactions, it will become a catalyst for illegal activities. Though much of the Bitcoin community has legitimate interests in the currency, it’s important to realise that there will always be a minority that may break the law. However that shouldn’t be used as an argument against digital currency – since that minority will always exist and will abuse any system of currency whether digital or physical. It could be argued that the legitimate desire for personal privacy and independence from governments is greater than ever, in the wake of the NSA scandal and the global economy crash of 2008 that many ordinary people felt keenly in their pockets. Distrust of governments has already boosted the popularity of Bitcoin, especially in early 2013 as seen in Cyprus. In midMarch, the Cypriot President announced that in order to fund the deeply unpopular bail-out of the country’s banks, a percentage would be seized remotely from savers accounts. Although this plan was blocked by the parliament, there was widespread outrage, and many Cypriots began investing their savings into Bitcoin instead, in order to keep their money safe (BBC 2013).
Realistically, Bitcoin is unlikely to entirely replace conventional currency for day-to-day use any time soon. Though public awareness of Bitcoin is higher than ever, this complex system with its novel anarchic roots is not easily understood by most. However as it grows, the benefits extend beyond keeping the parties involved anonymous. The idea of giving people freedom from the control of the government has been prevalent throughout history, although usually with more rebellious undertones. Bitcoin offers a multitude of benefits, but whilst the network is secure, the users must navigate the cyber battlefield of worms, viruses and hackers to actually access and store their money. This is where the real challenge lies, in improving the understanding, and removing the cloud of ignorance that surrounds the currency. And as the currency grows, naturally so will its publicity, allowing it to take further steps into being embedded into our lives. Our financial, social and technological conditions mean now if ever is the time when a digital currency is most likely to succeed.
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ILLUSTRATION:
VALERIO PELLEGRINI M OST PROL I FI C PASS COM BI NAT I O N I N M ATCH NU M BER O F SPRI NTS (> 7M / S) BALL RETENTION % 1%
SU TOTA L EX PECT ED GO A LS SCO RED
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JOE HART Probability of saving shot for goal 54.6% T Number of sprints (>7m/s) 3 P
PHIL JAGIELKA T Successful forward passes 23
P % of high intensity distance (>5.5m/s) when team not in possession 70.0%
GARY CAHILL T
Pass success % 92.5%
P % of sprints that were explosive [from slower starting speed] 47.4%
England vs Montenegro, October 11, 2013 T Technical
P Physical
KYLE WALKER T % of possessions that started with regain of possession from opposition 15.2% P Average sprint time (seconds) 1.21
BY JOÃO MEDEIROS 3. 3%
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% OF PASSES PLAYED F IR ST T I ME
% OF PASSES IN MIDDLE, CENTRAL 1/9TH OF THE FIELD
S E C O N D S H OT A S S I STS
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5%
47.3%
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DANNY WELBECK
Attacking entries 17 T
Probability of scoring best scoring opportunity 25.4% T
Number of sprints in defensive third 7 P
% of team’s high intensity (>5.5m/s) distance 11.8% P
Once scorned by suspicious managers, data analytics has become the latest tool keeping football teams one step ahead of the competition
STEVEN GERRARD Successful passes 45 T Average sprint distance (m) 4.58 P
DANIEL STURRIDGE Balls received in the final third 23 T % of high intensity distance (>5.5m/s) when team in possession 65.7% P
WAYNE ROONEY T Goals scored 1 P Number of movements faster than 5.5m/s 145
FRANK LAMPARD T
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P Recovery time between high intensity activities (seconds) 36
ANDROS TOWNSEND Probability of shot for goal being scored 1.7% T Sprints in final third 20 P
1
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Tablet extra! “Collecting data is always the first step Download the WIRED and Reep was a great accountant,” says app to interact with these infographics Chris Anderson, a political economist from Cornell University, New York, who’s been studying football statistics for three years. “But he wasn’t a great analyst and had a limited understanding of what the numbers were telling.” Reep, according to Anderson, had very strong preconceived notions and when he found what he was looking for – a chance to play the game with minimum input for maximum output – he didn’t investigate other hypotheses like another analyst would do. “He was welcomed into football by people who wanted to play a long-ball game and just wanted to know how do it without considering how wrong this approach could be.” In their book, The Numbers Game, Anderson and co-author David Sally write: “Reep’s quest to use the numbers to inform strategy fell short because he was an absolutist, determined to use his data to prove his beliefs. He needed to abandon his idea that he was looking for the one general rule, a winning formula, and learn to seek the multiple truths and falsehoods in the numbers themselves.” Reep’s assertion that statistics offer us a chance to see things we’d otherwise miss was absolutely correct.
