Friday, December 19, 2008

aAlgorithm for finding the bar at large gathering using Newton’s method

Algorithm for finding the bar at a large gathering using Newton’s method

Figure 1 Typical sample of people flaunting delightful beverages, while others remain beveragless.

Last year at the artists against AIDS benefit, I was enjoying the weird art, but was somewhat frustrated that I could not seem to figure out where the bar was, despite my best efforts. About ready to give up I decided to use my 20 years of schooling to come up with a robust method of finding a resource in a large group of people. What follows is the derivation and algorithm.

In order for this to work we must make some assumptions about the group.
Primary to this algorithm is that the group be sufficiently large and uniform to make observations on a sample of the group and apply gradients those samples. Depending on the type of room and the type of resource being sought the minimum total group size could vary from 30 to 70, but typically if it is a group of less that 50 the room size would be small enough that more direct methods could be utilized.

Second, we must assume that the members of the group are moving around the area. If it is obvious that some or all of the members are stationary for an extended period of time then those individuals should be excluded from the calculations. This is often the case where there are tables that people are sitting at.

Finally, the participants have to be, on average, consuming the resource in question at a fairly constant rate. This does not need to be constant over the course of the event, but must be continuous over the time period in question. Thus people will start with a full drink and slowly consume it over 20-40 min. The more variance in the rate of consumption the larger the sample size of the group will need to be. Large deviances from the norm like shots should be identified and discarded.

Figure 2 Vectors measuring the movement of alcoholic beverages in a confined space. The length and direction of the vectors is proportional to the velocity vector multiplied by the percentage of remaining beverage.

Once these criteria have been met the algorithm can be implemented.
First take a survey of all of the individuals in a certain radius from your location. Scale the individual’s movement vectors with the quantity of their drinks and average to obtain a single vector. This vector will show the average movement of the alcohol near you.
Figure 3 Initial sample group and the coresponding vector indicating the negative of the mean alcohol movement in the group.

With this invaluable piece of information we can derive several things. The first and most important is the direction of the bar which is in the opposite of the mean alcohol vector (MAV[1]). One could just start walking tat direction and see where they end, up, but would have substantially more success by moving in the direction opposite the mean alcohol vector, but only 30% of the length of the room, or a suitable distance depending on circumstances.

Figure 4 Second survey at location indicated by MAV[1], including MAV[2]

Once at the new location a new survey can be taken yielding a second mean alcohol vector MAV[2]. Furthermore by comparing the overall glass levels at both locations one may extrapolate the location where the glass levels would be full, and presumably this would also be the location where you would also be able to obtain a full glass.
Figure 5 Second survey point with the inclusion of a vector of the average of MAV[1] and MAV[2] weighted by the mean percentage of remaining beverage at each site.
Figure 6 Predicted location of bar by extrapolating the weighted mean vector for the location where beverage levels will reach 100%. ie. If you find where peoples drinks are full you will fin the bar.

In the extensive testing conducted by the author, this method has typically worked in as little as a single iteration and as many as 4. This is most useful for items with a known maximum and minimum such as beverages, but can also be used to locate cheese trays, chocolate fountains, or any one of a number of other items.
Figure 7 The results of the search method.

Special thanks to Rob Raguet-Schofield for providing the initial figure of randomized vectors, without which none of this would have been possible. Nothe that these figures are meant as a tool for explanation and may not be to scale. Please feel free to point out any questionable methods or overwhelming dorkyness in the comments section.






Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Blago-Cake

Blago-Cake

I was very excited to hear on the news today that Blagojevich got arrested yesterday, and to celebrate I decided to make a cake for Cara and the teachers whose pensions are no longer in danger of being stolen. Clearly I went with an AB Classic (Yellow Cake), which was slightly more difficult than it should have been.

First weigh all of the ingredients.

Cream together and weigh batter into each pan.
Top the layers.Make the icing w/ a ridiculous amount of sugarApply to the layersTada
Now you have your very own Blago-Cake.
The hardest part was clearly making the hamburgler-esque Blagojevich.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Hunting FAQ

Hunting FAQ

Ok, I apologize for the lackluster live hunting blog. After the first couple of posts I started having hardware problems and issues uploading pictures. That combined with the fact that I Shot a deer pretty early and then had to start backfilling, with no pictures, which all in all made for a bland dry blog (like so many turkeys this week). So to make it up to you I have “John’s hunting FAQ” Filled with questions mostly from my coworkers

Can I see your gun?
Certainly, I would love to let you know how it works and discuss gun safety and operation, sometime guys from work go out and shoot sporting clays, but not while people are drinking which is when I am always asked.

