Math and Climbing

Well I guess since you asked, and a friend pointed out this post to me I will "raise my hand".  Not sure if you are asking specifically if someone else can climb Pump-o-Rama, solving the Gaussian integral at the double kneebar rest or more generally send 5.13 and has a background in advanced mathematics.  I could at least raise my hand for the latter, although I have sent Pump-o-Rama a couple times yet forgot my white board.  To be clear I have a Masters in Mathematics and have sent a small hand full of easy 5.13s.  At the risk of sounding arrogant, what I have always wondered over the years though is can anyone else say they have a graduate degree in mathematics, sent 5.13, and have signed and NHL contract?  Would be pretty cool to get even one response.          

Can we trade rock climbing difficulty for math difficulty? How about proving, I dunno, the Snake Lemma at a kneebar rest on a 5.12? Or the Besicovitch-Federer projection theorem at a no-hands rest on a 5.11?

Ben Horowitzwrote:

It is a bit more complex than that, since the way mathematics is taught in schools is so poor that many people actively dislike math and are conditioned to think they are "bad" at math. In many ways it might be easier to work with someone who doesn't have that stigma. Obviously with the Sentinelese there is also the communication barrier which would probably take a long time to work through... Hard for me to intuit which one would be easier there. :P Climbing is arguably the more "natural" thing for our bodies to do relative to calculus however.

Agreed!

I took to math as a little kid, excelled through middle school (and was lucky enough to have an amazing teacher who further instilled my love for math), and extended this through a PhD in cryptography (very mathy kind of CS).  But man would I trade a lot of that to have been climbing since age 5 with Robyn Erbesfield or some equivalently amazing coach.

Of course I don't wish for a world where we teach climbing to every child like we teach math: there aren't enough outdoor resources to support all of humanity at the crags.

Hson Pwrote:

Can we trade rock climbing difficulty for math difficulty? 

I don't know if we can trade difficulty, but we should definitely be able to trade onsighting. That looks like it was really a redpoint burn of the Gaussian integral for him. If he were onsighting the integration on a 5.11, even more impressive. A FFA of any proof on a 5.9 would be even better.  

Responding to the OP. 

If you have a route wired to the point where you barely need to glance up for the next hand hold as you climb, it frees up a lot of brain space, so solving a math problem isn't necessarily that hard. I'm more impressed that he climbed with that whiteboard flapping around on his back, and how awkward and core-sapping it was to repeatedly flip the board toward the camera.

I've shotgunned a beer from that double kneebar rest on Pumporama with a small watermelon tied to the back of my harness, and proceeded to send the route in just under 5 minutes. This was after a shot of tequila on the ground. (Rendezspew party shenanigans.) Forgive the spray here, but it pertains to the topic. I definitely can't solve that math problem any day of the week, so I guess my accomplishment (cough, cough) represents the opposite end of the spectrum. Which is idiocy? Who am I kidding—most of us are idiots with too much free time. At least hunters have the guise of providing food for themselves, even though most of them seem to use hunting season as an excuse to drink and play with weapons and ATVs.

JonasMRwrote:

A FFA of any proof on a 5.9 would be even better.  

Zorn’s lemma is aid.

Or maybe we should trade difficulty the other direction. Anyone climbing a 5.15 who shouts down to their belayer “2+2=4” wins.

Chiming in to say that I'm pursuing a doctorate in math, don't climb anywhere near 13a, and the guy solving the integral while on Pump-O-Rama was my undergraduate thesis advisor.

Another of his students also is still doing math and definitely climbs hard things. Personally, my success in math and success in climbing have been inversely correlated--but it's more a time issue than anything. I think the concept of "flow state" is common to both pursuits. 

Hson Pwrote:

Can we trade rock climbing difficulty for math difficulty? How about proving, I dunno, the Snake Lemma at a kneebar rest on a 5.12? Or the Besicovitch-Federer projection theorem at a no-hands rest on a 5.11?

I've seen a proof of the Snake Lemma (in a graduate algebra class), but it was quite long, so I don't know if I could reproduce it while in a kneebar... would take a long time and the only 5.12's I've done with kneebars weren't hands-free, they were just enough for a few shakes.  (And the one 5.12a I've sent in Rifle didn't have any kneebars... weird I know!)

The problem with all of these "combined scoring" metrics is you never know how to formulate the combined score; in math speak, you don't have a "total order" on the pair.  So you'd have to make up some scoring system based on hardest redpoint and math proficiency (how do you even quantify the latter?).  I remember once trying to make up a combined score for climbing plus chess rating, but how to weight each number isn't clear.  Another interesting one is climbing plus age.

