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FLASH Decisions & Fastballs: STEM, Sports, and Smarter Thinking with Dr. Ricardo Valerdi
10 Plays15 days ago
In this episode of The Profectory Podcast - Mastering the Mind and Market, we dive into the story behind the story with Dr. Ricardo Valerdi — professor, engineer, and founder of the groundbreaking nonprofit Science of Sport. What started as a small baseball statistics camp for middle schoolers in Tucson has grown into a national movement partnering with over a third of Major League Baseball, the NFL, NBA, and more.
Ricardo shares how the intersection of STEM, sports, and systems thinking can inspire the next generation to love math and science. He also teases his upcoming book, The Five Tools for Great Decision Makers, a story-driven, actionable framework (acronym: FLASH) designed to help anyone—from students to CEOs—make better decisions in today’s data-driven world.
Tune in for powerful insights on numeracy, decision-making, career advice, and how big trends like esports, AI, and analytics are shaping the future of education and innovation.
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Transcript
Profectory Podcast Overview
00:00:04
Speaker
The Profectory Podcast, Mastering the Mind and Market. Hosted by Manny Turan, we explore what it takes to succeed both in business and within yourself.
00:00:15
Speaker
From a strategy and business growth to mindset and resilience, we provide the tools to lead with clarity, confidence, and wisdom.
Introduction to Dr. Ricardo Valerde
00:00:31
Speaker
Today we have a little bit of an atypical guest. ah Dr. Ricardo Valerde is a university professor and did also spend time in industry. He is department head.
00:00:42
Speaker
He's got so many accolades, I'd spend 10 minutes just reading them off. But today's conversation has to do with something that he started called the science of sport. Welcome to the show, Ricardo.
00:00:53
Speaker
Thank you. Great to be here. Yeah, so we've known other for a number of years and I kind of remember around the time where you decided to to make this a go. So give us a bit of the background, give us paint us a picture of how that all kind of occurred with the science of sport and tell us what it is also.
00:01:10
Speaker
Absolutely. Science of Sport is a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring kids to look at STEM in a more interesting and interactive way through sports.
00:01:25
Speaker
So we bring math and science to life through sports is our tagline.
Inspiration Behind Science of Sport
00:01:31
Speaker
I would probably need to rewind back to when I lived in Boston and I was a big and a big Red Sox fan.
00:01:42
Speaker
ah When I moved there initially about 20 years ago, they had just broken the curse of the Bambino. So if if you're familiar with baseball lore, that's when the Red Sox had gone on that journey.
00:01:56
Speaker
Eight decade drought of not being able to win the World Series. Right. And it was credited to the Red Sox making a terrible trade of Babe Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees.
00:02:09
Speaker
Greatest player of all time, even at today's standards. And what happened about 20 years ago is the Red Sox finally won a World Series and they broke one of baseball's curses, which is a massive thing.
00:02:23
Speaker
um And ah that that's sort of and Boston is just a big sports town anyway, with the Patriots and and the Celtics and the Bruins. So what that really translated to for me is a great example of passionate fan bases.
00:02:40
Speaker
Right. And what it does in terms of how they see the world. And around that time, the book Muddy Ball was published. Right. And Michael Lewis wrote the story about the Oakland Athletics in the early 2000s and how they were basically more efficient as a business because they were winning this as much as the New York Yankees, but at a much lower payroll.
00:03:08
Speaker
Right. right So it was like this business efficiency of wins per million dollar. And Moneyball was also a great way to tell the story about how baseball is a great way to understand statistics.
00:03:25
Speaker
That's what sang to me. So put those two ingredients together, the Red Sox breaking the curse of the Bambino, Moneyball coming out around the same time. And I'm moving to Tucson around that same time as well.
00:03:41
Speaker
And guess what? The University of Arizona baseball team wins the College World Series in 2012. Perfect storm. It's just everything is beautiful.
