Darts

During my PhD, we used to play darts in my research centre. As a mathematician, I wanted to know where to aim to beat my coworkers more often. One day, a researcher at my university, Paul Griffiths, mentioned that he had been trying to answer this exact question for a couple of years unsuccessfully.

This pushed me to give a shot to this problem and inspired by chess engines, I developed a computer algorithm that, based on a player’s skill, recommends the target point with the highest probability of winning.

A player who hits a double on demand 10% of the time, has 103 points left and wants to finish in three darts, gets the following recommendation:

Thanks to Santander Try It Fund, I raised £2500 to make the software more user-friendly. However, to this day, I haven't found a company interested in this technology.

If you're interested in potential applications, feel free to reach out!