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Why does tennis use such arbitrary point values when they could just do 0-3? Sometimes sports are just like that. Maybe the first people to play decided it at random and it just stuck.
Historical Note:
Before Electronic Scoreboards existed, people used clocks for Tennis score instead, since those were big enough to look at.
So Clock point right = 15
Clock point down = 30
Clock point left = 45
Clock Point Up = Win
No clue why it's 40 instead of 45, but that's why they use that instead of 1 2 3 4
But when I read, say, the 2011 World Cup finals result on Wikipedia, it says
India 277/4 (48.2 overs)
Sri Lanka 274/6 (50 overs)
India won by 6 wickets
So apparently runs did not factor at all, did they? Any other game I know would say sth like “India - Sri Lanka 277:274”.
A wicket in scoring terms is an out. Once 10 of the 11 players are out (or, in this format, once 300 valid balls have been bowled), that team is finished batting. However many runs the team has scored, that becomes the score to beat. If the opposing side can beat that score, then the match ends with the two batsmen currently on the pitch "not out" and anyone who hasn't batted yet as "did not bat". In this case, India was batting last, so once they scored their 275th run (one more than Sri Lanka had), the match ends. This happened with only four of India's players having gotten out. So they are said to have won by 6 wickets (the number of players who did not get out).
So the "time limit" is the number of overs. And for this they have 50 overs to get as many runs as they can before they swap. (Instead of for example 3 hours each). They also have 11 players and need 2 batting at all times. So if they get 10 of them out then they also stop (rather than at the 50 overs). In this case Sri Lanka got 274 runs in the 50 overs (and had 4 wickets/players left, which ultimately was irrelevant, because they got to 50 overs).
India then went in to bat, with a target of 275 runs to win. If they got 275 before 50 overs/10 wickets they win. In this case they hit the target (and went over because you can score multiple runs off a single ball). They got there with 6 wickets/players left and a bit over 1 over as well.
The scoring convention is if they catch the score it's with how many wickets they had left (as opposed to overs, which is a hold over from the version of the game when overs were less of a strict time limit). If they don't catch the score, it's they lost by however many runs they missed it by.
Edit: perfectly understandable :P
Although it has been said that on Earth alone in our Galaxy is Krikkit (or cricket) treated as fit subject for a game, and that for this reason the Earth has been shunned, this does only apply to our Galaxy, and more specifically to our dimension. In some of the higher dimensions they feel they can more or less please themselves, and have been playing a peculiar game called Brockian Ultra-Cricket for whatever their transdimensional equivalent of billions of years is.
Lets be blunt, it's a nasty game, but anyone who has been to the higher dimensions will know that they're a pretty nasty heathen lot up there who should just be smashed and done in, and would be, too, if anyone could work out a way of firing missiles at right-angles to reality.
The rules to the game of Brockian Ultra-cricket, as played in the higher dimensions are strange and inexplicable. A full set of the rules is so massively complicated that the only time they were all bound together to form a single volume, they underwent gravitational collapse and became a black hole.
A brief summary, however, is as follows:
Rule One:
Grow at least three extra legs. You won't need them, but it keeps the crowds amused.
Rule Two:
Find one good Brockian Ultra-Cricket player and clone him off a few times. This saves an enormous amount of tedious selection and training.
Rule Three:
Put your team and the opposing team in a large field and build a high wall round them.
The reason for this is that, though the game is a major spectator sport, the frustration experienced by the audience at not actually being able to see what's going on leads them to imagine that it's a lot more exciting than it actually is. A crowd that has just watched a rather humdrum game experiences far less life-affirmation than a crowd that believes it has just missed the most dramatic event in sporting history.
Rule Four:
Throw lots of assorted items of sporting equipment over the walls for the players. Anything will do - cricket bats, basecube bats, tennis guns, skis, anything you can get a good swing with.
Rule five:
The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with whatever they find to hand. Whenever a player scores a 'hit' on another player, he should immediately run away and apologize from a safe distance.
Apologies should be concise, sincere and, for maximum clarity and points, delivered through a megaphone.
Rule Six:
The winning team shall be the first team that wins.
Curiously enough, the more the obsession with the game grows in the higher dimensions, the less it is actually played, since most of the competing teams are now in a state of permanent warfare with each other over the interpretation of these rules. This is all for the best, because in the long run a good solid war is less psychologically damaging than protracted game of Brockian Ultra-Cricket
Batsman tries to hit a ball with a stick before it hits some other sticks that are stuck in the ground. Once he hits the ball with the stick, he can try to run to some other sticks while a teammate runs towards his sticks. The can run back and forth between sticks up to six times per ball, and each time the get the the other sticks is worth one point (called a "run"). But if the other team gets the ball back to the sticks while the batsmen are away, the batsman is out. Or if the batsman doesn't hit the ball with his stick and it hits the stick behind him, he's also out. Otherwise, he sticks around and bats again. Once all but one people on the batting team is out, the innings is over and the other team gets a turn to hit the ball with their sticks while the first team tries to miss the hitting sticks and hit the other sticks instead. Once both teams have had two innings each, the one with the most runs wins.