00:03:52
Speaker
and And if you
Collaboration and Expansion of Science of Sport
00:03:53
Speaker
know anything about ah Major League Baseball and its relationship with the state of Arizona, we host spring training here for half of the teams. So we have the Cactus League here in Arizona.
00:04:05
Speaker
The Citrus League is in Florida. So that also tells you a lot about the interest and the attention that baseball has in a state like Arizona because you can play year round.
00:04:17
Speaker
You put all those things together and and me coming at it from an engineering perspective and always looking for ideas on how to relate engineering to the real world.
00:04:31
Speaker
I just thought to myself, wouldn't it be fun to teach kids how to read the back of a baseball card? Right. larry That's it. that's Yeah, that's something that is, you know, as you hear the stats and, you know, especially in baseball and and now other sports.
00:04:49
Speaker
you know Now we're seeing like the NFL is making more decisions based on statistics and all of that. you know Your background is in systems and in just and industrial engineering. And so that's not a ah ah typical run-of-the-mill degree from, the we'll say, the the big four, the big three, electrical, mechanical, civil, and maybe mining. So tell us what that is all about.
00:05:13
Speaker
Absolutely. I actually got my undergrad in electrical engineering and worked for a few years ah for a wireless communications company, Motorola.
Innovative Educational Tools
00:05:23
Speaker
And interestingly, when I started my job at Motorola, they handed me my box of business cards.
00:05:30
Speaker
And on the business card, it said right underneath my name, my title was systems engineer. That was very confusing. I didn't know why they had done i thought maybe it was a typo. So I went over to my boss and said, hey, ah can you help me understand why that's my title? I thought I was a wireless communications engineer.
00:05:53
Speaker
And he went on to explain about The role that I'm playing in building a solution for a client, in this case, public safety, was the market that we were ah providing solutions for.
00:06:07
Speaker
And the idea was not just to sell them radios or woppy-talkies, but the idea was to sell them solutions. And then I understood what he meant by systems engineer. And of course, then I read some books, took some classes, got a master's degree, you got a PhD, and it sort of went on from there.
00:06:27
Speaker
ah But I quickly understood that if you have a background in in almost any engineering field, and then you take that expertise and you apply it to bigger problems, you're already talking about systems right right away.
00:06:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I can attest to that. I myself am a mechanical engineer. um my ah partner, Adam Hartung, is an electrical engineer and we're doing this now. We're in the business domain. yeah So I can see, I can draw the line in my head between yourre ah that perfect ah fertile ground you mentioned when you came to Tucson, you had all these things coming together. You wanted to teach kids about how to read out the back of a baseball card.
00:07:07
Speaker
And then you couple that with your problem solving skills in the systems world and boom. So give us an idea of how that pen to paper, how it actually happened, how you made the decision.
00:07:19
Speaker
and like, what does that, that initial piece look like?
00:07:26
Speaker
The problem I was trying to solve with the Science of Baseball program was to motivate kids who were either told that they weren't good at math or they were just disinterested because they're tired of hearing, you know, Johnny has five apples and Susie has six oranges and Peter has, you know, it's like, okay, come on, ah make it make it real.
00:07:50
Speaker
And there's a middle school right across the street from the University of Arizona, Mansfield Middle School. I'm sure you've driven by it. um Yeah, my kid went there.
00:08:01
Speaker
yeah Okay. So you have picked up there many times. and And I walked across the street. to that middle school and
Dr. Valerde's Book and Future Vision
00:08:10
Speaker
i I talked to the principal and I asked him whether he could identify middle school students that might be interested in a baseball statistics camp.
00:08:22
Speaker
And he said, absolutely, how many kids can I send? Say, well, how about we just start with 20 just to start small. And that's I sort of realized, OK, got to put something together.
00:08:36
Speaker
It's not just going to be about baseball cards anymore. But what else can we use baseball for? Geometry. physics, biomechanics, aerodynamics.
00:08:48
Speaker
I mean, it just goes on and on. Right. And that just caused us to think about what are the various expertise that exist at the University of Arizona. I started calling my friends at the medical school, in the math department, in the physics department, and they helped me put together a camp for these 20 kids in the middle school. And that was back in 2012. Right.
