Informatics

Introduction

The term 'informatics' is not used a great deal in sport settings in Australia. Here we note the origins of the term in Germany, France, the United States of America and Russia.

Karl Steinbuch was first to use the term 'Informatik'. It appeared in his 1957 paper, Informatik: Automatische Informationsverarbeitung. In 1962, Philippe Dreyfus created the term 'L'informatique' as a combination of 'Information' and 'Automatique' (Felix Paoletti, 1993). In 1966, L'Academie française defined 'l'informatique' as:

Science du traitement rationnel, notamment par des machines automatiques, de l' information considérée comme le support des connaissances humaines et des communications dans les domaines techniques, économiques et sociaux. (Felix Paoletti, 1993)

In 1962, Walter Bauer, Werner Frank, Richard Hill and Frank Wagner formed the Informatics company. Walter Bauer (2007) wrote of that time:

My colleagues and I spent some time deciding on a name for our new company. We were attracted to the suffix ‘‘-atics,’’ the Greek ending which suggests ‘‘the science of.’’ We tried Datamatics but that name was already reserved as there was a computer called the Datamatic 1000, developed in a joint venture of Raytheon and Honeywell corpora- tions. ‘‘Informatics’’ was our next thought, suggesting the ‘‘science of information handling.’’ We thought the name was great for our company and we were proud to have invented a new name for the industry. So proud, in fact, that within the company there was later friendly competition, never resolved, as to who should get credit for having invented the name.

In 1963, F.E. Temnikov produced a paper titled Informatika. Three years later, A.I. Mikhailov, A.I. Chernyl and R.S. Gilyarevski used the word 'Informatika' as the name for the theory of scientific information in their paper Informatika–novoe nazvanie teorii naučnoj informacii. (For a discussion of the emergence of this term in Russia see Robert Lopes dos Santos, 2010.)

Michael Fourman (2002) defined Informatics as the science of information that "studies the representation, processing, and communication of information in natural and artificial systems". He added that used as a compound "it denotes the specialization of informatics to the management and processing of data, information and knowledge in the named discipline". The University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics (2014) defines informatics as "the study of the structure, the behaviour, and the interactions of natural and engineered computational systems". The School provides a helpful resource 'What is Informatics?'.

John Gammack, Valerie Hobbs and Diarmuid Pigott (2007) suggest:

Informatics is the discipline that addresses how we live with information. Exciting new possibilities are now emerging due to the advent of powerful information and communication technologies and tools. (p.19)

The activities of informatics are essentially the everyday activities that have been enacted throughout history and across cultures: selecting, communicating, discovering, recording, organising, problem-solving, deciding and learning. (p.19)

One of the aims of this Sport Informatics and Analytics resource is to explore how computational systems are transforming the ways we analyse sport performance. We suggest that if we are to grow sport analytics then we need to understand how computational systems enable us to communicate with and through data. This will lead us to discussions about the interaction between the engineering of information systems, computation, thought, language and intelligence (Winograd and Flores 1986).

One starting point for this conversation might be Alan Turing's (1936) discussion of computable numbers. The Turing Archive notes:

In 1935, at Cambridge University, Turing conceived the principle of the modern computer. He described an abstract digital computing machine consisting of a limitless memory and a scanner that moves back and forth through the memory, symbol by symbol, reading what it finds and writing further symbols. The actions of the scanner are dictated by a program of instructions that is stored in the memory in the form of symbols. This is Turing's stored-program concept, and implicit in it is the possibility of the machine operating on and modifying its own program.

Eighty years later (2017), the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge shared this account of how these numbers are processed using a MegaProcessor in order to illustrate how computers work.

If you would like to learn more about Alan Turing's life and work, Jack Copeland and his colleagues have edited The Turing Guide(2017).

Brad Miller and David Ranum (2017) shared an interactive book (a product of the Runestone Interactive Project at Luther College). The title of the book is How to Think Like a Computer Scientist.

