Topics Sport

Question Is it fair and reasonable to say that one sport is more difficult than another? Sure football may be more athletic than golf, but does the ladder require more mental strength? Is it possible to rank the difficulty of sports?

Accepted:
January 18, 2006

Comments

Some comparisons may be possible, but I don't seen any particular reason to suppose that relative difficulty, for sports, is what mathematicians would call a total order: There may be questions of the form "Is A more difficult than B?" that simply do not have answers. The case of golf and football may well be such a case: Golfers and football players (and footballers, for that matter) use very different sets of skills. Perhaps one could ask whether it is more difficult to perfect the one set of skills than the other, but even that question might not have an answer. What is involved in perfecting the relevant sets of skills might, again, be very different.

Question Is it fair and reasonable to say that one sport is more difficult than another? Sure football may be more athletic than golf, but does the ladder require more mental strength? Is it possible to rank the difficulty of sports? Accepted:January 18, 2006

Question Is it fair and reasonable to say that one sport is more difficult than another? Sure football may be more athletic than golf, but does the ladder require more mental strength? Is it possible to rank the difficulty of sports?

Accepted:
January 18, 2006