News
Society Distinguished Lecture Series
The Control Systems Society is publicizing the Distinguished Lecture Series. The
primary purpose is to help Society chapters
provide interesting and informative programs for the membership, but the Distinguished Lecture Series may also be of interest to industry, universities, and other
parties.
At the request of a Society chapter, a lecture will be scheduled at a place and time
that is mutually agreeable to both the chapter
and the Distinguished Lecturer. One-half of
the funds for the normal travel expenses for
a lecture will be paid by theSociety,the
remaining travel expenses will be provided
by the chapter. Lecturers will receive no
honorarium. Initially, this program was limited to the United States andCanada, but
now that restriction has been removed. Some
effort will be made to coordinate scheduling
to maximize efficiency of the lecturer's time
and the use of travel funds.
Chapter chairmen will receive a complete
list of lecturers and notifications of the topics
on which these lecturers wish to speak.
Those wishing further details about the program should contact:
Craig Sims
Department of Electrical Engineering
West Virginia University
929 Engineering Science Building
Morgantown, WV 26506-6101
Phone: (304) 293-6375
AACC Awards
Nominations aredue by December 1,
1987,for three awards presented by the
American Automatic Control Council
(AACC). For information about the most recent recipients of theseawards,
see the
biographies and photographs listed under the
heading American Automatic Control Council Awards in this issue of the Magazine.
The award nomination should be sent to the
AACC Secretariat, c/o Bill Miller, 1051
Camino Velasquez, Green Valley, AZ
85614. For further information and help on
the nominations, contact the IEEE Control
Systems Society Chairman of Award and
Fellow Nominations, Prof. M. Vidyasagar,
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Ontario N2L3G1: Canada; phone: (519) 885-121 1.
August I987
Richard E. BellmanControl
Heritage
Award. For distinguished career contributions to the theory or applications of
automatic control. The nominee is to have
spent a significant part of histher career in
the United States. Posthumous nominations not allowed. Nominations by December l .
D O F ~ P.
M Eckman Award. For outstanding performance by a young engineer in
the field of automatic control. Nominees
must be younger than 35 years at the time
of the award. Based on contributions made
while the nominee was a resident of the
Unitedstates. Nominationsby December 1.
Education Award. For outstanding contributions to automatic control education in
any form. Nominations by December 1.
Industrial Electronics Conference
The 1987 annual international conference
of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society
(IES) is scheduled for November 2-6, 1987,
at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. IECON '87 will be arranged
in six topical conferences: Controls and Simulation, Small Computer Applications, Motor Controls and Power Electronics, Signal
Acquisition and Processing, Automated Design and Manufacturing, and Industrial Applications of Robotics and Vision. Each topical conference will consist of four technical
sessions of approximately seven papers each.
Both invited and contributed papers will appear in each session. The first three topical
conferences listed above will be on Tuesday
and Wednesday, and the last three will be
on Thursday and Friday. Tutorials will be
scheduled forMonday;three
tutorials are
planned. The keynote dinner will be
Wednesday at 6:OO p.m., and the keynote
speaker is Mr. John Jones, Executive Vice
President for Instrumentation and Automation Systems at Gould, Inc.
IECON '87 is being cosponsored with
SPIE, the Society of Photo-Optical Illumination Engineers. S P E has an annual conference on robotics that will be held at the
same time as IECON '87. Attendees at either
conference will be able to go to any of the
technical sessions given by either IES or
SPIE. IECON '87 is also being held in association with SICE, the Society of Instrumentation and Control Engineers of Japan.
For further information, contact the General
Chairman, Prof. Guy 0. Beale, Electrical
and Computer Engineering Dept., George
Mason University, 4400 University Drive,
Fairfax, VA 22030; phone: (703) 32343531
2302.
Probability for Winning Tennis
In the November 1986 issue of the Newsletter of the Professional TennisAssociation,
Alexander Dorato and PeterDorato presented the results of their system analysis for
the probability of playing winning tennis
based on the probability of winning an individual point. Peter Dorato is Chairman of
the Control Systems Society Technical Committee on Education and former SecretaryAdministrator of the Society. It is always
interesting to consider what happens when
people active in the Control Systems Society
apply their talents to other activities, as explained in the following narrative summary
taken from the tennis newsletter.
To understand the results of the analysis,
it is important to realize that the chances of
winning any given point during a match are
different from the chances of winning the
match. Ifyou could play John McEnroe
eitherone point or onematch, whichever
you had the greater chance of winning, you
would obviously choose to play one point.
You might get lucky on one point, but to get
lucky for a whole match would be almost
impossible. This study draws its results from
the relationship between the chances of winning points, games, and matches.
The most dramatic discovery was that a
small improvement in your game will translate into a large increase in your chances of
winning a match. To illustrate this point, let
us assume two players are of equal abilityeach has a 50 percent chance of winning any
given point. One player improves to where
he now has a 60 percent chance of winning
any given point. How will this small improvement affect his chances of winning their
matches? Surprisingly, that player went from
winning 50 percent of his matches to winning 99.9 percent of his matches! And that
is from an improvement of only one point in
10. By learning to play percentage tennis and
eliminating high-risk shots, you should be
able to make that small improvement.
Suppose your goal is to hold serve nine
out of every 10 times. What portion of your
'
to accomservice points do you need to v.'In
plish this? Believe it or not, it only takes
winning seven points out of every 10 times.
49
The mathematical probabilities derived
from the tennis scoring system demonstrate
that the cumulative effect of a slight edge
creates a large edge in the long run. That is
why the slightly better of two players will
almost always win in a match.