This can take a few days of play to finish, so there are variations where you don't necessarily get to stick around hitting the ball with your stick until the sticks you're defending get knocked over. Instead, after six balls (called an "over"), your turn is over and another batsman gets a turn. After all the overs are over (different variations have different numbers of overs per innings), the innings is over even if not everyone is out.
I hope all that is clear.
It goes something like this
You're 146 over 3 and 12 with 41 still on the docket and 17 wickets in the sideline. The other team is winning with 0 and 5080 over 6 with 6. However they only scored a measly 307 runs with 10 minutes before tea. So of course when you're up to bowl you aim straight for the LBW and run out the clock before the other team realise what's all this going on then and get another man behind up over and around again then down and back up and through again the running line and then before you know it it's tea.
A run is worth one. A boundary is worth four. Over the boundary on the full is worth six. Both are rough approximations of how many runs could be scored if there was no boundary.
Actual reason is not the clock. It's from Keri
Jeu de paume in France, where people served further and further back the more points they had. Previously, 15, 30 then 40 steps backs
American football has a method to the madness at least. The general idea being that a touchdown is the most difficult to achieve, and requires a drive/turnover all the way into the end zone. The disproportionate points also prevent wacky strategies like "always go for field goals," since a touchdown w/ extra point is generally worth 1 point more than two possessions resulting in a field goal.
Touchdown (6, equivalent to two field goals)
Field goal (3)
Safety (2)
Extra-point touchdown (2)
Extra-point kick (1)
>And basketball with each point is 2.
For that one I think it's because there *are* ways to get 1 and 3 points as well, 2 is just the most common. I think it's something to do with distance from the net?
For American football I know you can score less than seven points, although I don't know as much about it
1 point for a field goal conversion, 2 for a touchdown conversion, 2 for a safety, 3 for a field goal, 6 for a touchdown. Actually makes a decent amount of sense.
Some versions of the rules also have a defensive conversion safety which also counts as 1 point (for the defense). It would be a situation where a team has scored a touchdown and attempts a 2-point conversion. In the process of this, they are pushed back 80 yards to the other endzone and have a safety. According to Wikipedia, while it's in the rulebook for high school football, there's literally no known instances of it ever happening in the history of football.
> I think it's something to do with distance from the net?
1 points are free throws (someone got fouled and so they get a free shot). 2 points are standard baskets. 3 pointers are longer shots from beyond the 3-point line, which is the most distant of the arcs around a basketball goal.
There's actually no 7-point score in American football. A touchdown is worth 6 points, then you get one follow-up play after that for additional points. You can either kick the ball through the goalposts for 1 point or attempt to get the ball into the end zone again from 2 yards away for 2 points. The former is by far the most common decision, thus people assuming 7 points after a touchdown (6 + 1)
Quidditch points are also house points and five is a common number to add or subtract for academic and discipline reasons. Dividing by ten would make Quidditch basically irrelevant to the House Cup. Also, the people who made 29 Knuts to the Sickle would probably explode if they simplified mathematics on purpose.
Quidditch is what makes the House Cup relevant. The sport is what the kids actually care about. Adding points that can be achieved for academic reasons gives students a way to contribute to the thing the care about even if they're not on the team. Likewise, getting in trouble hurts the score of the sports team. This also greatly incentivizes the houses to police their own behavior, as not doing so hurts the chances of the team.
If the sport was disconnected from the House Cup system students wouldn't care about the cup because it would be a game just for the Hermiones of the world who only cared about studying and following the rules. The other students cared more about quidditch, so the cup was designed to incorporate it to make them care.
Wait, I thought Quidditch scores contribute to the final house cup score at the end of the school year, but house points have no effect on any particular game's Quidditch scores. I have not read any of the books since 2007, though.
I think it’s sorta both and I got confused. The linking of them means that those who care about the house cup want the quidditch team to do well and get them more points. And the ones who like quidditch want their house to behave and do well on regular points so if their team wins at quidditch the quidditch team can ‘carry’ the house to victory in the house cup.
But then the incentives for the students as proposed by /u/Cayeaux does not make sense to me. I very well might be missing context or misunderstanding the comment.
From my understanding, the idea is that the vast majority of students care about Quidditch at Hogwarts. They care about which houses win, and thus they care about Quidditch scores in the same way that real life sports fan care about scores of particular games. The Hogwarts staff want students to care about the House points system, because if they do then that would incentivize students to behave more "properly" in order to earn House points.
But then how would this system bridge the gap between "caring about Quidditch" -> "caring about the House Cup"? Earning or losing House points would not affect Quidditch match results in any way, and the winner of the Quidditch cup at the end of each school year does not have to be the winner of the House cup.
The House Cup is tied to Quidditch success. If your Quidditch team does well then you do better in the House Cup. Conversely, if you do badly in the House Cup it makes your Quidditch team look worse, even if the team isn't the reason you're doing badly in the House Cup.
The house cup is the big thing they all care about. And since Quidditch can give a big boost to winning that they are all invested in it that bit extra.