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DISTANCE COVERED (>5.5M/S)
10.3% OF TOTAL DISTANCE
hen Wilson joined Manchester City in 2006 in order to start a new department of football analytics, he hired the best analysts he knew and set himself the goal of changing how the football team used data. “After a game there wasn’t any kind of analysis,” Wilson says. “Emotionally, the manager and the coaching staff would just draw a line and move on. It was part of the culture. They wouldn’t ask themselves if the game plan had been right or even well executed. My team of analysts had to fight that habit and create a continuous loop between what happened in games, why it happened and what we are going to do next time.” At the time, City were a mid-table club that struggled to win away games. In September 2008, when the club was acquired by the Abu Dhabi United Group for Development and Investment, a private-equity outfit owned by a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, the team suddenly found itself with the resources necessary to mount a challenge for the Premier League. Today, Wilson is Manchester City’s manager of 1
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On October 11, 2013, England played a World Cup qualifier against Montenegro at Wembley Stadium. Here are some insights on the game from Prozone's analysis
01 02
HEAT MAPPING The red shows Everton left-back Leighton Baines’s territory during the game (both halves are superimposed here). Baines's corner-kicks are shown at the lower-right. VISUALISED PASSES This web depicts England’s
passes during the first half of a game. The blue arrows indicate successful passes and their direction. Red indicates the failed attempts.
strategic performance analysis. He co-ordinates A STRONG five departments, including the team of perfor- INDICATOR OF mance analysis, which is now led by a sports scien- PHYSICAL tist named Ed Sulley. After each match, they compile FITNESS IS exhaustive reports about the team’s performance RECOVERY data, focusing on statistics that they think most rele- TIME, WHICH vant. The list is extensive. They analyse, for instance, HAS FALLEN the number of line breaks, a term borrowed from rugby which means a forward pass that goes through the opposition’s midfielders or, more crucially, its line of defenders. They look at what happens in the OVER THE LAST 20 seconds after the team wins or loses the ball. SIX YEARS They pay attention to City’s ball possession in the last third of the pitch, a measure that they found to be strongly correlated with winning matches. “When we studied the profile of the top teams against average teams, the thing we saw was that the best teams dominate the possession of the ball in that part of the pitch,” says Wilson. “The success rate of the passes was very high, particularly forward passing. So now, when we recruit players, we pay special attention to individuals with high pass-completion rates.” Statistics such as line breaks and possession in the last third are important for City but would probably be irrelevant to a team with
PASSES EXCHANGED WITH KYLE WALKER: 30 (MOST IN MATCH)
% OF TEAM’S DRIBBLES: 37.5%
Hotspur winger Andros Townsend’s runs during the second half of the game. Yellow arrows are 4-5,5m/s; orange 5.5-7m/s; and red 7m/s+
MOVEMENT TRACING This is Wayne Rooney’s movement profile during the second half. With Daniel Sturridge and Danny Wellbeck in attack, England’s star forward is able to roam freely.
