Personal Research Page: Anna

Research topic & discussion of related work

There are many websites dedicated to the 'optimal' throwing strategy for cornhole [1] [2]. The general consensus is that it is best to throw it with a high arc, keep the beanbag flat and parallel to the ground as it is in flight, toss underhand, aim for the front third of the board, and add spin to keep it flying straight [3]. These have been proposed and discussed informally, and are frequently used by Cornhole professionals, but I have been unable to find any formal research done on the optimal bean bag throwing strategy [4]. All projectile motion equations make the 'spherical chicken in a vacuum' assumption, where they ignore the physics of the object itself [5].

Methods used to investigate the research question

My plan is to test if this knowledge gives players an advantage over players who do not have this knowledge. The experiment consisted of the following:

• Ask players a few pre-game questions, including whether or not they know the strategy for cornhole, how good they consider themselves at the game, and how much they have played in the past. This will allow me to directly compare results, while accounting for outside factors
• First provide only the basic rules of cornhole. Each player played 4 rounds of three bag tosses each (after one practice round) and record the score of each round.
• After those four rounds, provide the players with the information gathered online about the 'optimal strategy' (e.g. arc, toss underhand, bag flat, add spin, throw on front third of board). Again, each player gets one practice round and four rounds for a score.
• Compare the final scores of the two groups to see if there is a statistically significant difference

Figure summarizing results and description of all results gathered

The results showed promise, but are not conclusive, that these strategies do improve a player’s score. Four of the six players showed an increase in the average game score across four games. On average, there was an 0.75 point increase between the two rounds across all players. As stated, these results are promising, but the sample size is a bit too small to provide statistically significant results. If we’re going for overly honest methods, the sample size was small because most people in the lab were too stressed and busy to take a 20 minute break for the experiment.

Conclusion and future work

I expected that extra knowledge about the optimal strategy will provide an advantage to players. As mentioned, the results were promising. These experiments did help us determine the optimal location for the stopping bar, which stops the arm at a 45 degree angle. We found this to be an optimal angle to get a good arc and throwing distance. In the ideal case, these experiments would be done ahead of the design phase so we could take the other factors into account (e.g. have the robot throw underhand and add spin). However, many of these factors are infeasible to implement at this stage as our design is complete.

References

[1] KC Joyner, "Think you can play cornhole with the pros?," ESPN, 4 July 2018. [Online]. Available: http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/23915041/think-play-cornhole-pros. [Accessed May 2019].

[2] Pattrn, "Twitter," Pattrn, 29 March 2019. [Online]. Available: https://twitter.com/pattrn/status/1111659280686563329. [Accessed May 2019].

[3] "Cornhole Bag Toss Tips," [Online]. Available: https://www.bagtoss.com/how-to/tips. [Accessed May 2019].

[4] M. Mitchell-Ward, "The Biomechanics of Cornhole," April 2014. [Online]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZV5U-UCr1o. [Accessed May 2019].

[5] G. Palmer, Physics for Game Programmers, Apress, 2007.