Events Calendar

SAE 549 Systems Architecting Guest Lecture

Speaker: Terry Bahill, Emeritus Professor of Systems Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, University of Arizona

Talk Title: Part A The Science of Baseball, A Modeling Perspective; Part B Tradeoff Studies

Series: SAE Distinguished Speaker Series

Abstract: The first part of the talk is on the science of baseball and the complex models needed to analyze bat and ball collisions. Collisions between baseballs, softballs and bats are complex and therefore their models are complex. The purpose of the first talk is to show how complex these collisions can be, while still being modeled using only Newton's principles and the conservation laws of physics. This talk presents models for the speed and spin of balls and bats. These models and equations for bat and ball collisions are intended for use by high school and college physics students, engineering students, the baseball analytics community and, most importantly, students of the science of baseball. These models use only simple Newtonian principles and the conservation laws to explain simple bat and ball collision configurations. These models are used to show the necessary sixteen tasks in the modeling process.

The second part of the talk is on tradeoff studies. Tradeoff studies are a part of decision analysis and resolution (DAR). When the decision is one of selecting the preferred alternatives from amongst many alternatives, and the alternatives are to be examined in parallel, then the problem is amenable to a tradeoff study. Tradeoff studies address a range of problems from selecting high level system architecture to selecting commercial off the shelf hardware or software. Tradeoff studies are the typical outputs of formal evaluation processes. Nevertheless, even if the mathematics and utility curves are done correctly, care still needs to be exercised in doing a tradeoff study, because it is difficult to overcome mental mistakes. This talk will discuss mental mistakes in tradeoff studies and offer suggestions for ameliorating their occurrence.

Biography: Terry Bahill is an Emeritus Professor of Systems Engineering and of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He served as a Lieutenant in the United States Navy. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of eight engineering books and over two hundred and fifty papers, over one hundred of them in peer reviewed scientific journals. Bahill has worked with dozens of high tech companies presenting seminars on Systems Engineering, working on system development teams and helping them to describe their Systems Engineering processes. He holds a U.S. patent for the Bat Chooser, a system that computes the Ideal Bat Weight for individual baseball and softball batters. He was elected to the Omega Alpha Association, the systems engineering honor society. He received the Sandia National Laboratories Gold President's Quality Award. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), of Raytheon Missile Systems, of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is the Founding Chair Emeritus of the INCOSE Fellows Committee. His picture is in the Baseball Hall of Fame exhibition Baseball as America. You can view this picture at http://sysengr.engr.arizona.edu/ .

Host: Prof. Azad Madni, Executive Director, Systems Architecting and Engineering Program

Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: James Moore II