a different style: football analytics is a discipline in which the way a team plays dictates which statistics are significant. The challenge is to find out which. “Instead of looking at a list of 50 variables we want to find five, say, that really matter for our style of play,” says Pedro Marques, a match analyst at Manchester City. Marques and his colleagues are currently using data-analysis techniques, such as principal-component analysis, to home in on the match-related variables about winning. “With the right data-feeds, the algorithms will output the statistics that have a strong relationship with winning and losing.” Wilson recalls one particular period when Manchester City hadn’t scored from corners in over 22 games, so his team decided to analyse over 400 goals that were scored from corners. They noticed that about 75 per cent resulted from so-called in-swinging corners, the type where the ball curves towards the goal. “In the next 12 games of the next season we scored nine goals from corners,” Wilson says. “You usually get six coaches and they’ll have different experiences and they’ll throw their opinions in, whereas we had objective evidence to suggest that this was a pattern.” When Wilson was working at Prozone as a consultant for Southampton, he would capture the information from the Prozone machine on a removable hard disk drive, commute back to Leeds at 2am, process the data overnight and head back to Southampton to deliver the analysis. Sometimes he would work 20-hour days. He lived in Leeds with ten other Prozone consultants. The office was essentially a Far left: Clive Woodward, warehouse filled with computers. The CEO was who first used Prozone in 1999 Ram Mylvaganam, an engineer who had been a left: Andros Townsend, England marketing director for Mars. Mylvaganam didn’t vs Montenegro, October 2013 know much about football. On the wall of the Prozone office he hung a picture of a chalk drawing by the pavement artist Julian Beever, an artwork that, viewed from the right angle, creates an illusion of 3D. To Mylvaganam, data was like a Beever drawing – everything they needed to make sense of the data was probably right in front of them. “But if you stand in the wrong place, SUCCESSFUL PASSES: 30 the data looks like shit,” Mylvaganam says. Mylvaganam first had the idea for Prozone in 1996 when he was working for a management consultancy and had a contract with EXPECTED SUCCESSFUL PASSES (ADJUSTED FOR Derby County, a contact he got via Neil Ramsay, a former football PASS QUALITY): 29.1 agent. The first version of Prozone was a Portakabin filled with 22 massage chairs, developed by Mylvaganam with a local manufacturer, that emitted electrical pulses and, supposedly, relaxed the
39%
AVERAGE NUMBER OF TOUCHES WHEN IN POSSESSION: 3.61
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SPEED PROFILING The arrows show Tottenham
players’ muscles and increased their flexibility. Prozone was a contraction of “Professional Zone”. At 10.30 every morning, Derby’s players reported to Prozone and sat on the chairs for 15 minutes while the assistant manager, a young coach called Steve McClaren, gave presentations on a video screen about their game plan. Feedback, McClaren used to say, was the breakfast of champions. “McClaren worked in this glorified garden shed, where he would stay after all the players had gone home, with two video recorders and a screen. Just editing video,” Mylvaganam recalls. “I asked him, ‘Why don’t you get one of your monkeys to do it?’ and he replied ‘How do they now what is a good move and what’s bad? I want to show them how you win matches.’” Mylvaganam thought he could do better. He knew a small company in France called Video Sports that had developed pixel-tracking software. He bought 25 per cent of the company and installed eight cameras around Pride Park stadium. “The camera technology was bad. Sometimes we’d get the analysis back and there’d be players missing, so we had to redesign the software in Leeds.” Mylvaganam says. “Still, it was revolutionary. We were defining statistically what was a game of football.” In 1999, Steve McClaren was headhunted by Manchester United’s manager, Alex Ferguson. McClaren requested Prozone. The firm had been working gratis for Derby and had no paying costumers, so Mylvaganam insisted on a financial deal. United agreed to pay Prozone £50,000 if the club won a trophy that year. That season, United won the treble – the Champions League, the Premier League and the FA Cup – and Prozone earned its first cheque. In May 1999, Prozone had two clients and no revenue. By August 2000, six Premier League clubs were paying customers. Mylvaganam and Ramsay sent their sports scientists to football clubs to act as Prozone Right: Barry McNeill, consultants – what some of them found wasn’t current managing what they were expecting from multimilliondirector at Prozone pound businesses. “At Aston Villa, there was an old-school bucket-and-sponge physio who didn’t really speak to the manager and a manager who didn’t really speak to the players,” says the current managing director of Prozone, Barry