00:09:12
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. So like I can imagine those kids were, um, their minds were blown away. I mean, illuminated. There's so many eight things in, in sport that, you know, being an engineer, or recognize all those things you mentioned.
00:09:26
Speaker
And then, then you layer on top of that, the money side, you layer on top of that, the social media, the, mean, there's a, there's a whole thing there. So that was in 2012. We're now
00:09:39
Speaker
And how are what's happening now? what what's the What's the line, the progression that got you from there until now?
00:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, there was this tipping point about a six months or or a year later. Remember I mentioned the U of A baseball team won the College World Series in 2012. That was the same year I did the camp with the middle school.
00:10:04
Speaker
And I invited Coach Andy Lopez to be a speaker at the camp. And I sat in the back of the room, Andy Lopez gave a very inspiring talk about the importance of education and the need to focus on education before you thought about being a college athlete.
00:10:27
Speaker
And I remember the example he gave was when you're At school, you want to be the best student possible. But when you're inside of the foul lines, you want to be the best baseball player possible.
00:10:43
Speaker
And you see kids, these middle school kids, their light bulbs are going off. And I'm experiencing this too. And I'm looking around and saying, I think we've got something here. Baseball can be that vehicle.
00:10:55
Speaker
The Moneyball book is good evidence, but how do we translate this into something actionable? And somebody recommended that we meet with the Arizona Diamondbacks and share with them the idea that, that we're, that we were implementing in Tucson.
00:11:20
Speaker
And lo and behold, six months later, we have a partnership with the Diamondbacks and they want us to roll out this program statewide.
00:11:33
Speaker
And, and at that point I felt like the, the dog that caught the car, um, I thought, what have I gotten myself into here?
00:11:47
Speaker
ah and And fast forward to today, we we work with over a third of Major League Baseball. We work with NFL teams, NBA teams, Major League Soccer.
00:12:02
Speaker
It's massive. It's exploded into a concept that is applicable across multiple sports, across multiple grade levels, and it's gone nationwide. that's that's ah That's amazing. So you're who is your end customer? Because in in a way, you're your customer is the student, right? But who's actually engaging with the curriculum? Who's engaging with your team? And what and what does that look like?
00:12:30
Speaker
Yeah, I like to think of it as a as a trio of things that come together. that One leg of that is the schools.
00:12:42
Speaker
They have a need for innovative curriculum. They have a need for improving their the math scores or the science scores of their students. The other part of that triangle is the professional baseball teams or professional sports teams.
00:12:58
Speaker
Their interest is in growing their fan base and and improving the community and getting their brand out there. And then the the third part of that triangle is us.
00:13:12
Speaker
We are the service provider that bring those two worlds together. We provide something that the schools need and want, and we provide something that the professional sports teams see as a really impactful way to serve the community.
00:13:28
Speaker
And oh the combination of those things, we integrate them into a solution that ultimately serves the student. ah But the ah
Advice to Younger Self
00:13:39
Speaker
to have the three players at the table is what makes the magic happen.
00:13:42
Speaker
No, I can see that. One of our biggest things we have to talk about is trends. And, um you know, these are big megga megatrends or metatrends are sometimes called things like AI, the gig economy, demographics, climate change.
00:13:57
Speaker
um And among those, maybe not the top six, but maybe the upper 50, you have the idea of e-sports and how they're taking off and how they're challenging and giving the traditional sports domain a run for the money.
00:14:12
Speaker
So how do you see what you're doing impacting that framework?
00:14:18
Speaker
We've thought about that a lot. And there actually happens to be a very clean connection between what we do, which is the traditional um after school sports program or the little league or the rec league and e-sports. And the two connections are Madden and NBA If you think about it, those are not the most popular video games, but they do have tournaments. They do have a huge following.
00:14:51
Speaker
And you can think about the connection, very clear connection between understanding the science of football and then competing in a Madden football game. or Madden football, e-sports tournament.