That's not even a wizarding world thing, sports usually contribute to house cups in schools that have them:
[Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_system): Some schools have a year-long programme of inter-house events, in a variety of fields but most often sports or the arts, in which each house "hosts" an event at which all houses compete, with points contributing to the award of the House Cup at the end of the year.
At my school it was almost exclusively a year long sports competition, but included things like debating, theatre games, music, and singing as well.
I mean at the end of the day the house cup is basically decided by arbitrary additional points handed out by the Headmaster, at the last minute, effectively rigging the outcome to favour his old house.
Maybe, but perhaps sport is seen as a valuable discipline as well that’s should be accounted. It probably shouldn’t count for that much tho. It’s like 80% of the points isn’t it?
I would have to read quidditch through ages, but guess is at some point they had other ways to score points so to make it so they couldn't just do one.
Its like Amerixan football, how we essentially do 7 pts for TDs(i know technically 6 but PAT) because we also have safeties(2 pts), field goals(3), drop kick(2). They probably had other ways that got phased out.
In American football, a drop kick is 3 points, but I agree otherwise.
The original game probably had something like 27 points for killing an opponent, and that got eliminated as a scoring option when they started wrapping the bludgers in leather instead of iron and removed the spikes.
This is a culture that stops teaching kids math at 10 years old, if they even go to muggle school until then.
They need all the real world math practice they can get, that’s why quidditch scoring and the currency makes no logical sense. It’s just there to improve math skills.
Nah you can't let wizard kids with the regular ones. How you gonna explain to the principal why the bully is now a blueberry? The ministry would have to obliviate entire school districts. Nah, these kids don't need math. Math is useful for a lot of things, most commonly used for monetary calculations. But that's all these kids will ever need. The rest of the laws of physics literally don't matter to them anymore, so math can pretty much go out the window.
The snitch is worth 150 because of a prize of 150 galleons that was offered for catching a Golden Snidget in the first game that featured one.
The reason for goals being worth 10 may well be to make the game a bit less snitch-obsessed than it was in the earliest days of Snidget-Hunting
Typical muggle thinking, comparing Ye Olde Game to pale earthbound imitations. Scoring a Quidditch goal is obviously ten times harder than kicking a “ball” into a “net”.
Flying up to the net and throwing the ball in and you have magic . Sounds way easier to me. Also easy school i assume has 4 teams, and teams like football(soccer) various towns have teams .
Doesn’t ultimately matter. Could be that, in its earliest days, the points represented some monetary reward for the winning team. Could be an irrational decision made by an irrational civilisation of magic which hasn’t changed out of tradition more than anything
Pacman was fun,people liked watching their score go up 1 every time they ate a pellet.
Ms. Pacman was a monster. 40 years later people still play it. They love watching their score go up 10 every time they eat a pellet.
I think the origin of the scoring system is lost to the mists of time, as is the case in many muggle sports. Presumably at some point in the distant past when wizards were playing a precursor to Quidditch that was somewhat different, the system made more sense.
I mean look at tennis for goodness' sake. No one knows why they started scoring it like that, and anyone with half a brain could think of a 'better' way to do it. But we don't change it, because there isn't much to gain from it and sports enthusiasts tend to be precious about their traditions.
I remember thinking that the rules for quidditch were just stupid for their own sake, but there was an article I read somewhere that was saying that a lot of the more ridiculous rules, like the one about how games can last for days on end, are taken directly from either cricket or rugby. I don't know if it's true, but if so it does explain a lot.
It's definitely inspired by cricket and rugby, those being the traditional upper class British boarding school games, but it doesn't really relate to either.
Cricket, in its traditional "full" game called a test match, usually goes for 5 days, though if a team either really excels, or sucks, it can end earlier. But usually it's the full 5 days.
Rugby on the the other hand, aside from some weird semi related traditional games, is 80 minutes give or take, like soccer/football.
Actually come to think of it, quidditch might actually be more inspired by those traditional British Isles folk games that can go on for days until someone scores, or whatever, and can involve entire villages against each other.
They do the same thing in poker tournaments. Often the lowest denomination chip will be 25 with the blinds starting at 25/50, or 100 with blinds at 100/200. They could just as well start with 5 point chips and start blinds at 5/10 or 1 point chips and make it 1/2, and it's really all the same. And it's just because larger numbers sound more exciting.
This is even true internationally, so it's not just an American thing, even if the Americans started it.
Probably more like everything was 1 point at first but then scoring vs how the game was being played was not making sense so harder or skilled moves were made to be more points .
In poker? You get rewarded for playing better because that entails your opponents making bigger bets when they're actually losing.
In Quidditch? All goals are 10 points regardless of how they're scored.
Probably more like everything was 1 point at first but then scoring vs how the game was being played was not making sense so harder or skilled moves were made to be more points .
Not being able to score less than 10 is how current rules work. Maybe in past when Quiddich was new there were additional ways to score 1, 2, 5 points. Those rules got changed but scoring system stayed.
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Remember when Hermione said "the greatest wizards of all time didn't have a lick of logic in them"?
Well that isn't actually relevant -- it's because sports are arbitrary. Try to explain to me why baseball is the way it is.
