Should math and academic subjects be treated as a sport?

[Le Jacquelope]

I think they should be counted as such.

An overwhelming level of attention and money is spent on athletics. If the human race is to evolve intellectually as much as we have athletically, we need to start putting academics on the same level as sports.

Academic extremism is never endorsed by the private sector (but it is heavily endorsed by Communist regimes worldwide). The US is in danger of falling far behind in this area, as evidenced by the fact that students from Communist public schools consistently whip the crap out of students from American public schools, in all academic areas, ranging from literacy to science. The only reason the US stays ahead is that it is the great global brain drain of other nations. Once that ends, we will quickly fall behind.

My solution to this problem is to encourage Mathletics, and other academic sports, as an official government program, until private interests / sponsors can take up the slack, at which time the public programs would phase out. Academic athletes would get paid the big bucks to perform well, and the immediate taxpayer payoff would be their increased contribution to society in the form of, among other things, our technological superiority and general ability to innovate.

You can't say this is hogwash - the Chinese are doing it right this minute, and they've gone from a 3rd world nation to putting a man in space. They're catching up, and we're asleep at the wheel.

Foreign Governments fanatically funding science and academic excellence will technologically pass by America. It is an inevitable fact, unless we do the same.

Is Math a Sport?http://slate.msn.com/id/2103903/

And what about target shooting, Skee-Ball, and standing on one foot?
By Jordan Ellenberg
Posted Thursday, July 15, 2004, at 2:20 PM PT

Last week, the first contingent of U.S. Olympians arrived in Athens. The five men and one woman, survivors of a merciless selection process, stood ready to test themselves against the strongest competitors in the world.

Sunday, they go home.

Their competition, the International Mathematical Olympiad, is already over. The math Olympiad may not attract a worldwide broadcast audience or demand traffic-jamming last-minute infrastructure fixes like the Olympic Games per se. But it's a contest as rigorous and rarefied as anything you'll see on NBC this August. Could mathletes someday compete alongside track stars and basketball players under the aegis of the five rings?

The question isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. To many people, competitive math is just another sport. In my high school you could letter in it. ESPN broadcasts MATHCOUNTS, a national math contest for middle-school students. In Count Down, his gripping and definitive account of the 2001 IMO, Steve Olson writes that the American team attacks math problems "with the fervor and single-mindedness of world-class athletes." Not that you'd mistake these kids for the campus jocks—when I competed at the Olympiad, there were plenty of skinny eccentrics, with a promiscuous hippie here and there, and not a little subclinical autism spectrum. But the math stars display the focused confidence of athletes, even, at times, adopting Deion-style swagger. Honesty compels me to confess that my high-school math team was called the "Hell's Angles"; that we wore matching black T-shirts advertising this fact; and that we entered each match in file behind our captain, who carried on his shoulder a boombox playing "Hip To Be Square."

That's still a long way from an Olympic processional. But consider this: Chess and bridge were exhibition sports in Sydney and Salt Lake City respectively, and in 1997 then-president of the International Olympic Committee Juan Antonio Samaranch declared, "Bridge is a sport, and as such your place is here, like all other sports." Current IOC President Jacques Rogge has taken a harder line; in 2002, the Olympic Programme Commission reiterated that chess and bridge were indeed sports, but that "sports where the physical elements are not necessarily performed by the player in the conduct of the competition" would be ineligible thereafter for Olympic competition.

Can math really be a sport? That depends how you define "sport," something the IOC has carefully declined to do. It's not easy—try it yourself. Must a sport require physical exertion? If so, does target shooting count? And if you do count it—presumably because non-exertive physical skills like accuracy are athletic, too—then aren't you bound to include billiards, darts, and Skee-Ball? By what means do you distinguish between elemental physical trials like weightlifting and the marathon, and elemental physical trials like standing on one foot, or urinating for distance, or holding your breath as long as you can? (Bonus trivia question: Which of the latter three actually is recognized as a sport by the IOC? Scroll to the end for the answer.)

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."

The first condition excludes Russian roulette; the second eliminates math, chess, spelling, and bridge; the third and fourth conditions, alas, rule out urinating for distance. Suits' definition is compelling, but difficulties hide not far below the surface. What, for instance, does he mean by "the skill"? All but the most primal sports demand multiple skills, some physical, some not. Maybe one should take 2) to mean "at least one of the skills relevant to the game is physical." In that case, chess boxing, in which competitors engage in pugilism and speed chess in alternate rounds, makes the cut. But how much physicality is necessary? What about Jeopardy!, in which a slow trigger finger can doom even the most knowledgeable contestant? Or what if the math Olympiad took place at the top of a really big hill and you could start working on the problems only after you'd climbed up to your desk?

