Nester

Have you looked at the general design of a chess engine? Typically, they evaluate things such as control of the center, pawn structure, and piece value. I'm not a chess expert by any means, but it seems that high "mobility" could be either good or bad, depending on context: being mobile because of a vigorous offense is different than being mobile because you are constantly closing holes in your defense. That said, for any metric, the key would be to calculate its predictive power over a wide variety of games: you might have found something that, while not immediately obvious to those who know chess, nevertheless has value in evaluating a chess position (I'm thinking here of the cosine metric, whose use in evaluating the similarity of texts is decidedly non-intuitive. Is there a database of completed chess games you could analyze to see how your metric fares in different situations?

Economist here... Econometrics is the study of mathematical models of the economy: in my experience, it isn't something you study apart from economics, since you need to know the theory to understand the models. In the United States, an undergrad econ major typically has a one year econometric sequence, mainly linear regression with some time series. In grad school, you typically read journal articles that use econometric models to model aspects of the economy: these are much more sophisticated, such as the ARCH model for estimating market volatility. However, grad school allows other specializations, such as experimental economics, or game theory. If you just want the math without the theory, then perhaps an applied math major, with a minor in economics (so you can pick up the specific models) would work. Nester

I have a spring-mass system set up, and I'm trying to plot its position over time. I bought a Ping))) ultrasound sensor, and I have it wired to my Arduino so that it detects the position of the bottom of the mass. My idea was to pull the mass down, then release it and have the sensor capture the oscillations over time. However, the problem I'm finding is that the mass doesn't just oscillate neatly up and down: it bounces around in all directions, so it's hard to get a consistent reading without a lot of "noise". Does anyone have any ideas for an apparatus I can use to make sure the mass oscillates vertically, without affecting its natural frequency (i.e. not slowing it down)? I'm thinking along the lines of a hollow cylinder that I can snap around my stand, with a bar to attach to the mass, so that the mass moves up and down in time with the cylinder. I'm not sure if that's available, or if I'd have to build it (and if I do, then how to keep the friction between the cylinder and the stand as low as possible). Thanks, Nester