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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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Absolutely ridiculous. If math is a sport then what isn't a sport. Fuck. The world has gone nuts.
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If curling is a sport, anything is possible.
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!
Well, if World Series Of Poker can be broacasted on ESPN, then I guess math is a sport.
Math should be a sport as much as 0 equals 1.
I would like to see a mathematical proof written to support the claim.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
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.
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I think the first thing they have to do if they're looking for respect and recognition is to stop calling themselves "mathletes".
Ew.
Jurisprudence Fetishist Gets Off On A Technicality --theonion.com
And in addition:
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Oh, my, Is my math degree showing?
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
In all real sports you can reasonable expect someone to get injured.
If someone isn't going to get hurt.. why bother!
Math:
The study of the measurement, properties, and relationships of quantities and sets, using numbers and symbols.
Sport:
An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively.
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
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!
Are pros surrounded by eager young women in every city? FAIL
Bob Costas can tell you more than everything you wanted to know about it? FAIL
Participants use performance-enhancing drugs? PASS
Therefore math is not a sport
0 does equal 1, for very small values of 1.
Math is not a sport. Problem solving could be considered to be similar to a sport. You don't actually train on Math; you learn Math, and you train on solving problems. And you can show your progress and fitness (and speed) on solving a particular class of problems. I did, and I won the Olimpíada Matemática Argentina in 1989 and I would have gone to the International Mathematics Olympiad, if only the stupid government of Raúl Alfonsín (Argentina's president at the time) hadn't leaked all the central bank's reserves into every politician's pocket.
Plus, these competitions are also very fun (for those who like Math).
Math is interesting, math is fun, math is usefull, but math is not a sport.
From WordNet (r) 2.0:
sport
n 1: an active diversion requiring physical exertion and
competition [syn: athletics]
First of all I want to point out how absolutely ridiculous this question is. It is merely an invitation to petty linguistic bickering over whether the word 'sport' is broad enough to cover mathematics competitions. There is no real substance to this issue and I expect to see a bunch of pointless posts referencing differnt dictionaries. This is doubly pointless because the dictionary could say a sport is a type of lettuce and it wouldn't make any difference, the public at large is going to continue to use sport to refer primarily to athletic events and not mathematical competitions. Regardless of how you can twist dictionary definitions for all prctical purposes the word sport (by usage) will continue to not include mathematical competitions.
There is however, a more important issue to be addressed. That is the inappropriate confusion of these math (or science) competitions with the actual subject itself. Now I realize that these competitions are run with the best intentions but in the long run they do a disservice to the communities they attempt to publisicise.
While it *should* be entierly irrelevant who is making an argument unfortunatly it often is not. So perhaps it will clear up confusion if I point out that I am a math grad student who has competed in many of these type events (I even was in the physics olympiad camp) and I have quite positive regard for both these subjects and the competitions. The competitions are certainly a fun way for students interested in these activities to interact, meet others, and engage competitively. I'm not advocating they cease existing or anything of the kind.
I am, however, deeply disturbed by the way these activities are presented. The math and physics olympiads (as well as numerous lesser high school competitions) are presented as representitives of actual math or science. While it might have some local benefit to get people excited about the competitive aspect of these competitions it will ultimately only hurt these communities if people confuse these rigged competitions with what mathematicians or scientists *really* do. Science and math *aren't* sports where people race to solve rigged problems and presenting them as such quite likely erodes public perception of their importance. The public might admire sports but when push comes to shove they will cut sports funding before other programs, we don't want them to consider math and science the same way. Even worse by emphasising only the competitive aspects and problem solving tricks of these disciplines many students who have slightly differnt interests are turned off. I don't have any evidence but it is quite possible that the mischarechterization of science/math as primarily competitive contributes to the underrepresentation of females in these fields.
Unfortunatly this confusion between the competitions and the actual subject is quite real. At least in the mathematical world performing well on the putnam or IMO will get one into grad school or college respectively. There seems to be a widespread, and false, belief that these competitions bear a significant resembelance to their subjects.
It is true that the putnam and IMO competitions do focus on proving various results and not on the brute calculations that unfortunatly comprise most of HS and undergrad mathematics education. However, solving cute little problems under time pressure is hardly an accurate description of mathematical enterprise. Many important fascets of mathematical investigation (developing new definitions/conceptual frameworks, collaboration etc..) are entierly absent and the competition favors quick studious thinkers who go through books of past competitions over deeper thinkers.