Quantifying such things, even approximately, is a bit of a mess. Boxing columnist R. Michael Onello says "boxing is 70 percent mental"—if so, then the physical component of chess boxing makes up 30 percent of half of the enterprise, or 15 percent, leaving 85 percent on the mental side. That makes chess boxing a more physical activity than, say, tennis (90 percent mental according to Jimmy Connors) or the positively cerebral art of wrestling—99 percent mental, says Olympian Melvin Douglas.

What about beer pong? It's hard to call it a sport, though both key skills involved—getting a ball into a cup and maintaining hand-eye coordination while drinking heavily—are unquestionably physical. Yet there's something about the latter skill that makes it hard to speak seriously of "drinking sports." Ditto for thumb wrestling and Whack-A-Mole; in our usage of the word "sport," there seems to be some implicit requirement that the physical skills involved be non-frivolous, whatever that means.

Suits, along with everybody else who thinks about the meaning of words, works in the shadow of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who famously addressed the question we're discussing in his Philosophical Investigations:

Consider for example the proceedings that we call "games." I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? Don't say: "There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games' "—but look and see whether there is anything common to all.

Wittgenstein rejects the idea that there exists a finite list of criteria like Suits' that precisely delineates games from non-games. He continues:

How should we explain to someone what a game is? I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add: "This and similar things are called games." And do we know any more about it ourselves?

Wittgenstein is skeptical that the set of "games" can be exactly circumscribed at all. At best, one gives examples and draws out "family resemblances"—activity X looks a bit like checkers and a bit like whist, and there's something in it that recalls hacky sack, so we call it a game.

That doesn't mean there are no right answers. It is a fact that basketball is a sport, and it is a fact that sautéing zucchini isn't. And I think it's a fact that the math Olympiad isn't a sport either. Sports have goals—to score touchdowns, to pin the opponent, to strike a distant target. On the surface, a math contest has the same nature—you're supposed to solve a set of problems within a certain time span. But that doesn't reflect my experience. Working on a math problem is a solitary, contemplative act. That's true whether you're in a room full of precocious teens in Athens or at home in bed before getting up for breakfast; whether the problem is the Riemann hypothesis or something you solve in nine hours at the Olympiad. You're alone staring at the guts of the confusing, inexplicable, irritating universe, and the problem you're working on seems like a small part of an impossible-to-finish job. If it's like anything physical, it's like mountain climbing—only what mountain climbing would be like if the whole world were a 45-degree upslope, with no peak and no opportunity for final triumph. That's not a sport. It's something better: a game you can't ever really win.

Special thanks to Graham McFee, author of Sport, Rules, and Values, for helpful philosophical advice.

Related in SlateFollow the exploits of another "great athlete in top form," Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, in Dana Stevens' television blog "Surfergirl." In 2000, Jonathon Kahn called out the Olympic sports he found unworthy.

Related on the WebAnswer to the bonus trivia question: Static apnea, in which the competitors lie upside down in a pool holding their breath for as long as they can, is one of the underwater sports recognized by the IOC. A new world record—8 minutes, 47 seconds—was set last month by Germany's Tom Sietas. Mathletes got a publicity boost in 1999 when the best television show ever made featured a math team star as a leading character. A from-the-trenches view of the math Olympiad lifestyle can be found here. If you like the philosophy of sports, you're in luck; there's a whole association for you.

Jordan Ellenberg is an assistant professor of mathematics at Princeton University. His first novel is The Grasshopper King. He represented the United States in the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1987, 1988, and 1989, winning one silver and two gold medals.

 

[BlueEyesInLevis]

Nerds of the world UNITE!

 

[stray_girl]

Being a math educator, this works for me.

 

[Le Jacquelope]

Nerds of the world UNITE!

^^^ this kind of ignorance is why China has just put a man in space at the same time that the US space program has ground to a halt.

 

[BlueEyesInLevis]

^^^ this kind of ignorance is why China has just put a man in space at the same time that the US space program has ground to a halt.

Been there done that.....DECADES ago! Give up the math and try a lil HISTORY once in a while!

 

[BlueEyesInLevis]

^^^ this kind of ignorance is why China has just put a man in space at the same time that the US space program has ground to a halt.

... call me when they put a couple of men on the moon....AND bring 'em back!

 

[Le Jacquelope]

Been there done that.....DECADES ago! Give up the math and try a lil HISTORY once in a while!

China's talking about putting a man on the moon. We haven't been back to the moon in ages.

Both you and BlueEyes are seeing nations like China in your rear view mirror and believing they will stay there.

You don't realize that they're moving at 100mph while America is broken down on the side of the road.

 

[BlueEyesInLevis]

China's talking about putting a man on the moon. We haven't been back to the moon in ages.

Both you and BlueEyes are seeing nations like China in your rear view mirror and believing they will stay there.

You don't realize that they're moving at 100mph while America is broken down on the side of the road.

Isnt that what the Soviet Union claimed?

When they stop trying to steal all our secrets I'll start worrying.

BTW...if they are so fucking advanced...then why are they still building DIESEL powered subs??????????

