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Is Math A Sport?
theodp writes "The close of the International Mathematical Olympiad prompts Slate to question if math is a sport, wondering if mathletes might someday compete in the Olympics alongside track stars and basketball players."
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nt
Vandemar.org
Absolutely ridiculous. If math is a sport then what isn't a sport. Fuck. The world has gone nuts.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
No question about it -- they are.
Here are some traits of a sport:
(1) It's something that you can train for -- and, with training, improve in
(2) It's something in which your progress and fitness and skill/talent can be measured
(3) It's something in which some people are just naturally gifted and others can achieve at a level commensurate with their effort -- to a point. At some higher levels of mathematics, though -- just like at some levels of athletics (e.g. the Tour de France, the Olympics), no amount of training can overcome a genetic deficiency.
Most of all, both (mathematics & sports) are fun!
Why is it that smart folks can't be happy with simply being smart? Math is obviously not a sport, nor is it a competition. Compete at math? Huh? What does competition add to the struggle? (mumbles something about never reading slashdot again...)
It's an art.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Just about every word in the english language has multiple definitions. You know, when you look in the dictionary and there are numbers 1,2,3, etc. Lets' take a look at one in the OED.
I. 1. a. Pleasant pastime; entertainment or amusement; recreation, diversion.
If you use that one, then yes, math can be a sport for some people.
d. Participation in games or exercises, esp. those of an athletic character or pursued in the open air; such games or amusements collectively.
That one depends on how you do the math.
c. spec. Pastime afforded by the endeavour to take or kill wild animals, game, or fish. Freq. with adjs. referring to the result achieved.
no, math is not a sport. Unless you can make a funny joke about how doing math kills wild animals. See replies to this post for witty comments.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
You are missing one of the main criteria for sports. You have to be able to stop someone else from scoring or getting what they want. In all games, there is a defense for the offense. What can you defensivly do to stop someone in math?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
No.
If Stephen Hawking can do it, it's not a sport.
Geeks (like me) need to get over their inferiority complex (which I did). Intellectual pursuits are not more or less worthy than physical ones...they're just different.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Maths is not a sport.
If it were, then why not Physics? or Chemistry? or Biology? or History? or Latin?
I suspect people who want maths to be a sport are those who are good at multiplication tables and think they deserve recognition for it, but are too crap to actually do any proper mathematical research.
People ask this kind of question about all sorts of things, as though there is some kind of natural law that dictates what is or isn't a sport (or game, or whatever we're arguing about today). Alas, "sport" isn't some natural feature of the structure of the universe, it's a word that's reasonably useful in communicating an ill-defined concept. Asking questions about the precise boundaries of an ill-defined word is pointless.
Fortunately, nothing depends on it! Nobody's all that confused about which features math shares with track and field (sweating, no; competition, yes). And if the organizers of the Olympics declared that math (or poker, or cooking) would be admitted if it were a sport, the right step would not be to try to determine whether or not it's a sport. The right step would be to find out exactly what the organizing committee meant by "sport." After some run-around, we would find out they didn't have anything in mind, and were just speaking loosely in the hope that it wouldn't cause any problems.
The philosopher Bernard Suits defines a sport as a game that meets the following four criteria: "(1) that the game be a game of skill; (2) that the skill be physical; (3) that the game have a wide following; and (4) that the following achieve a certain level of stability." .1 or .2 seconds. That is one of the primary physical requirement, if you are too slow, no amount of mental skill can help you. So if everybody is running a 4.5s 40m, what makes one much better than another? The mental part, reading defenses, knowing their route against a given defense, running precise routes. The game is physical, the difference maker is mental.
"Maybe one should take 2) to mean "at least one of the skills relevant to the game is physical."
I think that falls short of the definition of sports, it should be the skills are primarily physical. Which includes things such as ballroom dancing, figure skating, but rules out math, bridge, or just adding a short running component to solving math problems.
Boxing columnist R. Michael Onello says "boxing is 70 percent mental"
I disagree with this, the difference between Boxer A and Boxer B can be 70% mental, but that doesn't mean the sport is 70% mental. Once you push the human body to its physical limits (which all top athletes do) the difference from athlete to athlete is mostly mental.
For example if you look at 40m times for football wide receivers there isn't much differece, like
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
" Compete at math? Huh? What does competition add to the struggle?"
A demonstration of one's capabilities that some aspire to reach?
"Derp de derp."
I clicked the biology one. it's about sitting exams. so didn't bother with the others. sitting exams is not a sport. even if it's a competition, that doesn't make it a sport, it makes it a competition.
Nobody is claiming that poker is a sport, either. Which is where your logic fails - you equate "broadcast on ESPN" with "sport". Granted, ESPN is mainly about sports, but it also broadcasts other competitive activities that are questionable as "sports". Poker is by far the one furthest from athletic competition. But if you ask anyone on ESPN if poker is a "sport", you can bet the answer will be "no".
Neither poker nor math are sports. Of course, the difference between poker and math is that poker can be fun to watch.
Isn't it amazing what you can prove using clever divisions of zero?
I can just imagine the announcers at the typical annual world math competition in, say, the topological manifolds event. "And there's the final buzzer, Bob, and as usual -- NOTHING HAPPENED! The greatest topologists in the world went at it for 60 minutes and NONE OF THEM HAD A SINGLE INSIGHT!"
And my opinion is similar to 3llia's.
From 3llia's post:
ere are some traits of a sport:
(1) It's something that you can train for -- and, with training, improve in
(2) It's something in which your progress and fitness and skill/talent can be measured
(3) It's something in which some people are just naturally gifted and others can achieve at a level commensurate with their effort -- to a point. At some higher levels of mathematics, though -- just like at some levels of athletics (e.g. the Tour de France, the Olympics), no amount of training can overcome a genetic deficiency.
Most of all, both (mathematics & sports) are fun!
By that criteria, should needlepoint knitting be considered a sport? How about cooking? Airplane piloting? Writing?
A lot of activities fit that criteria, most of them are not considered sport.
No sig
My math degree says:
Absolutely no. There is no way in hell math could possibly be considered a sport. Is this question some kind of joke?
You're only half-right. Expanding won't help, as his argument is that the terms rearrange to form the other series, which is 'almost' correct.
The problem, as already pointed out, is rearranging. In this case it's done by playing with differences of divergent subseries - and that's the fallacy in his argument. Thus, while x1=x2/2 is correct (true for any finite subsum), x1=x2 is not (where x1 is the {1/(2k+1)-1/(2k+2)} sum, x2 is the {1/(2k+1)-1/(4k+2)-1/(4k+4)} one)
I was on the Math Team in high school ... and I was Team Captain my senior year. That year, I came to the conclusion that since Math Team got the same letter jacket patches as the athletic activities, and since we were representing our team competitively against other schools just like the athletic teams, we should get the same "benefits" as the athletic teams. The first benefit we asked for - we needed to have cheerleaders.
Request was denied. :-(
We decided not to ask for the pep rally. :-)