McNeill. in at least 16 games to avoid relegation. They knew that if they “There were few coaching meetings, no preparation meetings and scored first they would have a 70 per cent chance of winning the I was just a 22-year old guy in a suit who had to explain how the game. They knew that set pieces, free kicks and corners accounted software I had in my PC could add value.” for nearly a third of the goals scored, and in-swinging crosses In 2000, Mylvaganam got a call from Sam Allardyce, the Bolton were more successful than out-swinging, so they practised not manager. Allardyce had played in the North American Soccer League only those types of crosses but also defending against them. They with the Tampa Bay Rowdies, who shared a training ground with also discovered that they would have an 80 per cent chance of not the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, an American football team. He’d been losing if the players outworked their opposition by covering more impressed with the Buccaneers’ use of technology. Mylvaganam distance at speeds above 5.5m/s. Allardyce insisted on players didn’t think a lower-division team such as Bolton could afford Pro- using long throw-ins, deep into the opponent’s area – if a player zone, but also knew that if they performed well, they failed to follow that simple command he’d go crazy because he TOTAL SPRINT could prove even better publicity than United’s treble. knew the odds of scoring had been reduced. Bolton’s performance DISTANCE PER Bolton became the first lower-division team to use the analysts studied a huge number of throw-ins and Allardyce would TEAM HAS system. They beat Preston in the Championship play- organise players in the places on the pitch where the ball had the INCREASED BY offs 3-0 and were promoted to the Premier League. highest probability of landing, the so-called positions of maximum At Bolton, Allardyce conceptualised a rigid game opportunity, or “pomos”, to increase the odds of scoring. “Pomos plan around data. His backroom staff included weren’t just relevant to throw-ins. In training, he would shout David Fallows, a former Prozone analyst, Gavin to the players to attack their pomos when trying to score,” says CONFIRMING Fleig, who had studied under Mike Hughes, and Ed Sulley. Between 2003 and 2007, Bolton recorded consecutive THAT PLAYERS Sulley. Allardyce and his performance analysts had top-eight finishes in the Premiership, a record of consistency NOW SPRINT a model he called “the Fantastic Four”: four areas bettered only by the top four. They qualified for the UEFA cup for MUCH MORE, that dictated success. Out of 38 games, they knew the first time in 2005 and again in 2006. When Allardyce left AND FURTHER that a team had to prevent the opposition scoring in 2007, they had an impressive 39 points after 21 games.
50%
RUN (6-7M/S)
% OF TEAM’S DRIBBLES: 64.2
ally and Anderson argue in The Numbers Game that football is as much a matter of skill as it is a question of luck. Goals are rare and studies show that 44 per cent are fortuitous. In any match, the favourite team wins only 55 per cent of the time. Football, they conclude, is a game dominated by randomness. That, however, doesn’t mean that nothing can be done to influence its outcome. Football’s inherent randomness makes analysis even more impactful. “What makes a difference isn’t data,” Anderson says, “but the brain cells that can translate data into a theory of how you win football matches.” Analysts used to believe, for instance, that the distance run by a player was a good indicator of individual performance and that a team’s ball possession had a positive correlation with winning. Those numbers, however, turned out to be meaningless. Analysts now know that it is the distance run by a player when sprinting that indicates good performance, and that it is ball possession within the last third of the pitch that correlates with success. Better metrics imply a more refined understanding of the game. “Sometimes we look only at the individuals and forget the context,” says Blake Wooster, a former director at Prozone, who now runs a sports startup called 21st Club. “For instance, Barcelona’s [Lionel] Messi is one of the best players ever, but what would happen if you took him out of that context and put him in another team? You can’t assess talent in a vacuum.” An example of that type of contextual statistics is a model recently developed by Prozone called “goal expectation”. This assigns each shot a probability related to its position, and thus determines how well a goalscorer is performing. The statistic filters out the quality of the opposition and the quality of the player’s team. Last year, for instance, Tottenham’s Gareth Bale had 161 shots and 21 goals, when, according to the goal-expectation model, he was due to score only 11. “Bale would regularly shoot from situations with a low probability of success, such as from a distance of 30 yards, and score,” says Paul Boanas, Prozone’s senior account manager and a former performance analyst. “This type of contextual information helps to explain why he’s worth so much.”
