{"id":815,"date":"2009-03-25T13:27:01","date_gmt":"2009-03-25T12:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=815"},"modified":"2009-03-25T13:38:19","modified_gmt":"2009-03-25T12:38:19","slug":"martial-mathematics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/?p=815","title":{"rendered":"Martial Mathematics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at The Endevour, John Cook considers the martial arts movie Redbelt <\/a>which differentiates between martial arts competitions and real fights.\u00a0 Competitions tend to have artifically imposed restrictions (aka ‘the rules’) whereas real fights don’t.\u00a0 In his post, John likens this to the difference between real world maths problems and academic maths problems.<\/p>\n

Taking the martial arts analogy one step further – I was reminded of a quote from Bruce Lee while reading John’s post.<\/p>\n

‘Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just like a punch, a kick just like a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Now that I’ve understood the art, a punch is just like a punch, a kick just like a kick.’<\/em><\/p>\n

I used to practise Taekwondo back in the day and I can relate to what Bruce was saying.\u00a0 When you start Taekwondo you expect to be taught how to kick, and you are, you are taught how to do a ‘side kick’ and a ‘front snap kick’ and a ‘turning kick’ and an ‘axe kick’ and a…..well you get the idea.\u00a0 A kick for every occasion.<\/p>\n

All these kicks to learn with each one having its own set of detailed technical nuances.\u00a0 I spent years developing the perfect ‘spinning reverse turning kick’ for example and got seriously good at it – everyone was impressed with my kick.\u00a0 It was a beautiful, powerful, amazing kick and I was proud of it.<\/p>\n

However, I rarely managed to hit anyone with it in a competition scenario.\u00a0 Of course if I ever did<\/strong> score a point with it then the crowd would go crazy – it looked great and they loved it.\u00a0 It just didn’t happen very often.\u00a0 Futhermore, in a real fight I would be a moron to even think about using it.\u00a0 It was too inefficent, too slow and put me at too much risk.\u00a0 It involved briefly having my back to my opponent while doing the spin for pity’s sake.<\/p>\n

Over the years of learning these fancy techniques I somehow missed the point…which was to learn how to plant your foot on your opponent as fast and powerfully as possible with the minimum of fuss.\u00a0 All the tehncial paraphernalia was just a means to an end but I got caught up trying to develop the ‘perfect kick’ for its own sake.\u00a0 The application didn’t concern me.<\/p>\n

I never got very good at winning fights but I had a whole load of fun and that’s what I really did Taekwondo for.<\/p>\n

Back to mathematics….<\/p>\n

When solving a mathematical problem how do you go about it?\u00a0 Do you insist on always using certain favourite techniques to get the job done?\u00a0 Will you only accept and publish\u00a0 the answer if you reached it by some clever, beautiful and impressive means?\u00a0 In short are you perfecting the perfect spinning reverse turning kick which will only work occasionally but when it does<\/strong> everyone oohs and aaahs at your technical prowess.<\/p>\n

On the other hand will you use any dirty, sloppy and downright underhanded method in your arsenal to solve the thing?\u00a0 Who cares how you get the answer as long as you get it?\u00a0 Street Fighting Mathematics<\/a> maybe?<\/p>\n

Personally, with both Mathematics and Martial arts, I don’t think that there is a ‘right way to do it’ just as long as you are aware of what you are doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at The Endevour, John Cook considers the martial arts movie Redbelt which differentiates between martial arts competitions and real fights.\u00a0 Competitions tend to have artifically imposed restrictions (aka ‘the rules’) whereas real fights don’t.\u00a0 In his post, John likens this to the difference between real world maths problems and academic maths problems. Taking the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-math"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3swhs-d9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=815"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":823,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions\/823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}