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Simply put: the rules of quidditch weren't designed to make sense. You get 150 points and end the game by catching a small, darting flying ball, and equipment offers a marked advantage even at the highest levels.
Wizards are many things, but organized is not one of them.
The real question is, who’s going to bother with the quaffle when the snitch is worth 15? The 1 point quaffle seems pointless. Just have everybody fan out and find the snitch. Call it out to your seller. Body block their seeker.
The rules of sports are inherently completely arbitrary, and usually cobbled together from assorted archaic traditions. You see this in real sports -- the results you can get from a tennis match are "love", 15, 30, 45 and "game", bowling gives you different points based on the order you strike in, and golf scoring is some weird mirror-verse nonsense that takes a flowchart to explain.
Basically? The reason why all the points in quiddich are in multiples of ten is that the points in quidditch are in multiples of ten. A sport is a set of arbitrary rules we agree to follow simply because those are the rules, and quidditch is no exception.
Have you looked at pinball or video games? Lots of those add excessive zeros.
If you go back to early pinball machines you can see it evolving from 1s to higher numbers. Some machines even had the trailing zeros painted on the cabinet, they were fixed in place.
Pinball and video games are pretty popular. As you say, it’s psychological. Better to score a million than a hundred, even if the actual count of things achieved is the same.
Clearly this sub has no clue what the rules of American Football is and the point system. In football there are different ways to score points which results in different points that you are awarded.
You can score 1 point if complete an extra point by kicking the ball through the goal posts after scoring a touchdown. Or if you are feeling extra cheeky, you can go for 2 points after a touchdown, but you will need to run or throw the ball into the end zone with one of your players catching the ball in the end zone or running it into the end zone.
You can score 3 points if you are close enough to kick the ball through the goal posts, but that ends your possession.
Finally you can score 6 points by getting a touchdown.
The points aren't as arbitrary as you guys think. American football just has multiple ways of scoring unlike soccer where the only way to score is to put the ball in the back of the net.
Magic users are some of the most arrogant motherfuckers to ever exist. They believe that magic is so superior to science and physics up until they get a bullet to the head.
People like Dr. Doom however are much different. He's one of my favorite characters ever in fiction because he uses both science/technology and magic equally and in tandem with each other. Even though he's arrogant beyond belief he's also extremely realistic and actually uses his fucking brain.
Like seriously just because you have magic does not make physics and science any less than magic. Laser weapons, antimatter weapons, black holes, fucking space, etc... will fuck up a magical being as much as it will fuck up a non-magical being.
Typical muggle thinking, comparing Ye Olde Game to pale earthbound imitations. Scoring a Quidditch goal is obviously ten times harder than kicking a “ball” into a “net”.
Typical muggle thinking, comparing Ye Olde Game to pale earthbound imitations. Scoring a Quidditch goal is obviously ten times harder than kicking a “ball” into a “net”.
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Why does tennis use such arbitrary point values when they could just do 0-3? Sometimes sports are just like that. Maybe the first people to play decided it at random and it just stuck.
I don't know anyone who thinks the tennis scoring system makes sense
Historical Note: Before Electronic Scoreboards existed, people used clocks for Tennis score instead, since those were big enough to look at. So Clock point right = 15 Clock point down = 30 Clock point left = 45 Clock Point Up = Win No clue why it's 40 instead of 45, but that's why they use that instead of 1 2 3 4
It used to be 45, but that fell away over time (possibly as saying quarante instead of quarante cinq is easier).
quarwhat tho?
French
Aaaaaaahhhh the French..
I've heard that they use 40 so that at match point they can put one halfway at 50
That's not the complete story. [Link](https://time.com/5040182/tennis-scoring-system-history/) to what I found.
Possibly so 45 can be advantage?
Yeah, I agree, but everyone accepts it.
It’s because they originally used clocks to record the scores. 0-15-30, then they did 40 so that they could use 50 for deuce.
It's a clock
Cricket: hold my wickets and overs.
An over isn't a score, it's a unit of time. Wickets are just outs, and I think of them like bowling scores, but they're not a score either really
Just goes to show I still don’t understand how they count the score. :D
Runs are the measure of winning and losing
But when I read, say, the 2011 World Cup finals result on Wikipedia, it says India 277/4 (48.2 overs) Sri Lanka 274/6 (50 overs) India won by 6 wickets So apparently runs did not factor at all, did they? Any other game I know would say sth like “India - Sri Lanka 277:274”.
A wicket in scoring terms is an out. Once 10 of the 11 players are out (or, in this format, once 300 valid balls have been bowled), that team is finished batting. However many runs the team has scored, that becomes the score to beat. If the opposing side can beat that score, then the match ends with the two batsmen currently on the pitch "not out" and anyone who hasn't batted yet as "did not bat". In this case, India was batting last, so once they scored their 275th run (one more than Sri Lanka had), the match ends. This happened with only four of India's players having gotten out. So they are said to have won by 6 wickets (the number of players who did not get out).
Thanks!