The mathematics required in obtaining the
probabilities presented here is based on the
theory of finite Markov chains. It is a rather
complicated theory, and its application to
tennis first appeared in a text by John C.
Kemeny and J. Laurie Snell, Finite Markov
Chains. Fortunately, it is not necessary to
understand the mathematics in order to benefit from its results.
We give a table that can be used to determine winning probabilities. Simply read
down a column to find the game, set, and
match probabilities given a certain point
probability.
Winning-Probability Table
Point
Game
Set
2-out-of-3
Set
Match
3-out-of-5
Set
Match
0.520
0.550
0.640
0.705
0.540
0.599
0.763
0.859
0.560
0.647
0.859
0.946
0.600
0.736
0.963
0.996
0.750
0.910 0.978
1.00
Alex Dorato is currently the Associate
Tennis Coach at Yale University. He played
varsity tennis 1978-1982 at the University
of New Mexico. He is also head tennis pro
at the Pine Orchard Yacht and Country Club
in Branford, Connecticut. and has been a
USPTA member since 1983. Dr. Peter Dorato is a Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering at the University of New Mexico. Although a late starter-he played his
first USTA tournament at 35-he is an avid
player and has been consistently ranked in
the senior divisions of the Southwest. He is
an expert in engineering systems analysis,
and this article, written with his son Alex,
is an application of this type of analysis to
the scoring system in tennis.
Social Implications of Technologv
Among IEEE societies, the IEEE Society
on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT)
is unusual in that its scope encompasses d l
areas covered by the IEEE. Every IEEE
member should consider joining. Perhaps the
best way to indicate what SSIT is all about
is to mention some of the issues that it has
50
been involved in. One category has to do
with the societal impact of specific technologies: the effects of automation on the lives
ofoffice workers, how computers can be
adapted for use by handicapped people, the
use of electronic devices to help relieve the
energy problem by facilitating time-varying
pricing. the controversy over nuclear power.
The public policy issues are considered that
span broad areas of engineering: risk assessment, star wars, environmental effects, government-imposed secrecy in engineering and
science.
Another important general area is that of
engineering ethics-the professional obligations of engineers-and how this is affected
by the conditions under which they work.
Here we consider not only the effects on society as a whole but effects on en,‘Olneers
themselves. Of particular interest are proposals for making it easier for employee engineers to operate as responsible professionals. SSIT presents its Award for Outstanding
Service in the Public Interest to engineers
who uphold ethical principles despite risks
to their careers.
SSIT provides a forum for the discussion
of these and other subjects in the pages of
its highly rated quarterly magazine, Technofogy and Socieg, and via sessions that it
organizes at various conferences and at its
annual meeting. Since many of the topics it
treats are of a controversial nature, differing
views are often presented. IEEE members
can join SSIT for the annual dues rate of
$12.00; the student rate is half that for regular members. Simply mail your check, payable to IEEE. along with your IEEE member
number, name, and address to: IEEE Service
Center. 445 Hoes Lane,P.O. Box 1331,
Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331.
ASME Energy Resources Awards
TheCool Water Coal Gasification Program in Daggett, California, and four other
projects won Energy Resources Technology
Awards in a new contest sponsored by
ASME’s Energy Resources Technical
Group. First announced last year, individuals and companies developing, applying, or
using designs, methods, techniques, or processes involving mechanical engineering in
energy resources technology were invited to
enter the contest. The technology used by an
entry had to be less than five years old. and
entries must contribute to the industrialization of the energy resources industry and to
the improvement of the U.S. position in the
wodd market for a product or service.
The first-place winner was the Cool Water
Coal Gasification Program in Daggett, California. The 100-MW, integrated, gasification, combined-cycle electric power plant has
been in commercial operation since June
1984 and was cited for firmly establishing
domestic coal as a source of clean, economical, and efficient energy for electric utilities
in the United States.
In the program, coal is used in a continuous process to produce steam for steam turbines and syngas for gas turbines, and both
produce electricity. The coal is ground and
mixedwith water to form a slurry that is
burned to produce syngas and heat. The heat
produces steam for the turbines and, after
cleaning, the syngas is burned to operate the
gas turbines.
The four other winning entries were the
Advanced Toroidal Facility at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory; the Biomass Gasification System at Southern Electric International; the Cascading-Bed Process for Retorting Oil Shale at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory; and the Zinc Ferrite
Hot Gas Desulfurization Process at Mogantown Energy Technology Center.
The Advanced Toroidal Facility at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory is a project of
Martin Marietta Energy System, Inc.’s, fusion energy division. Scheduled to begin operation thisyear. the facility will bethe
world’s largest stellarator experiment and
will be used to explore eventual commercial
applications of fusion power.
The Biomass Gasification System, located
in Quincy, Florida. is a project of Southern
Electric International. The plant converts
wood chips or wood waste to gaseous fuel.
The fuel is used by a major clay processing
and mining company.
Located in Livermore, California, and a
project of the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, the Cascading-Bed Process for
Retorting Oil Shale was cited for efficiently
separating oil from crushed oil shale in an
above-ground processing plant. This new
process uses the residual carbon char left in
the shale after separation to provide energy
for the system. Once the process is begun,
no additional fuel is required to provide energy for the separation process.
The Zinc Ferrite Hot Gas Desulfurization
Process is a program developed at the Department of Energy’s Mogantown Energy
Technology Center in Morgantown, West
Virginia, to desulfurize hot coalderived gas.
The process is regenerable and replaces wet
scrubbing currently used to control sulfur in
coal-based electric-generating facilities.
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Control Systems Mogozine