Comments | dr_c: Definition Fallacies at the Olympics

dr_c

Definition Fallacies at the Olympics

Feb 25, 2006 23:47

It is Winter Olympics time (or at least I assume they haven't done the closing ceremonies yet; which tells you how well I've been in touch with the games). And that means it's time for people to throw back and forth the usual arguments about "Is Figure Skating a Sport ( Read more... )

Comments 10

sreya February 26 2006, 13:16:33 UTC

Just giving Wetzel's column a quick read-through, I find it interesting that he seems to put figure skating at a level just lower than a sport because of the subjectivity of part of the scoring. If he wants to define "sport" on objectivity, though, it seems like figure skating, and similar competitions, should then be put on something just above a sport (if you're trying to create an heirarchy, which I think is silly), or something greater that includes "sport" within in, because there is the objective component - the technical score - and then there's the subjective component on top of that. Figure skating is, in that way, even more demanding than a clocked sport or a purely technical score sport, because you not only have to hit all the technical requirements and perform athletically, but do it in an aesthetically pleasing way. Which is more difficult and demanding, just performing a certain number of jumps and spins on the ice while skating back and forth, or performing them in conjunction with music and while making a connection ( ... )

peachespig February 26 2006, 17:15:29 UTC

You may have seen Jim Baker's column in Baseball Prospectus where he suggests an alternate reason why skating is not a sport:The key to real sports is that they have a conflict factor: there has to be somebody occupying the same space or a space adjacent to the competitor who has a vested interest in keeping the performer from performing.
By his definition, though, more than half the winter games seems not to be a sport anymore: anything where people run one at a time would be ruled out, leaving precious few "sports" except short-track speed skating and snowboardcross. (I'm not sure he realizes this, as he's only arguing about figure skating. His definition also seems to rule out golf, among other things ( ... )

tartanboxers February 26 2006, 19:32:52 UTC

The thing with total and complete objectiveness is that you have that in very few sports. There is always an element of human judgement involved. With football, you have a referee making calls as to whether a penalty has occurred, which put the team that committed it at a disadvantage. Yet it's still a judgement and open to interpretation. As much as a referee tries to be objective, there is always an element of subjectiveness involved -- did that player really grab his opponent's face mask, or did it just look like he did from the angle at which the referee saw it happen ( ... )

pack87man February 27 2006, 01:33:22 UTC

I think one major problem people have with figure skating is the arcane scoring method where the scores really don't matter, just the ordinals. If you're going to score someone higher, but give the other person the gold medal, what on earth is going on?

tartanboxers February 27 2006, 02:06:00 UTC

They changed the 6.0 scoring system after the 2002 Olympics. They uses a cumulative point system now.

tartanboxers February 27 2006, 02:06:18 UTC

*use

Replies to above comments dr_c February 27 2006, 04:31:58 UTC

sreya and tartanboxers: Let me clarify on Wetzel's behalf-- neither he nor I meant "objective" in the sense of being absolutely free from human judgment calls. I was careful in the essay above to qualify my description of mainstream sports as "objectively scored," echoing Wetzel's claim that "A sport needs to have a quantifiable way to determine a winner and a loser. There can be no debate about the scoring system."

To put it another way: In a "sport" according to Wetzel's definition, it could in principle be judged by a set of high-speed cameras and computers, given enough technology to pull it off. For example, baseball has already used a camera system in evaluating umpires' ball/strike calls, although the technology is still far too crude to entrust the calls to the cameras entirely ( ... )

Re: Replies to above comments tartanboxers February 27 2006, 14:56:21 UTC

But now suppose the kids were instead skating on an empty rink, and trying to score each other's long and short programs. Could that happen without controversy? I really don't see how it could. It's not even approximately objective.

I won't argue this point, because knowledgeable skating fans argue outcomes all the time, for example my comments about previous Olympic outcomes.

Are there, then, actually accepted standards about how much a fall hurts a skater's score, how much a quadruple axel (or whatever) helps, and so forth? If so, I've never seen it mentioned before.There are now, more so, with the new scoring system. The old 6.0 system was far more vague, but with that system the number wasn't so important as the ordinal (i.e. the order in which the judges placed various skaters -- the skater who got placed in the top position most often was the one who won that segment of the competition). However, under that system there were still deductions for falls in the short program. The long program was judged a bit differently, in ( ... )

More because this is *that* complicated and I went over the limit tartanboxers February 27 2006, 14:57:59 UTC

On top of all this, there are automatic deductions given for such things as falls. Once the points are totaled up, one point is removed for each fall in the program. In the case of pairs or dance, if both partners fall on an element, two points are deducted because both skaters fell.

As if that wasn't enough, they've got twelve judges actually scoring the program (not including the technical judges -- I mean the ones who are grading each element), but the computer randomly selects only nine of those marks when determining the final score. No judge can know whether his or her marks were included in the final score or not. I suppose a judge can hypothetically score an entire competition and never have his or her marks included in the results ( ... )

Re: More because this is *that* complicated and I went over the limit pack87man March 1 2006, 02:18:32 UTC

Like hockey!