How long do you have to wait to get a deer?
It depends on a lot of things, mostly luck. The prime times to get a deer are around sunrise and sunset. Usually you hit the tree stand just before sunrise and stay until 10:30 or 11 in the morning, then head back out after 2 in the afternoon and stay till dark. So 1-6, 4 hour chunks depending mostly on luck. The past 2 years I have gotten a deer in the morning both times then went back out. The previous year I sat out for 3 days and did not see anything.

What do you do while you are waiting for a deer?
Aside from live blogging and enjoying the majesty of nature, pretty much the same thing I would do sitting in a doctors office for 4 hours. Bubble breaker on my phone, read some magazines, keep a watch out for deer.

How hard is it to see the deer?
It depends, if things are still they tend to blend into the background. However, the human brain has the amazing ability to spot and focus on moving things. It is all part of our innate carnivorous breeding, along with our sharp teeth, eyes on the front of our head and relatively simple digestive system. It is not that hard to see a single leaf falling at 100Yds, but it is very difficult to find a doofus in a red and white hat in a crowded picture.

Is it cold?
Yes. Some days more than others, but as long as you are sitting still 20ft up in a tree in Nov you will want a jacket. A couple of year ago I figured out that if you really layer up on your core then your body will not get as much vaso-constriction in your extremities, and your fingers and toes will not be nearly as cold. But you will also want to bundle those up, and your head.

Depending on how cold it is ranging between 0F and the mid 50s there are also hand and foot warmers available that contain powered iron and an oxidizer that reacts slowly and releases a small amount of heat. These are awesome if they are inside something insulated and they can get some oxygen. The ones in my water proof boots usually heat up quick then slow down as the O2 is depleted.

What safety stuff do you have?
Surprisingly shooting accidents are not the biggest cause of injury during hunting season. The #1 cause of deaths is heart attack, presumably from out of shape middle aged men getting a small amount of exercise. Number 2 is falling out of a tree. To combat this some hunters wear a harness that can then be tied to the tree. If the tree falls down you probably have other problems. Often hunters use a rope to hoist their gun into the tree to avoid dropping it or falling while climbing the ladder. I usually have a small first aid kit as well. And the most important thing is not to be stupid, which is sometimes difficult for all of us.

How old do you have to be?
Apparently, 10. This year one of the neighbors sons came along and shot a deer. He seemed kind of young to be out in the woods with a shotgun, but apparently he took the “hunters safety course”, so more power to him. I think he is required to be supervised by a parent, at least he should be.

Do the Lead bullets cause lead poisoning?
Hunting deer with a shotgun is not like hunting birds with a shotgun. Birds you want a dispersion of BB sized pellets since it is unlikely that you could shoot a moving bird with a single bullet. For deer the bird shot would not really harm them all that much, much like shooting them with a bb gun several times. Buck shot is available which is a larger BB but still does not have much range. Most hunters use a single “slug” that is the size of the gun and a rifled barrel that will give the slug some range. Still the range is limited compared to a rifle, which is why only shotguns are allowed in most flat states.

The conventional wisdom is that since the bullets pass through the animal or are pulled out in processing that the metallic lead does not have enough time to permeate into the meat. However, an article one of my friends recently sent me had evidence that small fragments of lead slugs may break off particularly if they hit any bone, and that those fragments could end up in ground meat, react with the meat. This year I have started using solid Copper slugs, just in case. More foul hunters are using steel shot instead of lead.

Doesn’t all of that orange make you stand out to the deer?
Like me deer do not see colors, also they are not very observant. They do have a good sense of smell and hearing. So it is more important that you are quiet and don’t smell good or bad.