Some of the most important elements of football remain very hard to quantify and it’s difficult to understand what we can’t measure. Consider defence. Using data from the last ten seasons of the Premier League, Anderson and Sally compared the value of a goal scored and the value of a goal conceded. They found that scoring a goal, on average, is worth slightly more than one point, whereas not conceding produces, on average, 2.5 points per match. “Goals that don’t happen are more valuable than goals that do happen,” Anderson says. “It’s counterintuitive. The question is: how do we measure something that doesn’t happen? The challenge is to see the unseen.” Evaluating an attack consists of measuring what happens with the ball: shots, passes, crosses, sprints. Although actions such as tackles, clearances and saves give you a measure of defensive performance, the essence of defence lies in collective behaviour that happens off the ball – marking, cutting off passing channels, the positioning of defenders. This is a thorny problem that the analysts at Manchester City are beginning to study. Using Prozone’s tracking data, they are quantifying variables such as the area occupied by a team and the dispersion of the players. “We are trying to understand how the individual players co-operate and develop synergy as a team,” Marques says. “Most analysis still focuses on discrete variables and actions, but most important for us is to understand the interactions.” Every week during the 2011-2012 season, Manchester’s City captain, Vincent Kompany, sat down with the other defenders and a performance analyst, and examined their performance. “They would look at videos and statistics and ask questions,” Wilson says. “Was the pressure effective? How many forced errors did they commit? What would happen in the ten seconds after losing the ball? On the basis of that analysis they would design their own defensive tactics for the game. You can have a fantastic analytics team but you can never win a game with data if you’re not influencing the behaviour of the players.” At the end of the season, Manchester City had conceded the fewest number of goals in the Premier League. “We beat a lot of records that season,” Wilson says. “Most of the credit is due to the talent on the pitch. But I believe that about 30 per cent of that success is down to how well we prepared and maximised that talent.” Wilson missed the last game of that season, when City played Queens Park Rangers. City were level on points with Manchester United, but had a superior goal difference. “I had a flight but it was delayed, so I ended up only watching the first half on TV,” recalls Wilson. OPTA SPORTS “By then when we were winning 1-0, so I Prozone’s main rival, was confident.” In the second half, QPR London-based Opta scored twice. Two minutes after stopdistributes live sports page time, City’s striker Edin DŽeko equaldata not only to football clubs but ised. By then, United were winning their also to media and match and, if nothing changed, would be betting companies. the champions. Two minutes later, City’s attacker Sergio Aguero received the ball on STATDNA the edge of the box, in a position to shoot. This US-based video According to Prozone’s goal-expectation analytics company not only captures game model, he had a 12 per cent chance of scorevents, but also ing. Instead of shooting, he went around provides statistics a defender to a corner of the penalty area on defensive pressure and, from a spot where he had a 19 per cent and pass difficulty. chance of scoring, slotted the ball past the keeper. By the time Wilson landed at GatAPOLLO MIS wick, the news ticker running across the Founded by Ram Mylvaganam, after he TV screens was saying that Manchester left Prozone in 2005, City were the new champions.
OTHER TEAMS IN THE FIELD
Apollo's platform brings together training, medical and performance data.
