Heather first brit to be seeded at the Aegon Classic for 20 years apparently...

blob · All-time great

RE: Heather first brit to be seeded at the Aegon Classic for 20 years apparently...

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

blob wrote:
steven wrote:
blob wrote:
I think too much has been made of the "into the top 40" thing.
There is a very common and simple misunderstanding here, but more presciently, the terms into and inside are colloquially interchangeable.
It is arguable that 'inside [or into] the top 40' has a perfectly valid interpretation of '39 or better', that 'in the top 40' more probably doesn't; both in fact and certainly the common understanding.
I don't think it is arguable at all - saying that 40th isn't "in" or "inside" the top 40 makes no sense at all (would anyone say you had to be ranked 9 or better to have got "inside" the top 10?!) and I think it's almost certain that none of the media who reported the second occurrence as the first were thinking along these lines, they'd just forgotten - or rather, the first one to report it had forgotten and the rest just followed like sheep, as they are wont to do.
Given that they managed to forget that in a couple of weeks, it's hardly surprising that they have managed to forget most of Anne and Elena's achievements. I noticed Anne called them out on one such error/omission recently - good for her.
As a courtesy I warn anyone that none of my succeeding post is about tennis at all - and only worth reading if you want a discussion about sets - mathematical, not tennis.

Let me attempt to argue something that is not arguable at all ...
The confusion that people in general often have here is between a boundary and that which it encloses, and that which is without.
The boundary is often perceived as a distinct thing, separate from the contents.
To illustarte: Imagine you draw a cricle on a piece of paper, and then place a dot on it's circumference. Then you ask a random selection of people whether the spot is inside the circle or not.
People may well say it is inside, but the majority of people will pause before making their judgment. They are unsure as to whether being on the boundary counts as being in the circle.
If you ask them if the dot is inside the circle, a smaller percentage of people will agree that it is in the circle.
For the sake of argument, this is true even if ther circumference of the circle is made sufficiently thick to itself contain the dot - a thin line with a big dot straddling outer, circumference and inner, obviously adds to the confusion in a way which an integer would not.
If you move the dot so it is within the circumference, clearly separated by white space, almost everyone will immediately say that it is - except perhaps philosophy students!
These methods are how most people associate to sets and containers. This is a very difficult concept to be comfortable with when it comes to something as abstract as numbers.
Furthermore, people are used to the boundary being something distinct from the contents. For example, a bottle of milk. The bottle is clearly the container, and the milk - inside the bottle - clearly something else. Would anyone say that the bottle is in the milk? No. They are clearly distinct.
With groups of numbers, the numbers are both the boundary and the contents of the set. This further adds to the confusion, as people sub-conciously expect the more familiar and comforatble association of the separate container and contents to apply.
With all of that in mind, most people are very easily confused when it comes to groups of numbers. They try to deal with them in the physical, absolute terms that the are familiar with.
That is why I believe more people are happy to identify 39 as inside the top 40 than 40 itself, and why such thinking as given in the original article is accepted in the common perception.
However, you are of course correct, 40 is in the top 40. To numerate people such as yourself, it is obvious; palpable.
Regarding your example of 9th place. I think that almost all people will be readily agreeable to saying that '9 is inside the top 10', and that their answer to that question will come almost instantaneously, without doubt or hesitation. It is obvious and distinct to them.
If you ask them the same question of 10, most will probably agree. But, I suggest that the answers will be much slower in coming, as that element of doubt as to whether the boundary counts as part of the set or not is encountered. People are scared of being amde to look foolish, or being tricked, and would be wary of giving a wrong answer.
Most of these ideas come from something I must have read somewhere along the way - I think, at least in part, it must be Chomsky, as I haven't read that much! - and it undoubetdly requires more worthy a champion than myself.
I present them merely as, hopefully, stimulating areas of thought and without prejudice

I agree with every word - I think confuse smile

indiana · Tennis legend

I don't agree in the context we are talking here - tennis !

All very interesting, but in my view largely irrelevant. And I say this, appreciating the thought and time given by blob to it all, and having considered it as a mathematician, statistician and tennis follower.

