Interesting post by Jason Jordan about grades and how statistical modeling could be used to analyze something like the 8a.nu database to better understand how people quantify and perceive grades:
The point is, if grades are understood as probability-ranges rather than discrete pegs, the acrimony of grading controversy would be considerably dampened. The ironic fact underlying Monte Carlo is: by accepting factors of chance as well as skill in climbing grades, by acknowledging them to be a range of probability rather than a definitive standard, they become more rather than less accurate.
Two things about this. First, I don’t really think there are actually that many grading controversies going on out there. Sure, for many of us arguing about grades is a fun topic to banter about over a few beers, but I don’t think anyone is losing sleep over whether or not Resident Evil is actually V10. Second, at the highest ends of the sport where there is “controversy”1, there are really so few opinions able to be considered about a given climb that rendering any sort of statistically significant conclusion is impossible.
Maybe this idea of a sliding range could work though, we could call it the Brave & Humble™ scale. All high-end climbs could be rated using it and anyone who goes for the high-end of the scale will be clearly presenting themselves as someone who is not very Brave & Humble™, and anyone who goes for the low-end can be a shining example for us all. Consider it done.
I’ve also always wondered what a smart person might be able to glean from the trove of data stored in a site like 8a.nu, which is why it is especially odd that the person who does have access to it, who is by all accounts a very smart person, seems to make up charts more often than actually basing them on the actual data he has access too. I’m also not sure how useful the database at 8a.nu would be for this sort of thing since I would guess the vast majority of grades entered there are simply what is in the guidebook and if they aren’t they are inherently biased by being based against what was in a guidebook. In other words, the grades being entered aren’t simply objective conclusions reached by each individual climber but in most cases are either just what the guidebook says or 1 grade on either side, ignoring the possibility that the originally suggested grade could be many grades off.
- Controversy that is good for business for both the climber and the climbing media ↩
Yeah grades dont matter one bit. And yet we spent excessive amounts of talking about them – arguing about them in fact – and chasing them 🙂
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excessive amounts of time.. wheres the damn edit button. I cant be expected to type coherently at this time on a Wednesday morning.
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I wouldn’t say his database is hard to access. Some really basic web crawling techniques can be used to extract most data from 8a. Here is a quick chart iv had running for 6 months or so which records how many times Jens mentions Adam Ondra on the front page as well as tracks climbing rankings over time: http://www.snackoverflow.net/jensmonitor
This can easily be extended to extract whatever data you want in an automated fashion…
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First off, this is one of the best things ever. Second, just because scraping the site is an option doesn’t mean it’s all that great of one. Imagine what it would be like if 8a had a proper API people could play around with?
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What, and invalidate Jens’ spurious claims backed up by MS paint charts of made up data?
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Greg, you should provide whatever code is creating the /usboulders /jenscounter etc JSON. I’d love to play with that data.
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The relevant ruby backend code is here (lines 72 and below).
https://github.com/guidoprincess/gregkerzhner/blob/master/gregkerzhner.rb
The project runs on a ruby framework called Sinatra. All that happens is that once a day, an automated routine goes and calls those functions, which crawl 8a and save the number in the database. The front end code to actually plot it (which is pretty jacked, i just dont have time to fix it) is here:
https://github.com/guidoprincess/gregkerzhner/blob/master/public/js/jens.js
and just uses d3.js to draw a graph of these points
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Rad! Thanks. I found the d3 code through the page source, but for obvious reasons couldn’t get to the actual scraper.
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You spelled San Francisco incorrectly on your home page, unless it’s some intentional in-joke I’m not aware of.
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Sweat!
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It’s hard to extract anything really meaningful from 8a without jumping through lots of statistical hoops because 8a is an extremely biased collection apparatus. Nate Silver, for instance, presumably has to do massive amounts of error correction in his political forecasts to account for “overlap sampling” (i.e. what happens when the Gallup and CNN poll exactly the same people). He has a full-time job doing this and his data is much better than 8a…
One thing that would be fun to do is have some sort of objective calculation about a climb (based on stuff like average slope of holds, average overhang, etc.) that can grade a climb for a given set of human measurables – like reach, height, weight, finger size, etc. – and tell us a priori how difficult it is. (There would probably start off a shit storm because – to give an example – it might show Ashima has an easier time climbing than John Doe.)
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You could never, ever come up with a calculation like that that would be even close to accurate. Funny to see that people are still trying to discredit Ashima though.
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Maybe for the gym where the variables are minimal and grip design could be compared somewhat quantitatively. Even then it would be absurd. but outdoors – no way! For a start nature is in a state of perpetual flux and is infinitely complex. Thats why I climb 🙂
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Why not? Are there not obvious correlations between climbing style and body measurables?
I didn’t try to discredit anybody. I said it “MIGHT” and “FOR EXAMPLE” not that her sends were all bullshit because she’s 80 pounds. And why are people so opposed to the idea that climbing might not be the same for everybody? Nobody seems to deny the fact that it’s easier to pull 150 pounds up a boulder than 300 pounds. So why do people react so violently to the idea that she has an easier time than a 150 pound person? Y’all are so sensitive…
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Just because there are “correlations between climbing style and body measurements” doesn’t mean you can calculate the difficulty of a climb based on measurable physical characteristics of the rock. That would require an absurdly complicated equation with a staggering amount of variables that would be extremely hard or impossible to measure. It would absolutely never work.
And no one is opposed to the idea that climbing is not the same for everyone. It just a little suspicious that most people only bring it up when a child or a woman climbs something hard . . .