00:15:04
Speaker
You can think about ah the probability and all the statistical um interesting dimensions of basketball and then playing NBA two k And I think ah those two are probably the most logical connections.
00:15:23
Speaker
Even beyond that though, take any other game. Like I see my kids play Fortnite, for instance. and And there's a ton of statistics in Fortnite. There's a ton of strategy. There's a ton of things to measure, a lot of things to understand ah that I think you could probably create a similar curriculum around Fortnite.
00:15:47
Speaker
if you wanted to. Interesting. Now, you're obviously a professor, a distinguished professor the University of Arizona. What is, and you and sort of invented this under that umbrella to some degree, right? So is this university property or, I mean, i know Tech Launch Arizona because I used to be on the board, so I know that there's that.
00:16:09
Speaker
What's the relationship between science and sport, Tech Launch Arizona, and we'll say the world at large?
00:16:20
Speaker
One of the advantages of being a faculty member at a research university is there are units like Tech Launch that help you commercialize your idea. So ah shortly after we formed the partnership with Arizona Diamondbacks a decade ago,
00:16:38
Speaker
I went to David Allen, who was the director of Tech Lunch at the time, and I said, hey, David, I have this idea to form a company to provide educational services to school districts around the country around this concept of STEM and sports.
00:16:54
Speaker
And David kind of looked at me funny. He said, did you say nonprofit? um Yeah. Yeah. ah Interesting, what is do you have a patent or a trade secret?
00:17:08
Speaker
No, we don't. So it wasn't a traditional invention out of a laboratory ah in the College of Engineering. It was a service and it was a curriculum.
00:17:20
Speaker
And so we figured out with David's help, how to structure the curriculum in a way that it could be considered intellectual property. And since it was developed by me at the University of Arizona,
00:17:34
Speaker
The IP for the science of baseball curriculum is actually owned by U of A. Okay. Now, does that give you advantages or disadvantages or what does that do for your for your outreach?
00:17:49
Speaker
I think it's a huge advantage because it gives credibility out of the gate. It's affiliated with an educational institution. The U of A has a brand, not only in baseball, but in other sports.
00:18:06
Speaker
But it also gave me access to the alumni network. And let me tell you a quick example of that, which is the the very next customer after the Arizona Diamondbacks was the Anaheim Angels. Yeah.
00:18:25
Speaker
And the reason that relationship was created is because the owner and the president of the team are University of Arizona alums.
00:18:36
Speaker
Right. Artie Moreno, Dennis Kuhl. I contacted them about what I was doing in Arizona. And immediately they said, let's do this in Anaheim.
00:18:47
Speaker
Rock and roll. Bear down. Let's go. Nice. Nice. Yeah, I can see that. And you know, Ricardo, I know you and you're not going to just um wait or kind of just status quo this thing. So what's happening? What are you working on that we can look forward to down the road? And and how does that look with...
00:19:09
Speaker
Everything happening in the world. I mean, obviously sports have their own kind of world, um but mentioned earlier the the slight decline in some ways of some of the sports, the they increase, exponential increase in e-sports.
00:19:24
Speaker
I mean, you have this whole framework happening and you have, I mean, I know you, and you're not just going to settle for, give me more of the same. What's what's happening that's different? Okay.
00:19:36
Speaker
and um If you're familiar with Simon Sinek's Start With Why. Yep. I've continuously been asking myself that question.
00:19:48
Speaker
Why would we want to educate people to be better data scientists or sports analysts? And I think the answer to that question is because we want them to make better decisions.
00:20:03
Speaker
got And we want to promote numeracy, which is the analog to literacy. Numeracy is the ability to make decisions with data. i So let's unpack that a little bit.
00:20:16
Speaker
If I, ultimately my goal as an educator and as an engineer is to help young minds be better at making decisions, then where that put me, Manny, was I need to write a book about decision-making.