For tennis players and follwers, the boundaries that folk look to are such as 200, 100, 50, 40, 30, 20 and 10. And players reckon themselves and are almost universally acknowledged as having met these marks if and when ranked precisely WR 100, 40 or whatever. And folk may express this as reached the top 40, in the top 40, into the top 40, inside the top 40, all used and accepted when reaching the precise boundary ranking of say WR 40.

Such as WR 39 is quite nice to some, getting 3 as the first number in your ranking, but you wouldn't make it an aim as against WR 40. And more relevantly here, it is not something the media would take any real notice of at all.

I'm absolutely with Steven here. It was a simple mistake picked up by many othets, seemingly forgetting or being unaware she had already been WR 40. It wasn't awareness that she had been WR 40, but now she was WR 39, so she could be said to be in or indeed inside the top 40 at WR 39. Noone really cares about that and it wasn't the point being made.

So while much of what blob says is true, both mathematically and linguistically, as he said himself at the start, he was looking at it in a mathematical context rather than a tennis context, and that's where it falls down.

Context is everything here. The media mucked up.

SMC1809 · All-time great

I'm liking the fact that Djokovic is in the top 0 in the world and the best doubles team in the world can achieve nothing better than a world ranking of 2

steven · Tennis legend

I think blob's argument is very lucid, but I find it more a philosophical argument than a mathematical one and indiana has since expressed much better than I did what I was trying to argue about the 'top 40' issue in the first place.

The fact that blob thinks the reasoning may have come from reading Chomsky tends to back up the idea that the reasoning is more philosophical than manthematical, as does the fact that the two of us who definitely have a mathematical background don't think it's very relevant here and that the real explanation for what appeared in the media is much simpler. (I know other people here may be mathematicians too, but indiana is the only other person who has 'admitted' to it on this thread )

I realise this will be controversial, but to me philosophy is the art of making the simple into something complicated (as here), whereas mathematics tries to achieve the opposite. (That is, except at the very highest levels, where the distinction between maths and philosophy starts to blur and my brain starts to fry! LOL)

The problem is that a lot of people (*) don't really believe the "maths tries to make the complicated simple" thing, which is a pity, because that misconception is largely responsible for lots of people getting it into their heads that they are incapable of doing basic maths when they probably would be able to if they didn't see it as such a 'black art'.

That misconception (i.e. that maths aims to complicate rather than simplify) is probably also responsible for one of the things blob mentions, i.e.:

"If you ask them the same question of 10, most will probably agree. But, I suggest that the answers will be much slower in coming, as that element of doubt as to whether the boundary counts as part of the set or not is encountered. People are scared of being made to look foolish, or being tricked, and would be wary of giving a wrong answer."

It would be interesting to see what did happen if you asked a random sample of 1000 people whether or not the world number 10 was in the top 10, i.e. how many would say yes (surely the vast majority) and whether people would take longer than if you asked them the same question about the number 9. I would guess that it would probably depend on whether the question was asked in a way that made it sound like a trick question or not. I can't imagine many people would think the sentence "Andy Murray is now world no. 10 but has not yet reached the top 10" made sense, or that any of the media would have considered writing something like "Heather Watson is now world no. 40 and is now aiming to get into the top 40" when she hit WR 40 the first time.

Is it hilariously sad that this small issue has generated quite so many words on this thread? Yes (and I say that as someone who has written a fair proportion of those words!) but it's also part of what makes this forum a bit unique and infinitely preferable to people trolling each other all the time.

(*) especially in the West - it seems that the opposite may be true in countries like China and there is even evidence to suggest that it stems from the fact that the basic numbers are expressed in a more logical way in Chinese than in European languages

korriban · Challenger level

Looks like I missed out on this "discussion". Praise the Lord!

RBBOT · Futures qualifying

Computer programmers solved this problem a long time ago: always start counting from 0.

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

I got into arguments like this when I said the year 2000 was not the start of the new millenium, but the end of the old one!

Jan · Hall of fame

Madeline wrote:
I got into arguments like this when I said the year 2000 was not the start of the new millenium, but the end of the old one!

Ah yes I remember having those conversations too!