So is that like free meat?
Hardly!
Depending on how you calculate it and how far you have to travel and how much time you take off of work, it can cost anywhere from ground round to top sirloin. But golfers spend about as much for a weekend of hitting balls, and all they do not end up with a shiny deer at the end. If one lived where they were hunting and did not need a hotel, and processed their own deer, and inherited a gun, and did not use many $2-$5 dollar bullets, it could be almost free.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Hunting Live Blog

Here is the link to the rest of the photos... enjoy

Hunting Live Blog

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After a long day of sitting in the cold. We all adhourned to the property owners house to drink some cold beer and eat a variety of game dishes he and his wife prepared. One really could not ask more of a host.

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I got to the deer about the same time as one of my hunting buddies Steve. After about 20 minutes of deer photoshoot (coming soon) Roger went to get the truck while we dressed the deer. I tied the legs to a fence post and was getting redy to start cutting when, Steve schh'ed me. He saw a deer 80 yds off in the woods. I did not see it, but after about 15 min he grunted in into about 30 yds in heavy brush. Just as he was figuring out a shot Roger and Mike came back with the truck and the deer trotted off.

We got my deer field dressed and used Rogers truck to to pull it out. It turned out to be an 8pt buck. Done for the evening I helped get things ready for dinner.

Sorry for the lack of updates, and pictures, I will try 1 more time to upload some, and cut me some slack it is hard to type when you are cleaning a deer :)

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After looking around where the deer was I did not see any blood. However after following the path the deer took for about 30 yds, I did find a blood trail. I followed it just over the ridge and there was the deer.

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I took a shot at a deer, but I am not sure I hit it. It was about a 6 point buck that was coming toward me through some brush. When I took the shot it rand through some brush and over a ridge. I will go down and check for blood in a little bit, and keep you updated.

On a sad note it appeas that my wireless signal is now low enough that Up loading pictures is kindof painful. I will upload what I have when I get back into town.

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I am informed my live Blog "sucks". I'll try harder wait for updates

112108 0730 BREAKING NEWS

There are som cows grazing on the ridge now, also the sun is shining in my eye, also "My gmail looks awesome".

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Well, it is just after 7 and nothing much intresting has happened. While it is definatly sub zero,@ least it is not windy, so i am not that cold. It probably helps that this morning I put on:

Long Johns, sweatpants, wind pants, jeans, cotton socks, wool socks, foot warmers, boots, 2x long sleeve Ts, sweat shirt, under shirt, coat, hood, hat, hunting hat, glover, and hand warmers.

And that isall i'll say about the cold, because as the youth know, "John charges you a dollar to complian about the weather. Here is a pict of me in the stand (only a matter of time until I drop my micro SD card in the woods), and a couple of the view from the stand.

Looks like it is going to be a cold one tomorrow morning. We usually hit the woods about 6am, so for those who do not like graphs that is about 22deg w/ a wind chill of 15. I have packed numerous layers of everything, but I can only assume I am going to be freezing my ass of. In looking for winter clothes I realized that we were missing numerous gloves. In a (vain) attempt to find and match them, I got out all of our winter stuff and spread it out on the floor. Sure enough there were 7 orphan gloves, some purchased as recently as last year. I put them in a box in case there mates ever show up, but I am not holding out much hope.

Now you can experience all of the fun of hunting w/ out the waking up at 4am, sitting in a 25 deg tree, and having cold water drip on you. With the magic of technology I will be live blogging from the tree this Friday and Saturday, starting early. So keep an eye for updates, and pictures.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Four Day Work Week

Four Day Work Week


I love 3 day weekends, hey who doesn’t, but when you think about it what I really love is the 4 day work week. The knowledge that coming into the office and that tomorrow it is already Wed. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have a 4 day work week every week. Well it is actually quite possible. No no, I’m not talking about working 4 - 10Hr days. That is even worse. I am talking about juggling a few things and making the work week, work for you.

OK, First a little math
How much does your employer expect you to work:
40 hrs/week * 50 weeks/year (-xmas and holidays) = 2000 hrs / year

Now what if hypothetically there were only 6 days in a week. We will get rid of Mondays, you are welcome Garfield.
Well first of all instead of 52 weeks there would be 365.25 / 6 = 60.88 lets call it 61
Now we will give you your holidays back making it 59.
2000 hrs/year / 59 weeks/year = 33.89 hours/week

Wait for it…

So if we take our 33.89 hour work week and distribute it over our 4 day work week we get
8.47 hours per day for 4 days per week
Now that I can defiantly live with (I am often here that long anyway)

So now instead of working 5 out of 7 days of the week you worked 4 out of 6. As an added bonus no one will ever say “Sounds like someone’s got a case of the Mondays” again.