00:20:31
Speaker
and Okay. And and that thats that's what I'm working on now. Oh. So, yeah, that was that's a perfect segue. I was going to shift gears slightly away from what the yeah your involvement in the science of sport and kind of talk about your research.
00:20:48
Speaker
And let's start off with ah with that. tell tell us a little bit more about that question. that book because it sounds very interesting. Especially by the way, under the backdrop of all this AI stuff happening.
00:21:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. and but What's interesting is the my experience in in sports analytics and in using sports as a way to educate has heavily influenced how this book is structured. And I'll tell you the most obvious connection ah in baseball. There's this thing called the five tool player and every and every college, high school, college, minor league pro player gets evaluated on five tools, which is hitting for average, hitting for power, running, fielding, and throwing.
00:21:41
Speaker
Okay. And so there's this whole scorecard that's used for each of those five dimensions. And I thought to myself, I wonder if in decision-making or decision-makers have five tools that they need to be good at as well.
00:21:57
Speaker
And that's kind of where I landed with the book. I identified five tools that are important for decision makers, heavily influenced by baseball, of course.
00:22:07
Speaker
But then it departs from sports and it talks about how how are these tools? relevant how How are they derived from important decisions that are made in business, in the military and education and sports?
00:22:22
Speaker
ah and And ultimately what I landed on for the book title, working title, is the five tools for great decision makers. and Wow. So you're saying that these are, are um they could be used in any domain, business, um everyday life, or is it more targeted towards a particular domain?
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah. ah They can be broadly applicable to what am I going to make for dinner tonight? To should I take this job offer that's in front of me?
00:22:58
Speaker
To should I make or buy a certain solution? ah They are very broadly applicable. Decision making is everywhere. So there's a lot of of um things out there right now.
00:23:12
Speaker
ah Some words are... They call them hacking, you know, like when Tim Ferriss came out with the four-hour work week. There's Atomic Habits. There's the work up at the other Arizona school by ah by a guy named Dr. Cialdini, Influence.
00:23:29
Speaker
So there's all these tools that are that are actually culminating, right? Do you see this book as as one of those tools as well?
00:23:38
Speaker
Absolutely. And you can already tell that my wish was to make... the concepts from the book very accessible. So I almost imagine like I was writing to a elementary or middle school audience.
00:23:55
Speaker
so that it was crystal clear what needed to be done to be a good decision maker or great decision maker. And my hope is that people who read books about decision making, I mean, there's the classic ah thinking fast and slow by Kahneman, the former Nobel laureate in economics.
00:24:15
Speaker
That's, I think, the number one seller in the decision making category. So my wish is people who read that book, they would want to read my book next because it gives them some tangible advice and some stories from sports.
00:24:31
Speaker
And sports is a great teacher for decision making because you know very quickly whether you're doing well or not. um And that's my wish is that if you have thinking fast and slow on your bookshelf, that ah five tools for great decision makers will be right next to it.
00:24:49
Speaker
And were these these ah tools you came up with, obviously your academic and your commercial background both are part of this, your sports background. um Are these these particular tools derived from looking at at case studies of people making decisions or is it derived from the ground up or from divination and crystal ball? Like where'd you come up with these five?
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, so I had to ignore Everything I learned about writing academic papers and technical ah manuals and everything that engineers do, I had to kind of put that aside.
00:25:34
Speaker
And I had to learn how to approach, because I want this to be a broadly you know applicable book. So i'm I'm not saying that you're going to see it at an airport bookstore, but like it's kind of that that's kind of the goal.
00:25:51
Speaker
um for it to be of that that type of business books. and And so the idea was to write stories. And there were so many great stories about sports, and ah college from college sports to pro sports that are really good teachers about decision making. So it was it was more like tell a story about an event that occurred, describe how it played out and reflect on what is the crucial element that was a key part of making that decision.
00:26:26
Speaker
Okay. And you don't have to answer this because I know you're in the middle of writing the book. do you Can you enumerate the five so we have an idea of what what the framework looks like? Yes, absolutely. So I'm sure I can remember because I've been looking at it so much recently.
