1. An Analysis of Graphical Representations of Bowling
Allison Nelson
West Davidson High School, Lexington, NC
Summer Ventures in Science and Mathematics
Visual and Image Processing
Dr. Rahman Tashakkori, Mr. Jere Miles
Appalachian State University, NC
July 28, 2007

2. Introduction Objective: Methodology: To analyze paths of bowling balls
To model the balls’ paths
Methodology:
Utilization of ImageJ, Windows Movie Maker, Microsoft Office Excel, MATLAB, Microsoft Paint, and homepages/kennmelvin.
Video clips were broken down into frames and analyzed.

3. The History of Bowling About 3200 BC: Artifacts in boy’s tomb
Different Countries, Different Names
Italy: “Bocce Ball”
England: “Lawn Bowling”
Nine Pins  Ten Pins
Gamblers
Made illegal
Added one pin
Modern Bowling
End of 19th century
1936: Automatic Pinsetter: Gottfried Schmidt
TV Bowling: 1950’s

4. The Clips
Video clips of bowling were obtained from

5. Programs Used Windows Movie Maker Image J MATLAB
Separate videos into image frames
Image J
Delete everything but center pixel of the ball
Invert the image
MATLAB
Write a script to locate the center pixel
Microsoft Office Excel
Graph data and find the mathematical model

6. Results-Strike Ball
y = x x
R2 = 0.993
The ball followed a smooth second-order polynomial curved path. The equation above suggests that when the ball was released, the bowler intentionally put a spin on the ball to achieve the “hook” effect.

7. Results-Split Ball The initial coefficients of the
equation indicated that the ball
was initially thrown with just a
bit of spin, but this spin caused
it to deflect off the pins on impact.
y = x x
R2 =

8. Conclusions and Future Plans
The bowling ball must be thrown a precise way to achieve a strike.
Deviation=bad
Both balls hooked, strike ball hooked more
Need hook to strike consistently
Future Plans
Study speed of Balls
Investigate initial angle
Analyze more videos
Different scenarios (spares)

9. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people:
Dr. Tashakkori for giving me ideas and input, and writing the script I used in MATLAB
Mr. Miles for giving me pointers on the art of research writing
Ryan Belt for helping me with the technical stuff… 
Ben Bucior, Ryan Belt and Kyle Rhash for (trying) to write a macro for ImageJ for me. Thanks for helping!
My parents for coming to listen to me