One way to handle this is to enumerate one of the two categories and then ask for the highest performance in that category.  For example:

Oldest person to ever send:

5.14b: 64

5.13a: 73

5.12c: 75

5.10a: 84

(This is all made up; don't quote me.  Though the new Krol guide to Rifle says that Herman Goellner has the Pump-o-Rama age record at 73)

For math it would be, hardest send for each level of math:

PhD in Math: 5.14c (Mike Penn)

M.S. in Math: ?

H.S. Dipolma: 5.15c (Ondra).. I would guess.

...something like that.  Anyway, bottom line..., Penn is super impressive.  He's a legit math guy doing impressive research in math and climbing up to 14c and V12.

Derek Fwrote:

Responding to the OP. 

I've shotgunned a beer from that double kneebar rest on Pumporama with a small watermelon tied to the back of my harness, and proceeded to send the route in just under 5 minutes. This was after a shot of tequila on the ground. (Rendezspew party shenanigans.) Forgive the spray here, but it pertains to the topic. I definitely can't solve that math problem any day of the week, so I guess my accomplishment (cough, cough) represents the opposite end of the spectrum. Which is idiocy? Who am I kidding—most of us are idiots with too much free time. At least hunters have the guise of providing food for themselves, even though most of them seem to use hunting season as an excuse to drink and play with weapons and ATVs.

I know you're spraying a bit, but I found this really entertaining to read... :)

I'd give my left nut to climb Pump-o-rama without a small watermelon or a beer in tow.  And over 5mins would be fine as well (though I doubt I could hold on for 5mins anyway).

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Regarding how core-sapping it must have been to repeatedly turn the whiteboard to the camera: it's unclear in the video if he really redpointed the route.  In the kneebar rest, his upper body slowly lowers into an almost completely inverted angle, then there's a cut, then he's back up to horizontal again, before slowly lowering.  So he may have taken between takes (climbing lingo "taken" then movie lingo "takes"). I still wouldn't fault him though... still super impressive.

Grabbing both the 5.7 and 5.6 marked holds on a gym route = 5.13.   You just add the 6 and 7 when grabbing two sets of holds.

My father is a topologist and climber. So I grew up with this. In fact, his specialty is knot theory…although topological knots aren’t exactly what we normally think of when we think about tying knots.

In many ways I think there seems to be a correlation between math/engineering types and climbing. I’ve met a ton of climbers who are mathematicians, engineers, computer scientists, etc.

On the other hand, it seems obvious and important to point out that a huge similarity between the two groups is that they both have been dominated by white men since their inception, and still are. This may be a better explanation than anything else.

Climbing and mathematics (in particular) are diversifying, but it will still be generations before other groups are more widely represented in both areas. 

John RBwrote:

I know you're spraying a bit, but I found this really entertaining to read... :)

I'd give my left nut to climb Pump-o-rama without a small watermelon or a beer in tow.  And over 5mins would be fine as well (though I doubt I could hold on for 5mins anyway).

---

Regarding how core-sapping it must have been to repeatedly turn the whiteboard to the camera: it's unclear in the video if he really redpointed the route.  In the kneebar rest, his upper body slowly lowers into an almost completely inverted angle, then there's a cut, then he's back up to horizontal again, before slowly lowering.  So he may have taken between takes (climbing lingo "taken" then movie lingo "takes"). I still wouldn't fault him though... still super impressive.

Thanks, entertainment was the aim :-)

Now that you mention it, there are a couple of weird cuts in the video. Seems odd to cut those out even if he made mistakes in his equation or rambled, because it would be more impressive to see him hang tough through it all. So maybe your guess is right that he took some rests. Fun video nonetheless.

John RBwrote:

For math it would be, hardest send for each level of math:

PhD in Math: 5.14c (Mike Penn)

M.S. in Math: ?

H.S. Dipolma: 5.15c (Ondra).. I would guess.

...something like that.  Anyway, bottom line..., Penn is super impressive.  He's a legit math guy doing impressive research in math and climbing up to 14c and V12.

At least one Fields medal-level mathematician has sent 13d and V11, if you want another data point (not mentioning his name since I don't know him very well and IDK if he would be OK with that.)

On the other hand I took another famous mathematician climbing once and he couldn't get up a 5.10 so I think the correlation might not be 100% perfect.