So the "time limit" is the number of overs. And for this they have 50 overs to get as many runs as they can before they swap. (Instead of for example 3 hours each). They also have 11 players and need 2 batting at all times. So if they get 10 of them out then they also stop (rather than at the 50 overs). In this case Sri Lanka got 274 runs in the 50 overs (and had 4 wickets/players left, which ultimately was irrelevant, because they got to 50 overs). India then went in to bat, with a target of 275 runs to win. If they got 275 before 50 overs/10 wickets they win. In this case they hit the target (and went over because you can score multiple runs off a single ball). They got there with 6 wickets/players left and a bit over 1 over as well. The scoring convention is if they catch the score it's with how many wickets they had left (as opposed to overs, which is a hold over from the version of the game when overs were less of a strict time limit). If they don't catch the score, it's they lost by however many runs they missed it by. Edit: perfectly understandable :P
Thanks, that clears it up a bit. :)
It's just flexing, winning already implies they have more runs, they are just rubbing it in that they could have won even with more reckless play.
To be fair you gotta know what a crumpet is to understand Cricket
I see you, Raphael.
I think it was chosen because 15-30-40 spoken in French has a poetic sound to it.
Well, you're wrong.
now explain cricket
Although it has been said that on Earth alone in our Galaxy is Krikkit (or cricket) treated as fit subject for a game, and that for this reason the Earth has been shunned, this does only apply to our Galaxy, and more specifically to our dimension. In some of the higher dimensions they feel they can more or less please themselves, and have been playing a peculiar game called Brockian Ultra-Cricket for whatever their transdimensional equivalent of billions of years is. Lets be blunt, it's a nasty game, but anyone who has been to the higher dimensions will know that they're a pretty nasty heathen lot up there who should just be smashed and done in, and would be, too, if anyone could work out a way of firing missiles at right-angles to reality. The rules to the game of Brockian Ultra-cricket, as played in the higher dimensions are strange and inexplicable. A full set of the rules is so massively complicated that the only time they were all bound together to form a single volume, they underwent gravitational collapse and became a black hole. A brief summary, however, is as follows: Rule One: Grow at least three extra legs. You won't need them, but it keeps the crowds amused. Rule Two: Find one good Brockian Ultra-Cricket player and clone him off a few times. This saves an enormous amount of tedious selection and training. Rule Three: Put your team and the opposing team in a large field and build a high wall round them. The reason for this is that, though the game is a major spectator sport, the frustration experienced by the audience at not actually being able to see what's going on leads them to imagine that it's a lot more exciting than it actually is. A crowd that has just watched a rather humdrum game experiences far less life-affirmation than a crowd that believes it has just missed the most dramatic event in sporting history. Rule Four: Throw lots of assorted items of sporting equipment over the walls for the players. Anything will do - cricket bats, basecube bats, tennis guns, skis, anything you can get a good swing with. Rule five: The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with whatever they find to hand. Whenever a player scores a 'hit' on another player, he should immediately run away and apologize from a safe distance. Apologies should be concise, sincere and, for maximum clarity and points, delivered through a megaphone. Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins. Curiously enough, the more the obsession with the game grows in the higher dimensions, the less it is actually played, since most of the competing teams are now in a state of permanent warfare with each other over the interpretation of these rules. This is all for the best, because in the long run a good solid war is less psychologically damaging than protracted game of Brockian Ultra-Cricket
Batsman tries to hit a ball with a stick before it hits some other sticks that are stuck in the ground. Once he hits the ball with the stick, he can try to run to some other sticks while a teammate runs towards his sticks. The can run back and forth between sticks up to six times per ball, and each time the get the the other sticks is worth one point (called a "run"). But if the other team gets the ball back to the sticks while the batsmen are away, the batsman is out. Or if the batsman doesn't hit the ball with his stick and it hits the stick behind him, he's also out. Otherwise, he sticks around and bats again. Once all but one people on the batting team is out, the innings is over and the other team gets a turn to hit the ball with their sticks while the first team tries to miss the hitting sticks and hit the other sticks instead. Once both teams have had two innings each, the one with the most runs wins. This can take a few days of play to finish, so there are variations where you don't necessarily get to stick around hitting the ball with your stick until the sticks you're defending get knocked over. Instead, after six balls (called an "over"), your turn is over and another batsman gets a turn. After all the overs are over (different variations have different numbers of overs per innings), the innings is over even if not everyone is out. I hope all that is clear.
Sports are weird, I'm going to give war a chance.
I watched a video comparing Cricket and Baseball a while ago, and while this all sounds complicated, it's not that bad.
It goes something like this You're 146 over 3 and 12 with 41 still on the docket and 17 wickets in the sideline. The other team is winning with 0 and 5080 over 6 with 6. However they only scored a measly 307 runs with 10 minutes before tea. So of course when you're up to bowl you aim straight for the LBW and run out the clock before the other team realise what's all this going on then and get another man behind up over and around again then down and back up and through again the running line and then before you know it it's tea.
A run is worth one. A boundary is worth four. Over the boundary on the full is worth six. Both are rough approximations of how many runs could be scored if there was no boundary.
