Can maths give you an edge in sports
As I watch sports I'm applying more and more basic maths principles to figure out winning strategies. I play a lot of tennis and I've started using these strategies and haven't lost since.
It's basic things like where players are positioned on the court, how fast the ball will reach them, how fast they can run for it, how big the court target is. From this you can figure out where to hit the ball to make it an easy shot for you but a difficult return for your opponent. You can then also figure out the simple shots open to them using the same formula. You just need to cover these options to make their life more difficult.
Hopefully I've explained it clearly enough. You start with really basic principles like those I remember doing at school about two trains travel towards each other at certain speeds etc. Here we just figure out what the limits of ourselves and our opponent are and the limits of the court and you can come up with a lot of ways to make your life easy and your opponents hard.
I find it a fun and useful way to apply maths in real life to have more fun.
