Did you see today's epic track and field related Jeopardy fail? (video)

rojo wrote:

This actually happened on national television. It seems like a parody to me.

https://twitter.com/leighannesharek/status/1349893002324537345

A little bit shorter than a mile?

How can not one of these people even come close?

That's insane

Calamity Joe wrote:

adsfdasfasfsafadfa wrote:

Sure but lets look at the fails

a) One guy thinks 10000m is less than a mile

b) a girl thinks they have 10m races

If there are no 10 meter races someone needs to let Matt London know.

oh my goodness, that's the POTD.

The entire world is making the effort of learning the international language (English).

The minority of people using the imperial units system (or any other system) could maybe learn the international unit system, at least some basics.

Just sayin..

mansman wrote:

That "just a bit shorter" prompt would've gotten me to say 1600m even though a professional running 1500 is more likely.

Why does the US structure high school track differently anyways?

Why wouldn't you run 1 lap races, 2 lap , 4 lap and 8 lap races instead of 1 lap, 2 lap, 3.75, and 7.5? Makes a lot more sense. And obviously it would be crazy to run like 4.02 or 8.04 laps....

I bet when those 440 tracks were being replaced, a lot of people thought they were setting nice PRs. I know it happened to me indoors one race when I shattered my 800 best. Didn't realize it was 160 yard track that we just did 5 laps of:)

1. Dunning, meet Kruger.

2. Gross man. Don't rate women. It's natural to judge randos attractiveness, but keep that in your head. No one wants to hear that.

Lasse Viren wrote:

Wow are most Americans really that stupid?!

I suppose they would say the same thing when they heard my answer in the category of "13th century art."

Now that the “Super Spikes” are coming and the record books will soon be re-written, we should use the opportunity to switch to 500m tracks and change the events to full laps- 500m, 1000m, 1500m, etc. Heck, maybe it can be part of a gov’t infrastructure work program? ?

POD.

Almost as bad as the football category fail:

https://twitter.com/YahooSports/status/959227527033008129?s=20

hmmmmmmm wrote:

500m was the answer that remotely made any sense.

I had to check if El G. had any WR shorter than 1500m. He doesn't.

Strangely, 500m WR is a thing. Just before his Chernobyl-level meltdown and curious social media posts, David Rudisha put up the Men's 500m world record.

Bio Dome wrote:

semi_pro wrote:

I remember there was a Seinfeld episode where they were referring to some sort of barrier and said it was "Like breaking the 3 minute mile". God that was bad.

I can't remember the episode or anything else about it.

Can somebody find that?

It was meant to be hyperbolic to the point of being humanly impossible. I think they actually nailed it. Actually, the running related stuff on seinfeld was usually pretty spot on (except an elite marathon runner being from a sprinter country).

I agree. Saying it's like the 4 minute mile wouldn't make sense because plenty of people have done it. I'd say it's widely accepted to be impossible for anyone to run a 3 minute mile.

Epic! I guess it would be the same though if someone asked me about a ballet move. I think I will now take a page from our lovely political climate in the U.S. and officially declare myself the World Record Holder of the 10 meter dash with a time of 7 seconds....no wait, I believe it was more like .7 seconds to go from my couch to refrigerator. I know there's no proof available and no one saw me do it, but I did it. Really. Why? Well, because I said so. Therefore it's truth.

StillRunnin wrote:

Epic! I guess it would be the same though if someone asked me about a ballet move.

Not equivalent. This has less to do with T&F than dumb, insular Americans that still don't have a clue about a system that is divisible easily by 10

My name is neither Dunning nor Kruger, so I don't know what you mean. Apologies for the mix up of more and less, my brain forgot the 3 in the conversion of 1 meter to 3.281 feet.

You are right, a rating system for women is not appropriate and not something I typically do. Bit of a joke between me and an old friend. I'm sure you are familiar with beer goggles. Well there also are Jeopardy goggles. I find intelligence very attractive. Perhaps you might agree.

I saw it and thought they should do better than that with basic math skills. But ask them about 17th century Italian artists or some king from the14th century and they know that.

Kind of Old wrote:

I saw it and thought they should do better than that with basic math skills. But ask them about 17th century Italian artists or some king from the14th century and they know that.

I am a little surprised they had not memorized the list of olympic winners.

There are a lot of Olympic sports, and even in track there are a LOT of events.

Sports aren't covered that often on Jeopardy (and let's face it, track is a niche sport), so this result isn't that surprising. Although obviously they all could have made a more educated guess with the metric version of the mile conversion.

I think in a 10-meter race it woud be really important to get a fast start, you know?

RunningOtaku wrote:

It illustrates two things:

1. Americans don’t know much about the metric system

2. Most of us know even less about Track & Field

Forget track and field. This demonstrates that Americans have absolutely no concept of the metric system. How can you think a mile is just a bit further than 10km? Or 10 meters?

If you asked that in the UK you might get a range of answers in the 1km to maybe 3km range. But nobody is saying 10km is less than a mile.