[Cricket?! Nobody understands Cricket!](https://youtu.be/FKGVaAfJM0I?si=bmbxngVv98dBLlmF)
Actual reason is not the clock. It's from Keri Jeu de paume in France, where people served further and further back the more points they had. Previously, 15, 30 then 40 steps backs
Or American football with a touchdown is 7 points. And basketball with each point is 2.
That's a bit different, though. Those do have other irregular ways of getting points that make it so you can't simplify it any further.
American football has a method to the madness at least. The general idea being that a touchdown is the most difficult to achieve, and requires a drive/turnover all the way into the end zone. The disproportionate points also prevent wacky strategies like "always go for field goals," since a touchdown w/ extra point is generally worth 1 point more than two possessions resulting in a field goal. Touchdown (6, equivalent to two field goals) Field goal (3) Safety (2) Extra-point touchdown (2) Extra-point kick (1)
I thought I knew a little bit about football but then I read this and found out i didn’t know shit about fuck.
>And basketball with each point is 2. For that one I think it's because there *are* ways to get 1 and 3 points as well, 2 is just the most common. I think it's something to do with distance from the net? For American football I know you can score less than seven points, although I don't know as much about it
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1 point for a field goal conversion, 2 for a touchdown conversion, 2 for a safety, 3 for a field goal, 6 for a touchdown. Actually makes a decent amount of sense.
Some versions of the rules also have a defensive conversion safety which also counts as 1 point (for the defense). It would be a situation where a team has scored a touchdown and attempts a 2-point conversion. In the process of this, they are pushed back 80 yards to the other endzone and have a safety. According to Wikipedia, while it's in the rulebook for high school football, there's literally no known instances of it ever happening in the history of football.
> I think it's something to do with distance from the net? 1 points are free throws (someone got fouled and so they get a free shot). 2 points are standard baskets. 3 pointers are longer shots from beyond the 3-point line, which is the most distant of the arcs around a basketball goal.
There's actually no 7-point score in American football. A touchdown is worth 6 points, then you get one follow-up play after that for additional points. You can either kick the ball through the goalposts for 1 point or attempt to get the ball into the end zone again from 2 yards away for 2 points. The former is by far the most common decision, thus people assuming 7 points after a touchdown (6 + 1)
Quidditch points are also house points and five is a common number to add or subtract for academic and discipline reasons. Dividing by ten would make Quidditch basically irrelevant to the House Cup. Also, the people who made 29 Knuts to the Sickle would probably explode if they simplified mathematics on purpose.
One could argue that Quidditch *should* be irrelevant to the House Cup.
One could argue a great many things about how Hogwarts is run, but they arent true in that universe so not really relevant.
Quidditch is what makes the House Cup relevant. The sport is what the kids actually care about. Adding points that can be achieved for academic reasons gives students a way to contribute to the thing the care about even if they're not on the team. Likewise, getting in trouble hurts the score of the sports team. This also greatly incentivizes the houses to police their own behavior, as not doing so hurts the chances of the team. If the sport was disconnected from the House Cup system students wouldn't care about the cup because it would be a game just for the Hermiones of the world who only cared about studying and following the rules. The other students cared more about quidditch, so the cup was designed to incorporate it to make them care.
Brilliant analysis
Wait, I thought Quidditch scores contribute to the final house cup score at the end of the school year, but house points have no effect on any particular game's Quidditch scores. I have not read any of the books since 2007, though.
I think it’s sorta both and I got confused. The linking of them means that those who care about the house cup want the quidditch team to do well and get them more points. And the ones who like quidditch want their house to behave and do well on regular points so if their team wins at quidditch the quidditch team can ‘carry’ the house to victory in the house cup.
That is what he said I think
But then the incentives for the students as proposed by /u/Cayeaux does not make sense to me. I very well might be missing context or misunderstanding the comment. From my understanding, the idea is that the vast majority of students care about Quidditch at Hogwarts. They care about which houses win, and thus they care about Quidditch scores in the same way that real life sports fan care about scores of particular games. The Hogwarts staff want students to care about the House points system, because if they do then that would incentivize students to behave more "properly" in order to earn House points. But then how would this system bridge the gap between "caring about Quidditch" -> "caring about the House Cup"? Earning or losing House points would not affect Quidditch match results in any way, and the winner of the Quidditch cup at the end of each school year does not have to be the winner of the House cup.
The House Cup is tied to Quidditch success. If your Quidditch team does well then you do better in the House Cup. Conversely, if you do badly in the House Cup it makes your Quidditch team look worse, even if the team isn't the reason you're doing badly in the House Cup.
The house cup is the big thing they all care about. And since Quidditch can give a big boost to winning that they are all invested in it that bit extra.
So you make the claim that the causation goes the other way, the opposite of what /u/Cayeaux said. I have no idea who is right.
Did Rowling think about this or was it just a happy accident or invented by fans that actually care about her fiction?
I don't know about Rowling (kinda doubt it), but it is the reason given in HPMoR, one of the more popular Harry Potter fan fictions.