Everyone wants to talk about solving the math problem

But no one wants to talk about solving the meth problem

I taught a graduate level computer science class for a semester & the students called me professor (I was a lecturer), does that count?

I won't spray my climbing, but if that qualifies, then my one-time classmate Matt Wilder is both more math-y (I mean you don't name your kid Bayes otherwise) and a more accomplished climber (however hard I've redpointed on bolts he's done it on gear). Of course, then there's coaching your 10 year old to climb 5.14c: gripped.com/news/hes-only-1…

W Kwrote:

Everyone wants to talk about solving the math problem

But no one wants to talk about solving the meth problem

What's the problem meth is awesome. 

Long Rangerwrote:

What's the problem meth is awesome. 

Until you run out

A V wrote:

I think this has to do with who our parents are - many people learn the tricks of the trade or the mentality behind something from their parents. Old systems of class/racial segregation are reflected/passed down in this manner. For example, my father is a old school Soviet nuclear physicist with a PhD from Moscow’s premier technical uni and I have always felt constant pressure to achieve academically to a similar level as he did. He was for sure the type of parent that greatly values institutional scientific/engineering achievement - which naturally lends itself to me ending up in that arena.

As opposed to a black kid in south side Chicago that had his father locked up because of some petty/brain dead drug possession law that is disproportionally enforced on those historically oppressed communities. Not to mention all of the children who have parents that are denied access to basic things like healthcare and education - this country was never about opportunity - and a much different academic culture/mindset is created in those money poor families that get systemically humiliated like that by American society. They see basic necessities/dignities as being completely out of reach, because it historically has proven to be that way. It’s hard to understand unless you’ve lived it.

It’s unfortunately the patented U.S. “fuck you, got mine” kind of mentality that creates all of these issues, imho - speaking from the perspective of somebody that immigrated to this country and ended up hanging out with the immigrant/minority kids most of my growing up. Those communities get exploited like crazy by Americans. Of the incumbent Americans, there were so many examples of incredibly dumb entitled kids squandering massive opportunities and resources because of who’s ballsack they shot out of. And there were so many smart kids from poor communities that would just straight up get failed and discouraged at every opportunity to do something remarkable on the basis of things like cost/money/etc. Growing up, this is what really bugged me about the propaganda that America feeds to its residents about immigration and how awesome it is and how grateful everybody should be for being here. The reality is so much different than the naive wide eyed representation that gets circulated in schools. There is an incredible amount of racism/xenophobia from people who internally feel that their status in society is threatened and undeserved - and so they silently (and not so silently) fight to keep things the way that they are currently.

To circle this back around - hopefully we can overcome that gobbledy gook in order to diversify fields like this. It all starts with creating availability of top class education to people from all walks of life - not just people lucky enough to be born into a stable family with money to spend. If America calls that “socialism” then screw it - I’m a socialist. Eat the rich and give our children access to universities and give our elderly access to hospitals. Also, screw the rich neoliberals that say one thing and then vote against these causes with their wallets and investments. 

Why do you have to bring this, excuse me, Portland Community College NEET rant into every thread?

amariuswrote:

I wonder if solving differential equations would be easier if I take my shirt off, wear really tight shoes, and grunt

It only works for heavyside functions.

A V wrote:

Because I grew up with a bunch of rural Texans who told me to go back to Russia more times than I could count - literally hundreds of times - when the conversation of social injustice was brought up in a way that made rich white people feel uncomfortable. So much whining + complaining from a crowd that pretends to be all about stoicism and meritocracy. They will always shout you down, mock you, exclude you, subject you to death by a thousand cuts. I'm honestly completely numb to these strategies of social shaming that are used primarily to silence the conversation. Call me what you want - I've literally encountered it all.

So yeah - if we're talking diversity in STEM - it all starts with universal quality of life improvements for those pesky immigrant + black peasants that won't shut the hell up. Universal access to college is one of those things. But Americans see this as funding the competition that has come to replace them - so they fight against this as much as they possibly can. Snarky online comments, public eye rolling, and private racism/xenophobia are directed towards these groups on the daily. So I don't care if this subject makes people flaccidly complain about thread drift - you can just scroll past it and you don't have to reply to it. Just pretend that I'm saying that America is awesome and everything is going great and god bless the troops or something. 

I'm sorry that's your view, you're doomed to be unhappy the rest of your life. But I don't care you hold that opinion, bringing politics up in every thread you can is gonna get them closed and is very annoying. I would say the same if someone came in every thread complaining about how Biden is ruining America. It's very poor forum etiquette.