Peter Norvig (2017) discussed the future of programming and computer science. In his talk he envisions how our interaction with technology will evolve as intelligent agents become increasingly prevailing in our lives.

Peter Norvig on "As We May Program" from LispNYC on Vimeo.

What is Sport Informatics?

Daniel Link and Martin Lames (2009) have provided a detailed account of the origins of sport informatics in Germany. They note that:

The term covers all activities at the interface of computer science and sport science, ranging from simple tools for handling data and controlling sensors on to the modelling and simulation of complex sport-related phenomena.

Their chronology includes the following milestones for sport informatics in Germany:

The idea of an interdisciplinary science 'sport informatics' was developed by Jürgen Perl. He and Wolf Miethling published the first monograph in the discipline (Miethling & Perl, 1981).
Jürgen founded the Institute for Informatics at Mainz University in 1985 and established a working group in sport informatics.
Jürgen organised the first workshop on sport informatics in Hochheim in April 1989. This started a tradition of biennial conferences.
The German Association of Sport Science(Deutsche Vereinigung fur Sportwissenschaft (DVS))established a Sports Informatics Section in 1995 (Perl & Lames, 1995).

The term 'sport informatics' emerged at a congress hosted by the International Organisation for Sports Information in 1975 in Graz, Austria (Recla & Timmer, 1976). The theme of this congress was 'Kreative Sportinformatik'.

Arnold Baca (2006a) points out that until this moment "no differentiation between sports information and sports informatics can be noticed". He points out that up to this time "only sport information can be found as a discipline of sport science". The emphasis was upon documentation and information. Elsewhere, Arnold Baca (2006b) notes that sport informatics ceased being a synonym for sport information and developed its own field of study in the 1980s and thereafter (see also, Josef Wiemeyer & Jurgen Perl,1997) .

Josef Wiemeyer (nd) provides an overview of some of the educational issues arising from the study of sport informatics.

Areas of sport informatics research have included:

Data acquisition, processing and analysis
Modelling and simulation
Databases and expert systems
Multimedia and presentation
IT networks and communication

These developments have led Daniel Link and Martin Lames (2009) to propose that 'sport informatics':

is a set of multi- and interdisciplinary research programs at the interface of sport science and computer science. The materiel field is the application of tools, methods and paradigms from computer science on questions of sport science as well as the integration of sport scientific knowledge in computer science.

Daniel and Martin (2015) have provided an update on the emergence and development of sport informatics.

Martin Sykora and his colleagues (2015) have reviewed developments in sport informatics. The proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Computer Science in Sport (Chung et al., 2016) indicate how diverse the "multi- and interdisciplinary research programs" have become.

Bibliographical Resources

IAT Gateway provided by

Darrell Cobner (2015). The Value of Numbers #UCSIA15 (iBook)

Video Archive

Building 43 (2010). Charles Babbage's Difference Engine.

Ed Catmull & Fred Parke (1972). 3D Animation.

Jack Copeland (2012). Alan Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age.

Computer History (1996a). The Dawn of Electronic Computing 1935-1945.

Computer History (1996b). The First Computers 1946-1950.

Douglas Engelbart (1968). The Mother of All Demos.

Steve Jobs (1984). The Lost 1984 Video.

Lockheed (1965). Computer Graphics.

Ivan Sutherland (1963a). Sketchpad Demo (1/2).

Ivan Sutherland (1963b). Sketchpad Demo (2/2).

References

Arnold Baca (2006a). Computer Science in Sport: An Overview (Part 1). International Journal of Computer Science in Sport, 4(1), 25-34.

Arnold Baca (2006b). Computer Science in Sport - a Historical Survey. 06381Abstracts, Dagstuhl Seminar, June.

Paul Chung et al (Eds.) (2016). Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Computer Science in Sports. London: Springer.

Josef Recla & Rob Timmer (Eds.)(1976). Kreative Sportinformatik. Der Internationale Jubiläums-Kongreß 1975 in Graz. Schorndorf: Hoffmann.

Photo Credit

At the top of the course (Keith Lyons, CC BY 4.0).