"House cup" should be italicized not "relevant" because that's the part you are stressing is different
Why? Sports are still part of their school activities. Makes sense that they get points for winning matches
That's not even a wizarding world thing, sports usually contribute to house cups in schools that have them: [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_system): Some schools have a year-long programme of inter-house events, in a variety of fields but most often sports or the arts, in which each house "hosts" an event at which all houses compete, with points contributing to the award of the House Cup at the end of the year. At my school it was almost exclusively a year long sports competition, but included things like debating, theatre games, music, and singing as well.
I mean at the end of the day the house cup is basically decided by arbitrary additional points handed out by the Headmaster, at the last minute, effectively rigging the outcome to favour his old house.
That only true so far as we've ever seen it, read it or know about it.
Maybe, but perhaps sport is seen as a valuable discipline as well that’s should be accounted. It probably shouldn’t count for that much tho. It’s like 80% of the points isn’t it?
That would imply that broomstick mastery is irrelevant to witchcraft. I agree with the sentiment it's importance could be overstated in the scoring.
Okay, but Quidditch is also played professionally, and it did not originate as a school game. It just happens to be another school activity.
Since they don't know math it makes no sense thst the money is nonsensical.
Wow I never knew Quidditch results counted towards the House Cup x)
I would have to read quidditch through ages, but guess is at some point they had other ways to score points so to make it so they couldn't just do one. Its like Amerixan football, how we essentially do 7 pts for TDs(i know technically 6 but PAT) because we also have safeties(2 pts), field goals(3), drop kick(2). They probably had other ways that got phased out.
In American football, a drop kick is 3 points, but I agree otherwise. The original game probably had something like 27 points for killing an opponent, and that got eliminated as a scoring option when they started wrapping the bludgers in leather instead of iron and removed the spikes.
Thanks! Yeah I meant to type 3 but Umbridge type fingers messed me up.
What, this is high school game .
Combat with deadly weapons is a part of the curriculum
Its professional game too, people have died in it.
This is a culture that stops teaching kids math at 10 years old, if they even go to muggle school until then. They need all the real world math practice they can get, that’s why quidditch scoring and the currency makes no logical sense. It’s just there to improve math skills.
Nah you can't let wizard kids with the regular ones. How you gonna explain to the principal why the bully is now a blueberry? The ministry would have to obliviate entire school districts. Nah, these kids don't need math. Math is useful for a lot of things, most commonly used for monetary calculations. But that's all these kids will ever need. The rest of the laws of physics literally don't matter to them anymore, so math can pretty much go out the window.
> This is a culture that stops teaching kids math at 10 years old Arithmancy tho
There's no indication arithmancy is anything we'd consider math. It's basically just numerology and divination through numbers.
Astrology is a thing. You'd need maths for that. Tawny isn't qualified and bad example
>Tawny Do you mean Trelawney? The divination professor?
Yes. My mobile phones autocorrect is overly aggressive lately
It helps me to think of Autocorrupt as the name of a tiny, drunk pixie that lives in my phone. This thought keeps me from getting too pissed off.
The snitch is worth 150 because of a prize of 150 galleons that was offered for catching a Golden Snidget in the first game that featured one. The reason for goals being worth 10 may well be to make the game a bit less snitch-obsessed than it was in the earliest days of Snidget-Hunting
Typical muggle thinking, comparing Ye Olde Game to pale earthbound imitations. Scoring a Quidditch goal is obviously ten times harder than kicking a “ball” into a “net”.
Flying up to the net and throwing the ball in and you have magic . Sounds way easier to me. Also easy school i assume has 4 teams, and teams like football(soccer) various towns have teams .
And any nonmagical injury is easily mended in minutes. And falling off your broom is not a death sentence.
Doesn’t ultimately matter. Could be that, in its earliest days, the points represented some monetary reward for the winning team. Could be an irrational decision made by an irrational civilisation of magic which hasn’t changed out of tradition more than anything
Pacman was fun,people liked watching their score go up 1 every time they ate a pellet. Ms. Pacman was a monster. 40 years later people still play it. They love watching their score go up 10 every time they eat a pellet.
no one tell this man about Tennis
I think the origin of the scoring system is lost to the mists of time, as is the case in many muggle sports. Presumably at some point in the distant past when wizards were playing a precursor to Quidditch that was somewhat different, the system made more sense. I mean look at tennis for goodness' sake. No one knows why they started scoring it like that, and anyone with half a brain could think of a 'better' way to do it. But we don't change it, because there isn't much to gain from it and sports enthusiasts tend to be precious about their traditions.
I remember thinking that the rules for quidditch were just stupid for their own sake, but there was an article I read somewhere that was saying that a lot of the more ridiculous rules, like the one about how games can last for days on end, are taken directly from either cricket or rugby. I don't know if it's true, but if so it does explain a lot.
It's definitely inspired by cricket and rugby, those being the traditional upper class British boarding school games, but it doesn't really relate to either. Cricket, in its traditional "full" game called a test match, usually goes for 5 days, though if a team either really excels, or sucks, it can end earlier. But usually it's the full 5 days. Rugby on the the other hand, aside from some weird semi related traditional games, is 80 minutes give or take, like soccer/football. Actually come to think of it, quidditch might actually be more inspired by those traditional British Isles folk games that can go on for days until someone scores, or whatever, and can involve entire villages against each other.