The physics competitions (which I have more personal knowledge of having been a finalist in the physics olympiad) are even worse. Physics is the search for *new* laws and rules about the universe (not necessarily fundamental...for instance laws about liquid flow) while the competitions merely measure application o
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Many people cite it as a "non-sport," but synchronized swimming is incredibly difficult, both athletically and otherwise. Here's a way for you to find out:
swim 60 meters underwater.
stay underwater 3 out of 5 minutes.
train in a pool 7 days a week in addition to a periodized weight regimen and plyometrics.
Those things are just auxiliary. As a prerequisite, you must to have incredible overall swimming skills, cardiovascular and muscular endurance, great strength, agility, balance, discipline and superbly-honed technique.
Yeah, but so is eating hotdogs and chasing monkeys while covered in tar. I'd say take anything from Japan with a grain of salt. :)
Step 1: Assume Math is a sport.
Step 2: If Math is a sport, all Math nerds are athletes.
Step 3: All atheletes are jocks (remember high school?).
Step 4: All jocks beat up math nerds (again, re: high school).
Conclusion: All Math nerds beat up math nerds.
But: I am a math nerd, and have never beaten anyone up (including myself or any another math nerd).
This is a contradiction.
Ergo, Math isn't a sport.
QED
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.
Even if there were a "natural brain" competition class, it would be more like the Special Olympics once most everyone else was augmented. I'd be thinking, "Look at those pathetic meat-brains! They can't even do simple calculus in under 1 millisecond like the X30-implant can! Haha. Amusing luddites."
(the steroid analogy doesn't really apply here because most people aren't on them themselves, but when athletes *DO* use stealthy enhancement drugs, and the latest in training/materials, it makes for a more interesting spectacle despite the 'cheating' hypocrisy. If most people were also physically improved cyborgs, that attitude would change, and it would the 'aided-human' class that got the spotlight.)
--
Power to the Peaceful
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."
The formalists thought it was a "game" -- which is to say a formal system interesting mainly because of the relations between various components in the system.
Unfortunately, that was only fun for a little while until Gödel's Incompleteness Proof successfully proved that not all truths of arithmetic could be proved using the rules of arithmetic. The result generalizes.
So the real question here is "Are all sports games?" If so, and it seems quite reasonable, then quite objectively the answer to "Is mathematics a sport?" is no. (Ok, so only if all games are formal systems...)
Calvinball does not count.
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.
No, it's not some kind of python coding competition. As it turns out, besides the ancient Olympic games there were three other large competitions: The Pythian Games at Delphi (Apollo); The Isthmian Games (Poisedon); and the Nemean Games (Zeus).
According to my tour guide in Delphi (I was recently there, really a very interesting site) the Pythian games were originally and primarily artistic in nature, with musical, dramatic, and poetic competitions, with athletic competitions added somewhat later. Delphi was the most important religious site in Greece, and Apollo was the god of reason and music, thus the emphasis on these subjects.
So in that respect, I think intellectual and creative competitions should very well be regarded as sports. Perhaps resurrecting the Pythian games (and perhaps the others as well) alongside the Olympics would be a good idea.
On a side note, the winners of the Pythian games were not the ones who excelled in a single subject, they were the people who did well in all subjects. Balance in all things was considered a key virtue by Apollo. It would be nice if that were true today.
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There are only three true sports Fishing, Mountain climbing and Car racing, the rest are merely games.
..........FULL STOP.
I nominate you to play defense.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
You can't divide by 0.
With an "I can't" attitude like that, you'll never succeed at this sport!
I don't doubt synchronized swimming requires a lot of strength, endurance, training and practise, and deserve international competitions of their own.
But they don't really seem to have the same goals as the other olympic sports; being first, the highest, furtherest, or the fastest (having been derived from ancient warfare from the Mediterranean).
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In order for something to qualify as a sport, there need to be accepted rules in place to determine who wins and loses, or what the participants' scores are. Math itself cannot be "won".
You can have math competitions, of course. These have rules. But the problem is that there is no accepted standard for how the competition actually works. Different mathematics competitions are very different, (oral vs. written, etc.) If you say math is a sport, there are many different kinds of event you might be considering.
Mathematics is an area of research. There may be competitions and prizes based on it, but that doesn't make it a sport. Such competitions are just separate games that involve math (or not games at all). You could invent a game that involved throwing rocks. Though the game you invented may be a sport, that doesn't make rocks a sport. (And no, if you name the game "Rocks" it doesn't change anything.)
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. :-)