Math & Sports

Math is intimately related for all sports and physical activities.

Physical Exercises

In schools for physical exercises students organise themselves into formations which are geometrical. This is to ensure that each student has sufficient space to perform the exercises and for the PT instructor to keep an eye whether the exercises are being done correctly and in time. Timing & coordination is ensured through drumbeats.

Physical exercises also resemble dancing to a great extent, except that the moves are more masculine whereas dance uses mostly feminine moves.

Team Games

Every team game is played in an arena which has a geometrical shape and specific dimensions. Every game has a codified set of rules, which would be enforced by the umpire. Examples of some team games are football, basketball, badminton, cricket, table-tennis, lawn tennis etc.

The games are played with balls of different sizes and shapes. Since they are physical objects they move as per laws of physics. So an understanding of laws of motion, force, speed, direction, reflection will enable players to excel in the game.

Athletics

Athletics involves physical effort by individuals. Here again understanding of the strengths and weakness of our bodies and laws of physics would enable us improve our performance.

Events like discuss, shotput and javelin demand not only a lot of brute force but also their smart use as per laws of physics.

Sports training & medicine have become specialised fields to improve performances. Sports coaches use computer software to demonstrate different combinations of moves.

Swimming

Swimming requires an understanding of water resistance and techniques to reduce these by appropriate dress & body movements. Top swimmers even shave their body hair just to get an advantage of hundredths of a second.

On 31st January 2023, came the news of Prof Ken Ono of Virginia University working with the swimming team to improve their performances. Ono’s team at UVA analyzed swimmers’ technique using a set of sensors and underwater cameras and used math techniques to study their swimming techniques and optimise performance.

Chess

Chess is one of the most mathematical of games. Today's top players have complete records and analysis of the games of all their opponents. The computer has become a necessary training tool.

The placement of 8 queens on a chess board so that none threaten one another is a classic puzzle in chess, originally proposed in 1848. Recently it was solved mathematically for the general case of a N X N board.

Sports Statistics

With more emphasis given to sports right from schools, documentation of timings & distances has become very important. The parameters used in each sport is different.