Ok so we are agreed, but wait now that we have settled all of that we can use this opportunity to clean up the calendar a little. Give February back the days that were stolen from it by the Roman Emperors (I’m looking at you July and August), and all of the months can have 30 or 31 days.


Now that we have fixed the calendar, it is time to fix this Daylight Savings Time mess.

I have yet to meet anyone who was overly excited about DST, and almost everyone’s opinions range from mild annoyance to utter disdain And what does it really accomplish anyway. We shift everyone’s schedules twice a year and now suddenly it is pitch black at 4:30 pm in the sinter and stays light till 9 in the summer. There has to be a better way

First to dispense with a myth, farmers hate DST, because any livestock they have is unaware of the change and does not really want to change their eating schedule, so if anything they just ignore DST and keep on the same schedule.

Second, I don’t really have any problems with getting more daylight in the evening as much as I don’t like changing all of the clocks in our house twice a year, as well as adjusting everyone’s sleep schedules.

Maybe we should all just pick a time and stick with it. For that matter does it really even matter what time you get up in the morning. Maybe a more suitable solution would be to shift our schedules to the daylight and not our clocks. It doesn’t really matter is the sun comes up at 4:40 or 6:30 if you are going into work at 11. So we should set the local schedules to what best fits the area.

This raises an interesting point, since we could change our schedules to our daylight hours, why do we really need time zones at all. Aren’t they really just another confusing layer of complication on top of everything else we are dealing with?

“Oh your meeting was at 2pm EST you are an hour later”
“Your flight from NY to LA will last 45 min but the one coming back will be 8 hours”
“Damn I set 30 rock to tape at 8EST not 7CST”

What if we were all on the same time, some standard time that is already programmed into all of our computers, maybe GMT. Now all of those useless flight calculations would be unnecessary. 5pm in Chicago would be 5pm in NY and 5pm in Tokyo. We would not have to have multiple clocks with different time zones there would be 1 time zone to rule them all. Our schedules would shift , but after the initial weirdness of the sun coming up at 11pm there would be no more changes…

Until, we finally switch to the metric system in 2047.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

A House Divided…

A House Divided…

The other week when we were at the farmers market Cara noticed that the Champaign Democrats were selling Obama signs. Against my urgings she got one for the yard. I was however very adamant that I wanted equal representation.

My first step was to look on the “interweb” to find the Champaign Republican headquarters. Several addresses were given on different sites including one near art mart in Lincoln Square Mall (the mall). After looking at the addresses with no success, I tried calling the listed number. I got the voice mail and left a message requesting a sign. A few days later I went to the address from the message, which was a law office. I the back room w/ no distinguishing signs denoting it as the headquarters for a county of 200,000±, a nice woman told me that they were out of signs and probably would not be getting any more.

Somewhat discouraged both at the state of the party in Champaign Co and my distinct lack of a sign I returned home, and informed Cara that she could put up her sign. Fortunately, 2 days later I received a call that they had gotten another shipment of signs and I could pick mine up whenever it was convenient, and while I know we are canceling each other out, so are 100M other Americans, and at least we can do it in style.



Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Sayonara Bush

Sayonara Bush

Wait Wait, before you head to the comment section (like you always do), this is not anything political. However, I’m sure Cara would love to make a corollary. This is the complement to the "popular" blog article “Tree Planting Tips and Ginkgo Facts”. While we still love the Ginkgo and it is settling in quite nicely. There is a bush in front of our house that Cara hates. After some discussion I finally agreed that we could get rid of it and replace it with something nicer.



The first thing we did was hose the whole think down with roundup, and don’t get chincy. Sure enough a week later it was dead as a doornail. I gave it an extra week just to make sure it was dead all the way down to the roots.



Then I wrapped the base with a tie down strap and hooked it up to the hitch on Old Blue (the Saturn). While Old Blue held some tension on the bush I cut roots around the perimeter with a shovel. I hopped in and gave it some gas, and pop went the tie-down. Fortunately, in typical Gutzmer fashion I happened to have a professional 4” tie-down left in the garage.



The “trucker grade” strap did the job and drug the bush out into the driveway, along with most of the rocks. After it was out I wrapped up the top part with the broken strap and took a chain saw to the base. Now we have a delightful fall decoration for the front of the house, and in the spring we can plant a new box hedge.

