Yesterday, Samsung announced it is ending the production of the Galaxy Note 7 around the world, pulling the plug on the phone after a months-long controversy over its defective, dangerous batteries. The company’s shares tumbled 8 percent the same day, its biggest one-day decline in nearly a decade. The damage is immense, with analysts estimating the recall could end up costing as much as $17 billion.
Of course it is just too dangerous to leave that phone in the hands of consumers, but the fact that Samsung does/can not identify the problem bothers me. Although i do have to note that there are only 35 reported incidents of overheating Note 7’s worldwide.

Samsung never clearly stated the reason for the Note 7’s exploding issues; the company said it was a “very rare manufacturing error” that causes the anode to come into contact with the cathode, which in turns causes the overheating of the battery cell, but that explanation now sounds sorely lacking. However, a report by the New York Times indicates that despite assigning “hundreds” of employees, Samsung has not been able to reproduce the spontaneously smoky, blazing hot phones too many customers have experienced. Thus, when you can’t even replicate an issue, you pretty much don’t know the exact cause.

The former director of the Center for Advanced Batteries at the Korea Electronics Technology Institute Park Chul-wan, says the issue is probably “far more complex” than some error with the battery or the chip board. I guess Samsung over packed their product with too much innovation in order to surpass Apple. But regardless of whether Samsung knew, exactly, why the Note7 batteries’ keep bursting or not, the decision to recall the device for good was the right one. I’m curious how the South Korean company will compensate this immense set back.

Ever seen the movie Moneyball? Watching this movie changed the way I look at sports. Before, I thought sports and my IT focused education were strictly separated. But is seems quite the contrary: the movie describes the switch between measuring player performance traditionally, dominated by anecdote and intuition to an evidence-based approach. Nowadays, it is possible to record the exact movements of players in team games such as football, basketball and baseball. This science is driven by the relatively new ability to gather vast amounts of data about the players and the play while the game is in progress, resulting in a totally reformed sports environment.
However, in many of these sports, the capacity to gather data has not been matched by an ability to process it in meaningful ways. So an interesting question is what challenges sports sciences face in crunching this data effectively. What are the open questions in this rapidly evolving field?
The big challenge in sports science is to use this data to gain a competitive advantage, whether in real time during the game or to help in training, preparation, or recruitment. But while researchers have made significant progress, there are also important hurdles barring the way.
First off, the older generation have a hard time accepting and integrating the new way of work, as also described in the movie. Another significant challenge involves understanding how players can dominate parts of the pitch near them. In sports science, a player’s dominant region is the region he or she can reach before any other player.
Another related challenge is to work out whether a player is open to receive a pass. That means determining if there is a certain speed and direction that the ball can be passed so that a given player can intercept it before any other.
But perfecting algorithms that can solve these problems is only half the battle. The next stage will be to ask how these tools can help improve performance both on and off the field. Can they be used as a metric of player performance and value? Can they determine whether a player who is successful on one team will be also be successful on another? And can they work in real time during a game to help coaches and fans alike? I am really curious what the future will bring.