João Medeiros is wired’s science editor. He wrote about testosterone in 01.13 1
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Just how far can a human hit a golf ball? A group of British mathematicians, engineers and scientists intend to answer this question by designing and then 3Dprinting a composite-material club capable of sending a ball further than ever before. The Performance Engineering Solutions (PES) team, based at the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, believe that their club can propel a ball more than 370 metres. 0 0
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Dan Fleetcroft and his team of engineers are designing a 3D-printed golf club in an attempt to hit a ball further than ever before (By comparison, Tiger Woods’s average drive is 268.6 metres.) They’ll attempt the record in 2015. “Our sole purpose is to produce a driver that breaks the current official carry record of 373.8m,” says PES engineering design director Dan Fleetcroft (pictured). “This means our club does not have to adhere to the rules of golf and this means we can ask questions golf manufacturers can’t.” Questions like: is titanium really the best metal to use? Can we change the biomechanics? And can we develop a system involving compressed gas? “We’re exploring everything from the aerodynamics of golf clubs to the energy-storage systems of competition archery bows, to the energy transfer between snooker balls,” says Fleetcroft. Ace. Stuart Hood amrc.co.uk
After evaluating the optimal club-head geometries using white-light scanning, the team produced this model. The key difference between it and standard golf drivers is the minimised hitting area
PHOTOGRAPHY: HOWARD BOYLAN
Driving ambition
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Hooray forthe herobot
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Lidar, stereo cameras and perception algorithms in Atlas’s head-mounted sensor package give him a wide field of view.
We’re saved! Atlas is built to rescue hapless humans in peril
Materials
The robot is built mostly from aluminium, steel and titanium. Good for crash protection.
Computer
PHOTOGRAPHY: BOSTON DYNAMICS
An onboard system monitors sensors, controls actuators, collects data and communicates with a remote user.
eet the Pentagon’s 1.9m, 150kg humanitarian robot, Atlas. He was designed to save lives in disaster zones (such as Fukushima). But although this Tin Man has a heart, he lacks a brain. In December, seven teams of scientists from institutions including MIT and Virginia Tech will compete to code the bot for action. Each team will send its own Atlas into Darpa’s trials – eight tasks that will test his ability to navigate degraded terrain, drive a utility vehicle and enter buildings. “We designed Atlas to facilitate programming – but we expect Darpa to make the competition challenging,” says Marc Raibert, president of Boston Dynamics, Atlas’s maker. Here’s the skinny on the massive bot. Jason Kehe bostondynamics.com
Hands
The robot’s wrists accept numerous accessories. Some even have fingers, so Atlas can use tools such as screwdrivers.
Stature
Atlas’s predecessor, Petman, was the size of an average western male; the new bot is several centimetres taller.
Joints
With 28 hydraulically actuated joints, Atlas can perform a range of motions: he can jump, crouch and tackle stairs and rough terrain.
Feet
Made for walking: Atlas takes elegant heel-to-toe strides. 0
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BBC 2013 Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23431543 (last accessed 28/01/14) Quartz 2013 http://qz.com/162021/the-most-popular-drugs-bought-with-bitcoin-on-silk-road/ (last accessed 28/01/14) BBC 2013 Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22292708 (last accessed 28/01/14) Bitcoinboard 2014 Available at: http://bitcoinboard.net/tigerdirect-processes-250000-bitcoin-pay (last accessed 28/01/14) Huffington Post 2013 [img] Available at: http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1116735/thumbs/o-BITCOIN-facebook.jpg (last accessed 28/01/14) WIRED 2014 The Future as it Happens Jan 2014
Reading Material Websites: Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/12/04/the-bitcoin-bubble/ The Economist http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/06/virtual-currency Financial Times http://www.ft.com/markets/currencies Journals/Books: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System (2008) Satoshi Nakamoto The problem with Bitcoin (2013) Danny Bradbury Security and privacy in social networks (2013) Yaniv Altshuler Technology: Bitcoin - A brave, new Bitcoin world (2013) Duygu, Tavan
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FREE DIGITAL EDITIONS iPHONE, iPAD AND KINDLE FIRE
PAC K AG E WO R T H £ 1 0 3
A L L F O R O N LY £ 2 8 1 2 P R I N T I S S U E S R R P £ 4 7. 8 8 D I G I TA L E D I T I O N S R R P £ 3 5.8 8
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W I R E D.CO.U K /S U B S /CW R 1 0 51 3 O R CA L L 0 8 4 4 8 4 8 52 02 R E F: CW R 1 05 1 3 *AFTER YOUR TRIAL PERIOD, UNLESS WE HEAR FROM YOU, YOUR SUBSCRIPTION WILL RENEW WITH 6 ISSUES FOR £12 ON DIRECT DEBIT PAYMENT. OUR DIRECT DEBIT GUARANTEE MEANS YOU CAN CANCEL AT ANY TIME AND GET A REFUND. OFFER CLOSES ON 02/01/2014. SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY AND LIMITED TO THE UK.