Note: The optimal means for pulling plants out of the ground with a vehicle is to put a wheel hub from a discarded tire in front of the plant and to put the strap or chain over that so that you are pulling up instead of sideways. I did not have any old wheels laying around.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I have completely given up on signing my name for credit cards

I have completely given up on signing my name for credit cards

At some point in the recent past I realized that the checkers were not looking at my signature at all let alone the back of my card. Most of the time you do not even give them the card. So I decided that it was no longer worth it to try to write out my name as sloppy and pixely as it was, and just decided to throw down a scribble. The scribbles have evolved and now I have a few standards. I guess those are my signature now… Maybe I should put them on the back of my card..

In addition to those I also have some special holiday signatures that I can endeavor on the highly accurate touch pad. Since I have started I have gotten several remarks from checkers that they are going to stop signing receipts. A few have given me a look especially when I throw down something like this.

However, NONE of them has asked to see my card or license. Maybe I am just that trustworthy or maybe they just don’t care. Either way, the credit card signature is officially no longer a security measure of any kind.

Thanks for reading

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Homoerotic Splash Screen

Homoerotic Splash Screen


I was installing some software for the Casting group today and this is what comes up whenever you launch the program. I am not really sure what this program does, but I want nothing to do with it. Leave it to the Germans to make a splash screen that makes all of its users slightly uncomfortable about opening it at work.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Guide to Unfamiliar / Interesting Olympic Sports

John's Guide to Unfamiliar / Interesting Olympic Sports
People have told me that has been a while since I updated my blog. I guess I hadn’t noticed since I was so busy watching the Olympics. Any way since I’m sure I have been watching way more Olympics than you have I will be happy to fill you in on what I have learned.

1) Dressage
Do you like horses, riding horses, and watching horses prancing around in circles. Then this is the sport for you. Basically a horse rides around in a particular pattern prancing and walking at different times. The whole thing takes about 5 minutes and then another horse goes. I am not sure how many horses there are or if there are multiple rounds, but this goes on for several days. Fortunately, it is mostly relegated to the Oxygen channel “the lowliest of Olympic networks”. At the end medals are given out to the riders, and presumable some delicious horse treat is given to the horse.

You may think this seems incredibly boring and is not really worthy of being called a sport. You are correct. However, it is somewhat hypnotizing. After watching 3 or 4 hopefully your spouse will snap you out of it, and you can go back to beach volley ball.

And the Dressage Gold goes to: Some lady on a horse

2) Beach Volleyball
Beach volleyball is the 2 person cousin of court volley ball. The big difference is bikinis, and ratings. Now the network feels obligated to also show a fair amount of men’s beach volley ball, but if you look at the schedule, when they want to reel in the viewers they always go for the girls jumping in bikinis. Fortunately, for NBC this is a lengthy tournament so they can put in on in prime time for at least 30 min a night.

Like most of the other sports invented in the US, the US is always in the running for the Gold, but apparently in some attempt to prevent the US from sweeping the volleyball medals every year Brazil has some sort of death match round robin tourney to produce some teams of their own. Anyway it has all come down to the final match in Women’s beach volley ball. It is the US vs. Brazil. The radar calls for rain in the afternoon, and you have to choose between the red bikini or the white bikini. This could have meant the game, but fortunately the US made the right choice w/ the white bikini.

And the Beach volleyball / wet T-shirt gold goes to: Walsh/May-Treanor

3) Trampoline

Hey remember when you were a kid and you went over to your friends huose with the trampoline with the exposed springs and the jagged lawn chair just within jumping distance. Well it turns out all of that pinched skin in rusty springs and canvas burns were all part of the buildup to the big event… Olympic Trampoline.

I know, I know, ever since I was a toddler being crushed by kids 5 times my size I knew I had a gift on the trampoline, and now it turns out I could be an Olympic champion. Well, It turns out that the Olympic trampoliners are much better than I ever imagined anyone could be. But on the other hand it still seems like a pretty standard trampoline, and with some practice and dedication, how hard could it be.

And the Trampoline Gold goes to: He Wenna?
Come on! How could some American kid not win this? It is like the American dream.

