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New Olympics Scoring: No More Perfect 10.0
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Aug 06, 2008 09:42 AM
from the get-rid-of-judged-events dept.
from the get-rid-of-judged-events dept.
Dekortage writes "If you watch the Olympics gymnastics this year, you may be confused by the new scoring system which will let athletes score 14, 17, or even higher. The new rules are 'heavy on math' and employ two panels of judges: one for technical difficulty, which adds points up from a score of zero; the other for execution and technique, which starts at 10.0 and subtracts for errors. The two numbers are then combined for the final score. As one judge put it, 'The system rewards difficulty. But the mistakes are also more costly.' The new rules were adopted after South Korea protested a scoring at the 2004 Olympics." Now I'm sure that no Slashdot reader will intentionally watch any "sport" that has judges determine the winner, but their wives/girlfriends might seize control of the remote because they want to know who is the best at that ribbon-twirling thing.
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China Claims Score In Weather Manipulation 147 comments
hackingbear writes "Despite prior skepticism over effectiveness, China claims successful application of weather intervention to ensure a stunning Olympic opening ceremony, according to a report by the official Xinhua News Agency:
'We fired a total of 1,104 rain dispersal rockets from 21 sites in the city between 4 p.m. and 11:39 p.m. on Friday, which successfully intercepted a stretch of rain belt from moving towards the stadium,' said Guo Hu, head of the Beijing Municipal Meteorological Bureau (BMB).
While there wasn't a single drop of rain over the National Stadium — also known as the Bird's Nest — during the opening ceremony from 8:00pm-12:00am on August 8, the weather services said that Baoding City of Hebei Province, to the southwest of Beijing, received the biggest rainfall of 100 millimeters Friday night, and Beijing's Fangshan District recorded a rainfall of 25 millimeters."
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Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huh (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
If they have rhythmic gymnastics, they should have professional dance. Seriously.
Parent
Re:Huh (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, DanceSport [wikipedia.org] (which I'd say is a subset of non-amateur competitive dancing) is an IOC recognized sport [wikipedia.org], but it is not in the current set of events for the Olympic Games.
Yes, they may add it in the future. I'd argue that they should, if they're keeping Rhythmic Gymnastics.
Parent
Re:Huh (Score:5, Funny)
On the other hand, watching nubile athletic girls contort themselves does it for me.
Parent
Re:Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
I find that those girls are too contorted and their body shapes too scary for my tastes. Any girl whose shoulders are twice as wide as her hips looks freakish to me. Even guys that are that abnormal look weird to me.
Parent
Re:Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point is that anything that needs judges is not a sport, due to it being subjectively instead of objectively scored.
Parent
Re:Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
For anyone confused by the summary (Score:5, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife [wikipedia.org]
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girlfriend [wikipedia.org]
Yeah right (Score:5, Funny)
No single male would ever switch the gymnastics on and watch a bunch of young ladies do physical exercise in leotards.
In other news, the last porn site finally died, citing a "lack of market" for its product.
Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
What if the single male wanking off is also pre-teenage or early teens?
Parent
Boxing anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
how about martial arts... last time I checked they are scored by judges...
Just call it part of the game (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, the 2004 Olympics (and the next Winter Olympics perhaps even more so) contained judging that didn't necessarily reward the 'best' contestant. But that's part of the sport; it's not about being the 'best', which is pretty well impossible to define except in straightforward running/throwing events. It's about getting the highest score.
Nobody really thinks Tour de France cyclists don't store blood and take drugs; part of the game is the tradeoff between higher performance and higher chance of getting disqualified. Look at the way football is played in south america; taking a fall is just seen as part of the game, a judgement call like any other with particular risks and rewards. Argentina beat England in 1986 by pushing the ball in the net by hand; that may mean they won by taking a particular risk, but it doesn't mean they didn't win. They won the game of 'being allowed the most goals, by whatever means', which is the game they were actually playing.
I don't think the answer is to change the scoring. The answer is to take a more holistic approach, and say: "Ok, he was maybe the second best at *gymnastics*. But he was the best at *getting points for gymnastics*!"
Lame. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I'm sure that no Slashdot reader will intentionally watch any "sport" that has judges determine the winner, but their wives/girlfriends might seize control of the remote because they want to know who is the best at that ribbon twirling thing.