00:26:43
Speaker
So I actually came up with an acronym, FLASH, F-L-A-S-H.
00:26:53
Speaker
The F, the first tool is F, which is first ask questions. And that involves figuring out, well, what is the decision that needs to be made? Who's making the decision?
00:27:08
Speaker
What kind of data do we have to support the analysis? How are we going to analyze that data to support the decision? So on you can think of many, many questions that would be necessary to ah begin to understand what what is in and out of scope.
00:27:25
Speaker
The L in Flash is look at the data. And I talk about all sorts of techniques that help with not just slicing data and aggregating data, but also the statistical tests that tell you one thing or might tell you another.
00:27:44
Speaker
um There's a lot of really cool examples from baseball, actually, ah that that point to potential um mistakes or biases that can be made along the way.
00:27:57
Speaker
yeah The A, the third tool, is analyze the consequences. So think of unintended consequences, think of intended consequences, think of second order effects, these the sort of gaming um simulation that you need to do ah to understand what the implication of your decision is.
00:28:21
Speaker
The S, the fourth tool, is scrutinize the options. it So you can think of all sorts of ah sort of techniques like being devil's advocate or try to figure out why you might be wrong and looking at things from different perspectives to stress test the decision.
00:28:41
Speaker
And finally, the H in flange is humanize it. get And the best way to describe that is remembering that in the world of artificial intelligence, ah those are decision aids, but at the end of the day, it's human beings leveraging AI to make decisions.
00:29:05
Speaker
The AI is not going to make the decision for us, but it's knowing how to leverage the power of AI to support a decision. Wow. that's Those are very compelling. I think...
00:29:18
Speaker
the, uh, the flash acronym really brings it home. And, uh, you know, we talk a lot. Another, one of the things we talk about is bias and how bias is really, just super important to understand that it's there, figure out ways to mitigate it So I'm really excited to to get a ah hold of your book. When's it going to come out? do you have ah an idea?
00:29:40
Speaker
ah Yeah, I hope that next year ah it will come out. I've written about three quarters of it. um And hopefully you'll invite me back ah to the podcast once the book is published and we can talk about the stories and talk about ah the experience of talking to people about how Flash applies to their industry or their problem area.
00:30:06
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. love to have you back. I think ah the idea is trends, bias, scenario planning. ah you know Some of these are the tenants that we we talk about.
00:30:18
Speaker
And a lot of that is data-driven. There's this big idea of follow your gut. And you're, you know, gut this, gut that. And there's nothing wrong with that to some degree.
00:30:29
Speaker
But if you have data in front of you, why not follow the data? um And, you know, there's many decisions I've made where I've gone against my gut. And I'm glad I have because I was leveraging data.
00:30:41
Speaker
um And there's other times when I have actually just leveraged my gut. So appreciate the opportunity, Ricardo. Any final thoughts? Actually, I have one more question. I almost forgot.
00:30:53
Speaker
If you were to have a magic telephone and you could call yourself when you were 24 or 23 years old and tell yourself some bit of advice about the next 25 whatever years, what would that be?
00:31:13
Speaker
I would probably tell myself, to relax a little bit about career planning and what the future looks like, because what's more important is yeah crushing the current thing that you're working on, keeping the main thing, the main thing, because people are watching there.
00:31:38
Speaker
They're observing what you're doing, how you're navigating, uh, the problem, how you're solving the problem, how you're interacting with people. And that's so much more important than worrying about where do you want to be in five years?
00:31:53
Speaker
ah That that exercise is, is interesting, but it's not critical. It's not the most important thing. So my message to myself would be relax, focus on the main thing, do it well.
00:32:08
Speaker
And that's going to open doors. Wow, that's really good advice. Good advice. I know we have kids about the same age and I'll definitely let them know that, that you know those are very, very good words.
00:32:21
Speaker
Thanks again for your time, Ricardo. We'll have you back when you get your book out. And with that, make it a great rest of the year. Talk to you Thank so much. Cheers.