THE WIRED CIRCUITBOARD Braze Lights is a new, innovative fashion jewellery brand, bringing a burst of colour to any outfit with their funky silicon bracelets, handmade by owner Daniel Ramos. Long-lasting, great looking and hugely practical, Braz aze e Li Ligh ghts ts is the wa way y fo forw rwar ard d in design and unisex jewellery.
Available Av ailable in a as assortmen sortmentt of siz sizes es and colours, see www.facebook.com/ BrazeLights or call 0049 179 2555 142 for more information.
Vintage Watch Movement CufflinksBy Pretty Eccentric. Swiss jewelled watch movements from the 1920s - 1950s. Backed with vintage leather and mounted as cufflinks. cufflinks. Presented in vintage inspired box, £49 .
Visit www.prettyeccentric.co.uk or call 07870607925 07870607925.
TO ADVERTISE, CONTACT 020 7499 9080 EXT 3705 The Lanky Jeans Co. Tall and slim? Would like a pair of jeans that actually fit? The Lanky Jeans Co. has jeans up to 38” long for men and a range of long-legged options for women. Bringing you the choices that the High Street never does. Brands include Lee, Wrangler, Mish Mash, Silver and Hudson. Go on, make jeans shopping a happy time again. Free delivery over £80 and free exchanges. Visit www.lankyjeans.com or call 0800 1955 051
Interiors by Ruben are online specialists in modern and traditional furniture and home accessories. Pictured is the ‘Ferrari’ 458 Italia Red Ferraro 2 piece wallpaper mural, as well as the Jimmi Hendrix print- both designed so you can trim the edges to your wall without losing the main print! The Fatboy beanbag is their original beanbag- hugely comfortable with its ample dimensions and good for any room with its classic design! Visit www.interiorsbyruben.co.uk or call 01902 711475 for more information. Enter dis2013 at the checkout for 10% discount until 2nd January 2014.
Christopher Ward C8 Regulator
Vitabiotics Wellman Skin Technology is from the UK’s number 1 men’s supplement brand and has been developed to help men stay looking their very best. It includes nutrients such as niacin (vit.B3) and biotin which contribute to the maintainace of normal skin health. It also includes lycopene, lutein esters, alpha lipoic acid, green tea and grape seed extract. RRP £17.30, available from Boots and online at wellmen.co.uk or call 020 8955 2600 for more information.
Visit www.etonshirts.co.uk or call 020 7430 1433.
WHEN THE WORLD ZIGS, ZAG. Revolutionary English lucury watch brand Christopher Ward are never afraid to take the opposite direction to the herd evidenced by their new C8 Regulator. So called because the mechanical separation of the units of time allows precise regulation, necessary in pre-quartz days, for watchmakers and World War 2 Bombardiers alike. It is the latter use that informs the vintage military aesthetic of this unusual and superb timepiece.
53, South Molten Street, Mayfair W1K 5SF 020 7495 8416.
C8 Regulator / £995 Visit www.christopherward.co.uk or call 0844 875 1515.
ETON SHIRTS The perfect choice. Button down multi check, £150. Brand Store, 65, Kingsway, Holborn.
E X P E R I E N C E T H E M O N S T RO U S S O U N D N O W I N YO U R O W N H O M E
V Â Â? Â Win the awesome KEF V300 Digital TV Sound System and Samsung TV worth over ÂŁ1,500 to mark the release of on Blu-ray 3D , Blu-ray and DVD! Bring all of the apocalyptic action to life in your own home with KEFÂ’s ultra-slim V300!
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