[Newspoetry] Bowling lessons.

[Chris Piuma]

Bowling Lessons
===============

1. Human counters are more reliable than machines. I would bowl and 
knock over nine pins, but the automated scoring machine would count 8 
of them. Then on the second throw, I'd miss the single remaining pin. 
Although there was only one pin standing, it would know I had 
gutterballed -- which, of course, I had, but you'd think it would 
know that, since there was only one pin standing, that I must have 
knocked down 9 pins in that frame. Instead the machine gave me only 8 
points for the frame. This happened several times that evening -- a 
total of 4 points were lost in two games, out of 187 points overall. 
While those 4 points wouldn't have made my score any less pathetic, 
and certainly didn't cost me the game, an uncounted pin rate of over 
2% is completely unacceptable. The conclusion is obvious: We would 
have been better off counting pins by hand.

2. Accuracy is more important than speed. I tended to hurl the ball 
with as much speed and gusto as possible, thinking the pins would 
ricochet and knock each other down with more vigor and in greater 
numbers. My opponents, however, tended to bowl "slow and steady", and 
had greater accuracy. They hit the "sweet spot" much more often than 
I did. Although sometimes their slow balls didn't have the speed or 
"oomph" to knock down all the pins, they still finished with much 
higher scores than my fast-ball approach yielded. Conclusion: 
Obviously, the ideal is a combination of speed and accuracy, but if 
you can only choose one, go with accuracy.





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Yrs,

Chris Piuma, etc.
http://www.flim.com