The flashing lights, cool sound effects and high-speed bouncing ball action have made pinball simulators a hugely popular genre of video game, not to mention big business for the software houses that develop them.
Alongside statisticians Opta, BBC Sport presents the statistical team of the World Cup group stages, with each player in the tournament rated on over 250 on-the-ball actions, including goals, assists and clean sheets.
For unfamiliar agents like self-propelled balls, further cues to goal-directedness may be required – such as evidence that the ball's actions are efficiently related to the goal.
She predicted in an interview with the Guardian that Balls's actions would lead to a "local tragedy and a national catastrophe" for child protection.
With that in mind the FA's expert panel are also working on devising research into the long-term effects of repeatedly heading the ball, the action that is thought to have led to Astle's premature death.
Singing, dancing, flirting, laughing, talking, drinking, watching the world go by and eating the galettes after which the moulin was known: Renoir's most famous painting is an absolute ball of action.
The wider costs of Balls's actions – the traumatic effect on safeguarding, helping trigger an unsustainable rise in the number of children referred to social services, most of them unnecessarily – is incalculable.
James Eadie QC, appearing for the government, defended Balls's actions to the appeal court, saying urgent action had to be taken following Ofsted's "ghastly findings" uncovering "dangerous" failings in Shoesmith's department that threatened local and national confidence in effective child protection.
Children looked longer at the first condition, and the authors concluded that infants perceive the small ball's action as goal-directed.
Hissing and sparking, it burned through a platform installed inside a repurposed Ikea bookshelf, sending four colored balls into action, lighting camp stoves, swinging fly swatters and knocking over books in a frenetic burst of organized chaos.
The judges said that although Balls's action had put the council "in a very difficult position" there was no urgent reason to have rushed to a decision to terminate her employment, a process the judges said was "tainted by unfairness".
