New Olympics Scoring: No More Perfect 10.0 722
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.
Re:Huh (Score:4, Interesting)
but if you take something - say ice skateing and make it so that x gives y points.. then everyone will just learn to perfect the move with the highest y and then you will just see a chain of them for the lenght of the event..
it is perfectly acceptiable for it to be subjective - this is why there is more than one judge - and they do have guide lines for quality and preformance..
while i agree it might be better to call it a compitition than a sport - i do belive it has just as much a place in the Olympics as sports.
pure artistic stuff i don't think is right for the Olympics but if it is a good hybrid between art and athletics then go for it.
Re:Huh (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't true, and I have the evidence to back it. Read this paper from Carnegie Mellon [cmu.edu]. An excerpt:
In 1995, the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) began an effort to bring more women into its undergraduate computer science (CS) program. At that time, just 7% (7 out of 96) of entering freshman computer science majors at Carnegie Mellon were women. Five years later, the percentage of women in the entering class had increased fivefold. In 1999, women were 38% of the incoming first-year computer science class (50 out of 130)2 ; in the fall of 2000, approximately 40% of the entering class were women.
I saw the woman responsible for making this change speak. She described that the way that they made that change in computer science enrollment was by focusing on changing perspective and creating a community where women felt comfortable being part of the program.
By looking at the numbers, it seems that worked.
Re:Huh (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, no, there is no requirement that the Olympics have everything that qualifies as a "sport" under whatever definition applies.
That aside, Ice Dancing. Seriously.
Re:Huh (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always thought the olympics should include breakdancing. It already has a large body of international practitioners, qualified judges, it requires massive amounts of skill and it looks awesome. That may just be me.
Re:Huh (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly, that's unlikely. Most of the top ballroom dancers are Russian or Eastern European. They start 'em young over there, and that becomes their lives.
100m? (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, I have always felt that the most stupid event at the Olympics is the 100m sprint. Paradoxically this seems to be the viewers favourite, despite the fact that it is the event most determined by luck and, frankly, rule bending. I find it odd that there should be such expectation and buildup around an event that is over after less than 10 seconds. Though I suspect many women may have some insights on this.
The 400m sprints, and especially the relays, are nearly always a more interesting events. But Gymnastics of all kinds, in particular so called "artisic gymnastics", is most entertaining of all. If you think it's somehow inferior to the track and field events, then I challenge you to perform even one of the maneuvers seen there without spraining/breaking something.
All that said, I won't personally be watching much of the Olympics, except those clips that are splayed all over the news cycle. I've no wish to see the end result of years of a deprived and spartan childhood reduced to a walking canvas for corporate logos while they compete athletically around in front of obese onlookers in the middle of the worlds largest totalitarian state. Whew! Did I cover everything?
Re:Huh (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, though, I love to watch it as a performance (except when they make a movie out of it).
Re:Numeric inflation (Score:4, Interesting)
Not everyone eats crappy food and has a sedentary lifestyle. Particularly not the sort who end up as Olympic athletes, who on average have a lot more time to train and a lot more research on how to train effectively than at any time in history.
</obvious>
Re:100m? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that if you need judges it shouldn't be considered a sport since the result depends on someones opinion, not actual data (like time, points, distance, etc).
Re:100m? (Score:3, Interesting)
> Personally, I have always felt that the most
> stupid event at the Olympics is the 100m sprint.
Oddly, it was the ONLY event in the first Olympics, back in 776 BC. OK, since they didn't have meters, technically, it was a dash of about that length. The 100 yards/100 meters event has the advantage of showing performance without pacing, whereas longer races include the problem of not running so hard that you exhaust yourself before the end.
It's easy... (Score:2, Interesting)
or
no finish line = not a sport
After having this argument several times that is the definition I have settled on. Please point out any exceptions you can think of.
I am not at ALL saying that it isn't difficult if it isn't a sport...just that it isn't a sport.
Re:Huh (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a "degree of difficulty" baseline in ALL sports.
Hmm, let's see how that statement holds up.
Soccer - a goal is 1 point. Period.
Baseball - a run is one point. Period. (Never thought I'd defend baseball as a sport).
Tennis - while they use a weird-ass way of keeping score, every "point" is essentially worth the same - doesn't matter if you score off the serve, off a volley, from the back, or at the net - each point is the same.
Hockey - a goal is a goal.
Polo - a goal is a goal.
So, yeah - looks like you're wrong. Basketball and (non association) football are pretty much the only mainstream sports where this occurs.
Re:Huh (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, in baseball, if you hit the ball over the fence on the fly, it's a home run. If it bounces first, it's a double. Cricket is similar -- 6 runs for hitting the ball over the boundary line on the fly, 4 runs if it bounces first.
Volleyball used to have a difficulty factor (scoring after serving = 1 points, scoring after returning = 0 points + serving the next time). It's gone now, though.
Target sports (archery, etc.) have an obvious degree of difficulty as well.
That said, you're correct that not ALL sports have a degree of difficulty baseline.