First, if you can't appreciate the beauty and artistry in judged events, then you're missing something wonderful. From the guys doing iron crosses on the rings (which makes my shoulders hurt sympathetically) to the girls seeming to ignore gravity, there's something there to move any soul.
Second, my wife was a college swimmer and completed Army Airborne training. She's about as into ribbon twirling things as I presume girls are into you.
Scoring... (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory jokes below.
PM
More fair, less accessible. (Score:5, Insightful)
As a former gymnast, I can say that the new system is definitely more fair -- if you have two perfect routines, the one with the higher difficulty wins. Also, it means that you don't have to keep changing the system -- as routines include more difficult elements, the start value becomes higher. And you can keep a standard set of deductions for things like bending your knees, or not maintaining a toe point, or falling on your ass.
On the other hand, as a fan of the sport, the new system is more confusing, because when it was out of ten, everyone knows that a 9.9 is really good, but now, is a 16.5 really good? Or a 17.3? As it turns out, a 16.5 might win gold on one event, but not even medal on another. But I think anyone who actually follows the sport will be able to keep up, for the casual once-every-four-years viewer, they can just concentrate on the shiny medal thingie hanging around the necks of the folks on the podium at the end.
Re:Hot chicks at the olympics (Score:5, Funny)
I was gonna say the same thing. Then I remembered all gymnasts look 12 years old.
Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, amiright? ...
Parent
Re:Hot chicks at the olympics (Score:5, Funny)
Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, amiright? ...
Dunno. Are you attracted to powerful shoulders, an over-developed torso, flat chest, and short (Russian style) muscular legs?
If you are, you might be interested in the stocking clerk that works at my local grocery store. His name is Billy.
Parent
Numeric inflation (Score:5, Insightful)
isn't restricted just to the Olympics - though it's sad to see it happening.
Look at all (american) professional sports. Every time they're in a slump, some "rule change" comes along to bump scores. Basketball got laxer and laxer on obvious rules violations (watch any of the running leaps a "slam dunk" guy takes). Football implemented letting q-backs throw the ball into the stands. Baseball juiced up the ball itself, but thankfully drew the line on allowing metal bats.
And it's not even restricted to physical sports. Look at a pinball table today - you could easily chop off the last 3 digits of the score, because they never read anything meaningful anyways. Look at the numbers for damage ratings in "rpgs" like the Final Fantasy series - you used to start with characters doing 5-6 points of damage a hit, now you do 500-1000 and go from there.
Parent
Re:Hot chicks at the olympics (Score:5, Funny)
Your second comment is appropriate. I could care less. It doesn't mean that I do care more. If you were to assign a scoring system of 1 to 10 to my level of care, where 1 is absolute lack of care, and 10 is absolute care, the Olympics may rate a 3, at which point there is room in the scale to raise or lower my level of care. I could care less, but it wouldn't even matter, because it's lower than a neutral level of care (5), and has no direct impact on myself.
If there were to be a direct impact upon myself by the event, then that level of care would be more significant. Take the scenario "There's a truck coming down the road". If I were not in the road, I could care less, at a care level of 3, and it wouldn't matter. If I were standing in the road in front of the truck, at a care level of 3, and I did care less, that would definitely be a sign of deep depression, which would be resolved rather quickly, assuming the truck does it's job appropriately and runs me over. :)
It becomes a moot point, as the phrase "I could care less" entered colloquial English approximately 40 years, and it is already commonly understood to mean the same, either in the positive or negative syntax. It is found in print as far back as 1966. I'm only 35 years old, and I started speaking at 1 year old, so both versions of the phrase were already in common usage for 8 years.
http://incompetech.com/gallimaufry/care_less.html [incompetech.com]
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/couldcare.html [wsu.edu]
http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/g09.html [reference.com]
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ico1.htm [worldwidewords.org]
Parent
Yes, and I didn't like the implication (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:For a system that's math heavy (Score:5, Funny)
You would think they could have just increased the floating point size to 10.00 instead!
But it goes to 11.
Parent
Re:China controlling even this? (Score:5, Informative)
The IOC made this call a few years back actually. I believe most international competitions leading up the Olympics have been using this new scoring system.
Parent
Re:I really dont care for olympics (Score:5, Insightful)
Now add in that they did this not on the ground, but on a balance beam only inches wide and they nailed the landing with narry a wobble?
Regardless of the politics surround this year's Olympics, you seriously can't see why anybody would enjoy watching a human being pull off amazing shit like that?
Parent