The Last Byte: Baseball and Testing

Abstract

If you are curious about the title, you may not be alone. When I was invited to give a keynote speech at the 2019 International Test Conference in Asia (ITC-Asia), I was helping my colleagues at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) establish the Center for Sport Science and Technology. So I thought, why not combine the two things that have shaped my entire life? The United States, which has a vision of “all children have the opportunity to be active through sports” and a policy of “sport for all, play for life,” is where baseball was born. And, of course, we all know it is where transistors and integrated circuits were invented. Therefore, there may be more people than we know who live in the two worlds simultaneously. I do. I played in the 1971 Little League World Series, and when I mentioned this once, Rob Aitken immediately disclosed that he also played Little League Baseball (LLB). Bill Lowd in the Steering Committee of ITC is also an administrator of LLB. Today, it is becoming clear that the two worlds have more to share than before.