Math and Gymnastics

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Simone Biles has been in the news for a very excellent reason. She is tied with the most decorated gymnast of all time and she doesn't seem to be slowing down at all.  Since she is so much in the news and on possibly every magazine cover, it seems like a good time to talk about math in gymnastics.

I'm sure we've mentioned a couple of times before that Math is everywhere so let's prove it.  As is mentioned  in the article below, gymnasts form all kinds of angles while they are twisting, bending, jumping and contorting their bodies in the air.  Take a look at a slow motion clip of Simone Bile's incredible triple-double flip.  Can you find acute, obtue and vertical angles in the clip?  Go back and review the clip and super slow down motion.  You're sure to find them and be amazed.

Also mentioned in the article is the fact that decimals are involved in gymnastics.  Read it and find out how.  Yes - it has to do with scoring.  You'll notice that gymnasts receive scores in decimal form.  You'll also notice that gymnasts do more than one pass at an event and that they receive an overall score.  How do you think they figure that out? Average score.  How do you find the average score?   We are tempted to recite the ditty from childhood.

"Hey Diddle Diddle, the Median's the Middle, You add and divide for the Mean.  The Mode is the one that occurs the most and the Range is the difference between,"

Average = mean.... So now, we know you know how the overall score is derived.

So -- we think we've accomplished what we wanted to do. Math is Everywhere.

Thank you, Simone Biles for giving us this challenge and Congratulations!

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Math in Gymnastics 11/18/2014 0 Comments   I chose to explain how math is used in gymnastics because I did gymnastics for four years when I was younger and it's an interesting topic to me. A lot of different kinds of math used in gymnastics such as angles, decimals, and average.      ANGLES: Whenever you do a skill you are at a different angle each time. When the gymnast in a handstand they are at an 180 degree angle which is obtuse. When the gymnast is going to leave the mat to do a tuck or hand spring or cartwheel, or any other gymnast move that requires your feet to come off the floor, they have angular momentum from their push off. They also have angular momentum on the uneven bars. A gymnast usually starts out with one giant swing around the bar and it stays constant even when the speed of the spinning increases.      DECIMALS: Scoring in gymnastics also uses math. The way the judges score a gymnast is with decimals. The highest score you can get is 10.00 and the lowest in 1.00, the score is always a decimal no matter what it is. The number in the hundredths place after the decimal has to be either a zero or a five.      AVERAGE: Average is also used in calculating the gymnast's score. There is more than one judge scoring the gymnasts and they all give different scores. To get the final score they take the average of all of the scores they gave the gymnasts. For example, if the first judge gave the gymnast a 9.1 and the second judge gave then an 8.3 the overall score would be an 8.7.