[JakeW]

Originally Posted by The Professor

But I don't think there's nearly as much "judging" in football as in figure skating, or at least from what I've seen of skating. It seems that the judges just give a score out of 1-10 based on the athletes performance. That seems really subjective, whereas whether the person caught the ball in the end zone, although it can be subjective depending on if he was almost out of bounds, usually isn't.

Now, I'm not a figure skating expert, but I AM a gymnastics expert, so I will assume that they are similiar. (I.E. a panel of judges gives a 1-10 score)

I have to assume though that most people don't understand where that score comes from. It's not any different than most sports. For instance, you're taking a 10 point vault. A judge (umpire) see's that when you land you take one step back (sees a strike) that judge deducts 2/10's of a point from your score (calls a strike).

I think you'll agree that seeing a person take a step is as easy as seeing if a person missed a ball?

After you see that a person messed up, the point deduction is formulaic, a set amount of points per penalty.

As for some penalties being harder to see than others (i.e. pointed toes vs. taking steps) I would argue that that difference is 1) easier when you're trained for it, and b) not any harder than differientiating between a ball and strike close to the strike zone.

I think you've already agreed that most sports (at least in some circumstances) are based on human judgements (and therefore subject to human error). This alone is enough to assert with some certainty that the "judged by people" rule for what qualifies as a sport is not sufficient.

Jake

[The Professor]

You learn something everyday. I didn't know all that about gymnastics/figure skating. I thought it was all subjective i.e. "this performance was good: 10". I'll have to rethink my "judged by people" theory.

[Art]

Originally Posted by The Professor

You learn something everyday. I didn't know all that about gymnastics/figure skating. I thought it was all subjective i.e. "this performance was good: 10". I'll have to rethink my "judged by people" theory.

This is why, when you watch figure skating, the judges scores are all very close to each other.