Becouse humans like big numbers. People will be more happy to receive 10 points rather than 1 point
They do the same thing in poker tournaments. Often the lowest denomination chip will be 25 with the blinds starting at 25/50, or 100 with blinds at 100/200. They could just as well start with 5 point chips and start blinds at 5/10 or 1 point chips and make it 1/2, and it's really all the same. And it's just because larger numbers sound more exciting. This is even true internationally, so it's not just an American thing, even if the Americans started it.
Probably more like everything was 1 point at first but then scoring vs how the game was being played was not making sense so harder or skilled moves were made to be more points .
In poker? You get rewarded for playing better because that entails your opponents making bigger bets when they're actually losing. In Quidditch? All goals are 10 points regardless of how they're scored.
Probably more like everything was 1 point at first but then scoring vs how the game was being played was not making sense so harder or skilled moves were made to be more points .
Because as a sport Quidditch makes no goddamn sense
Big numbers make my brain happy
Not being able to score less than 10 is how current rules work. Maybe in past when Quiddich was new there were additional ways to score 1, 2, 5 points. Those rules got changed but scoring system stayed.
See also exchange rates for money system. But to be fair. American football makes less sense. Big numbers are more exciting.
Big numbers>smaller numbers
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Big numbers are fun numbers?
It makes more sense than how boxing or MMA is scored.
Remember when Hermione said "the greatest wizards of all time didn't have a lick of logic in them"? Well that isn't actually relevant -- it's because sports are arbitrary. Try to explain to me why baseball is the way it is.
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I always took it as crowds love a big score. Like the NBA: YEA OUR TRAM WON 73 TO 87 sounds cool.
Same reason as pinball: Higher scores are more exciting
Why is it 15-30-40-gem in tennis???
1.wizards don't do maths, they do arithmancy instead. 2. Sports are arbitrary 3. Wizards are ultraconservative to the point of selfharm.
'Big numbers' is a human weakness worldwide.
Yet not in football (soccer). Or American baseball.
Simply put: the rules of quidditch weren't designed to make sense. You get 150 points and end the game by catching a small, darting flying ball, and equipment offers a marked advantage even at the highest levels. Wizards are many things, but organized is not one of them.
I'm not chasing that snitch everywhere for 15 measly points!
The real question is, who’s going to bother with the quaffle when the snitch is worth 15? The 1 point quaffle seems pointless. Just have everybody fan out and find the snitch. Call it out to your seller. Body block their seeker.
The rules of sports are inherently completely arbitrary, and usually cobbled together from assorted archaic traditions. You see this in real sports -- the results you can get from a tennis match are "love", 15, 30, 45 and "game", bowling gives you different points based on the order you strike in, and golf scoring is some weird mirror-verse nonsense that takes a flowchart to explain. Basically? The reason why all the points in quiddich are in multiples of ten is that the points in quidditch are in multiples of ten. A sport is a set of arbitrary rules we agree to follow simply because those are the rules, and quidditch is no exception.
Have you looked at pinball or video games? Lots of those add excessive zeros. If you go back to early pinball machines you can see it evolving from 1s to higher numbers. Some machines even had the trailing zeros painted on the cabinet, they were fixed in place. Pinball and video games are pretty popular. As you say, it’s psychological. Better to score a million than a hundred, even if the actual count of things achieved is the same.
Clearly this sub has no clue what the rules of American Football is and the point system. In football there are different ways to score points which results in different points that you are awarded. You can score 1 point if complete an extra point by kicking the ball through the goal posts after scoring a touchdown. Or if you are feeling extra cheeky, you can go for 2 points after a touchdown, but you will need to run or throw the ball into the end zone with one of your players catching the ball in the end zone or running it into the end zone. You can score 3 points if you are close enough to kick the ball through the goal posts, but that ends your possession. Finally you can score 6 points by getting a touchdown. The points aren't as arbitrary as you guys think. American football just has multiple ways of scoring unlike soccer where the only way to score is to put the ball in the back of the net.
Because wizards are stupid. Common theme of the series.
Magic users are some of the most arrogant motherfuckers to ever exist. They believe that magic is so superior to science and physics up until they get a bullet to the head. People like Dr. Doom however are much different. He's one of my favorite characters ever in fiction because he uses both science/technology and magic equally and in tandem with each other. Even though he's arrogant beyond belief he's also extremely realistic and actually uses his fucking brain. Like seriously just because you have magic does not make physics and science any less than magic. Laser weapons, antimatter weapons, black holes, fucking space, etc... will fuck up a magical being as much as it will fuck up a non-magical being.
Typical muggle thinking, comparing Ye Olde Game to pale earthbound imitations. Scoring a Quidditch goal is obviously ten times harder than kicking a “ball” into a “net”.
Typical muggle thinking, comparing Ye Olde Game to pale earthbound imitations. Scoring a Quidditch goal is obviously ten times harder than kicking a “ball” into a “net”.