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To be fair, I bring this up every time I send a hard climb
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“That would require an absurdly complicated equation with a staggering amount of variables”. Sounds like you agree that it’s possible. I never said it would be easy, but there are obviously underlying trends that would be relatively straightforward to discover if anybody ever put in the effort. It would involve a lot of measurement, a lot of traveling, and a lot of number-crunching, but it’s entirely within the realm of possibility.
I agree with you (to a point), which is why I said MAYBE and FOR EXAMPLE and not “as in the obvious and well-documented case of women and children climbing hard problems/routes”.
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Its really funny how many grown men cannot take it that this little girl is incredibly talented. So many bruised egos.
A solid counter argument is Adam Ondra who climbed hard since a very young age and just got stronger as he got taller. In your logic he should have gotten weaker, because he got heavier and got bigger fingers.
And if it were so like you say, why isnt there an army of children climbing hard? I guess with the amount of children participating in birthday parties at climbing gyms world wide there would be are very solid chance that there would emerge hundert thousands of Ashimas – given your assumption that its only because its easier for children.
I have been working in climbing gyms for over ten years and let me tell you. Not once came I across such strong kids like Mirko, Tito or Ashima. Those are talents, accept it.
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You don’t have to deny Ashima’s talent to say that certain things, namely tick-tacking crimps, are easier for her than Jimmy Webb, anymore than you have to deny Jimmy’s talent to say that something like Sky would be harder for Ashima than it is for him.
It’s called common sense and it’s okay to use it.
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I understand what you are saying.
Let me make an slightly insane example: this comparison would only make sense if there was a creature that had Jimmy Webbs body and had Ashimas fingers, then it would be easier for this creature.
As this is not the case you are comparing two climbers at the top of the pyramid of their respective body type. The statement that something is easier for any of the two with regards to grading has no motivation at all and could even be wrong, as I shown at the example of Adam Ondra. Adam was at his younger age at the top of the children pyramid and now that he is grown is at the top of the grown male pyramid. His accomplishments at his younger age had therefore nothing to do with the ability of tick-tacking crimps.
So please answer me: When it comes to girls and womens ascents, why people have to mention advantages of the body type? I know that its sometimes out of pure curiosity “how did that work?” but more often than that its not. The OP even suggested the possiility – in the context of grading – that the top of the girl/little women pyramid to be equal to the average male climber. Sorry, but what comes next?
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Being able to quantify human performance is an important part of any sport, at least on the coaching / training side of things, and it would awesome to be able to do the bio-mechanics that would quantify the forces at work for different climbers on the same move. But yea, trying to quantify all the vairables at work in a climb and basing a grade on it? I’m drowning in data just thinking about it. But I would argue that a variable such as body weight (mentioned above) may not be an absolute value, what’s more important in my mind are things like the type and quality of balance at work in a move and the distance the Center of Gravity has to travel in space in order for the athlete to attain the next hold. These will be very different for tall and short climbers, and the relative advantage of being lighter can be quickly eroded by other variables.
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Go take classical mechanics before saying it can be done and calling parts of it easy. Too many variables, not to mention, who is going to do the surveying of boulder problems and these calculations? We’re talking about weeks to months of calculations at least (probably more) for one boulder for one person if it’s even totally possible.
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Yes exactly. Also, define “hold”. Not so easy it it…?
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Jens is “by all accounts a very smart person”?
Seems I’m yet come to grips with his peculiar genius.
I’ve always found him one of the most fascinatingly deluded and non self-aware human beings on the planet.
That’s why I love him. For endless entertainmnet value he’s impossible to beat.
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I feel like he is actually a statistician or something in real life
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apparently he is. funny thing is that he has never, not once, shown anything that actually shows any statistic savvy.
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Presumably that is from people who know him in real life. You know, unlike you.
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True story
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I wouldn’t subscribe to that either. He does not appear to me as a person who actually is uses mathematical rigour a lot. But he is for sure a master at trolling a world wide community.
Another point: I don’t like how the 8a database changes climbing. One of the biggest “damage” is in my opinion the change of notation of the boulder grade. Formerly “fb 8a” became “8A”. That little “fb” in the front was a nice artifact of climbing history, telling new generations where that grading scale evolved (Fontainebleau in case you didn’t know). Like the name “redpoint” in rope climbing that also has some nice stories around it. The argument that this new notiation will help to make accomplishments world wide comparable is bogus. Instead, we still have the V-grading, fb-grading and now this new grading. In my opinion are climbers only comparable on their performance on the same route/problem not by the grades given to them.
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nicely said, and you’re right. I like the idea of using the capital letter, because it makes a quick visual distinction for me between routes and boulders. I’ll definitely start adding the fb again though 😉
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I think Paul is on to a super cool futuristic idea! 3D mapping complex areas, objects and landscapes is already being done by drones: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/31/kinect-drone.
I don’t think it would be too far of a reach to say someone could program an algorithm that could determine, at the very least, the angle of a boulder problem and spacing between usable holds and come up with a very general calculation of how hard it could be. Once that was a reality then the next step would be to writing a program that would plug in your measurements (height, ape index, weight, center of gravity, etc.).
Of course, why would we go through all the trouble (time and money) creating such a thing when ultimately (at least for me) who really cares that much? Although it would be nice to be able to tell my buddies, that no I didn’t get that move because I’m taller than you the data clearly shows that you are well within the height range it requires to pull the move your just not as good as me!
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