 

[SIN'til8?]

Why not? Ballroom dancing is...

 

[BlueEyesInLevis]

Why not? Ballroom dancing is...

Ohh I forgot...you're right!

 

[Phoenyx]

Why not? Ballroom dancing is...

It was only a demonstration sport but not an official medal one

 

[SIN'til8?]

An OLYMPIC sport!



That's about the time I tuned out.

Even for my sport.

As we learned in boxing, fawkin' Koreans cheat!

 

[SIN'til8?]

Gotcha Phoenyx,

Brings new meaning to the old ABC tagline, the agony of defeat!

 

[SIN'til8?]

Let me guess, was it was a demonstration sport in the Barcelona Olympics...?



Who are they trying to fool with that running of the bulls shit?

 

[BlueEyesInLevis]

Gotcha Phoenyx,

Brings new meaning to the old ABC tagline, the agony of defeat!

That made me laugh

 

[Le Jacquelope]

Isnt that what the Soviet Union claimed?

When they stop trying to steal all our secrets I'll start worrying.

BTW...if they are so fucking advanced...then why are they still building DIESEL powered subs??????????

You forget that the Soviet Union was kicking our asses until 1969. It took over a decade for NASA - a Government program (aka example of socialism) - to catch up.

Also, much of America's aerospace technology and ALL of its nuclear weapons technology originated from foreign immigrants. If Einstein hadn't immigrated here, we'd be screwed. Oppenheimer's parents immigrated from Germany, too, but I'll claim him as American because he was born here.

The most important thing is not where you're at but where you're going and how fast. China has gone from a piece of shit joke of a superpower wannabe, to putting a man in space practically overnight. How long do you think they took to plan for this? How long do you think it'll take them to move to the next technological step?

They're playing catch-up and they're playing it well. Your complacency is disturbing and, if shared by our nation's leadership, destructive in the extreme.

 

[Le Jacquelope]

Why not? Ballroom dancing is...

Can someone hit me up a difference between ballroom dancing and ice skating?

 

[SIN'til8?]

I'll take a stab at it...

The French don't fix the Ballroom Dancing Events?

 

[BlueEyesInLevis]

You forget that the Soviet Union was kicking our asses until 1969. It took over a decade for NASA - a Government program (aka example of socialism) - to catch up.

Also, much of America's aerospace technology and ALL of its nuclear weapons technology originated from foreign immigrants. If Einstein hadn't immigrated here, we'd be screwed. Oppenheimer's parents immigrated from Germany, too, but I'll claim him as American because he was born here.

The most important thing is not where you're at but where you're going and how fast. China has gone from a piece of shit joke of a superpower wannabe, to putting a man in space practically overnight. How long do you think they took to plan for this? How long do you think it'll take them to move to the next technological step?

They're playing catch-up and they're playing it well. Your complacency is disturbing and, if shared by our nation's leadership, destructive in the extreme.

At this rate they'll have smart bombs in another 20 years or so.

Like I said...if they are so fucking advanced, why are they building diesel subs. If they have made a few technological advances its ONLY because Clinton allowed some greedy defense contractor to sell it to them. Face it, they are AT LEAST 30 years behind on the techno curve.

 

[SIN'til8?]

Now the speed skating I look at as Nordic NASCAR...

 

[SIN'til8?]

At this rate they'll have smart bombs in another 20 years or so.

Like I said...if they are so fucking advanced, why are they building diesel subs. If they have made a few technological advances its ONLY because Clinton allowed some greedy defense contractor to sell it to them. Face it, they are AT LEAST 30 years behind on the techno curve.

I didn't laugh at this.

 

[BlueEyesInLevis]

Now the speed skating I look at as Nordic NASCAR...

...not till they start duke'n it out

 

[BlueEyesInLevis]

As to your idea of making mat a sport, it reminds me of the Great Bear Bryant who was asked why academics werent more popular in society...

*deep gravely voice* "Wellll....its kinda hard to rally 'round a math class"

 

[Le Jacquelope]

At this rate they'll have smart bombs in another 20 years or so.

Like I said...if they are so fucking advanced, why are they building diesel subs. If they have made a few technological advances its ONLY because Clinton allowed some greedy defense contractor to sell it to them. Face it, they are AT LEAST 30 years behind on the techno curve.

They were twice as far as that before the 21st century.

And once again, they spy on us, but we import our talent. Home grown is home grown, and not home grown is not home grown, no matter how you cut it.

We have our cruise missiles and our uberzappers largely because of imported talent.

It's really sad that you think China can never catch up. Complacency is its own punishment.

 

[SanDguy_22]

Isnt that what the Soviet Union claimed?

When they stop trying to steal all our secrets I'll start worrying.

BTW...if they are so fucking advanced...then why are they still building DIESEL powered subs??????????

because its cheaper... And they dont have to deal with nuclear waste etc.