4) Trap Shooting
Ok, so this one only made it because I went trap shooting last week and thought I was doing pretty well for not having been in a couple years. This was a completely different sport.

When I went you would launch a couple of pigeons (clay, calm down) to see where they were going to go. Then you would point your gun there, tell one of your friends to launch another and shoot at it. It usually hangs in the air for a couple of seconds while you aim it up and pull the trigger. If you like shooting stuff, but not cleaning small animals I highly recommend it. So, it sounds pretty easy, but even with my skills I only got less than half of them.
Olympic trap shooting is nothing like that. First the pigeons always shoot out in some random direction, Second, they go fast. If you blink it is gone. Also they kind of explode when you hit them. I assume that is something the Chinese added (they love fireworks). Oh and the other big difference is that these guys are good. For instance the winner only missed 4 out of 125.

And the gold medal goes to David Kostelecky from the Czech Rep.
Surprisingly off all the shooting the US only got 1 Silver in air rifle (I did not see that one, but I assume it is like a bb gun, in which case I would be awesome). I assume this is the result of gun control laws, which clearly they do not have in Czech.

5) Sync Swimming / Diving
Ok the networks are calling for more sports with people in form fitting swimsuits. What are you going to do? The answer is clear. Take some of the swimsuit sports that you already have, add another person and call it Synchronized. It seems like that is pretty much the only difference in the diving. Now there is an extra person jumping off the high dive, and they get some extra points for looking the same (advantage China). Unfortunately, this made up a large bulk of the middle of the Olympic coverage. At some point you have to say, this is all very interesting and for some strange reason I am becoming an expert in judging diving, but isn’t there something else going on, and there is.

Unfortunately, it is Synchronized Swimming. This is pretty much just water ballet, but if they call it swimming so they can get medals for it. It is really one of the least interesting sports in the Olympics (right after Dressage), and like all the Olympic pseudo sports it is judged. So the results are entirely subjective (see rant below).

And the Gold medal for Sync Diving goes to: China
In fact China won all of the gold medals for diving except 1 (eat that Michael Phelps)
Sync Swimming surprisingly went to Russia [shrug]

So all in all it was a very informative Olympics. I learned a lot about new and interesting sports, and even felt compelled to prove myself on the badminton court recently. It is certainly an investment in time, particularly, with the broadcasts running live every night until 11:30 or 12. At one point Bob Costas was giving out “Olympic Hangover” tips, including drink lots of fluids and wear sunglasses to hide bloodshot eyes.

A few more observations before this gets long (tooooooooooo late)

If you have any of the Olympics taped you should defiantly go back and watch the men’s gymnastics again, only this time put “That’s what she said” after everything the announcers say.
“Oh, this next one is going to be really hard.”
“Now be sure to watch his hip angle on this insertion.”
“Wow, he really stuck it right in the mat.”
It goes on and on. (thats what she said)

We need to do something about these subjective sports. I think it is clear that as these sports become more and more competitive, that the margins of victory become slimmer and slimmer. Michael Phelps won one of his races by .01sec. Just to put that in perspective, for his 100m in 60 seconds that is about 1.6cm or 0.01%. How can we expect gymnastics or diving to be able to determine the winners and losers when even a margin of error of 5% (it is probably more) is 300 times as much as the potential difference in abilities.

Right: What diving scores should look like based on ability and fair judging.
Left: What diving scores actually look like
The typical data set for the smallest of surveys or statistical analysis is 100 data points. The typical data set for a diving or gymnastics score is 5-7. It is a statistical certainty that with 5-7 datum that over 100 or so contestants that at least one median score will fall outside of the first standard deviation. Even when you drop the extremes, It is a definite that some of the athletes got screwed and some were unfairly elevated. And that is just the math assuming that there is no bias by the judges (there is). Perhaps we should have hundreds of preselected judges around the world watching the events on their TVs and voting from home. 121M people elect the president, 1B elect the American Idol, why do only 5 elect the gymnastics champion.

On a sad note it seems like this may be the last year for softball and baseball., two sports that have been received very well in other countries. I am not sure why they IOC choose to remove these, but it seems foolish to take out a popular team sport, in favor of any of those listed above. It seems like unless you are wearing a swimsuit your sport will not receive much coverage. Maybe if women’s softball was played in bikinis it would have held a better chance of holding on as an Olympic sport.