RRC Archives

It could feel exponentially harder and still be linear or even logarithmic because to improve in strength and skill by linear increments gets exponentially more difficult.

SCIN wrote:

pigsteak wrote:

twan wrote:
catching up to people above me is only going to make me stronger.. and just add to the fun..

not true. when you catch them they are now depressed. glad your game hurt someone elses feelings.

and the point system is so retarded that it doesn't even begin to make you stronger. you can climb 10a over and over and over, and out score about anyone. the scale needs to be exponential to begin to capture the essence of hard climbing.

So Pigsteak are you saying that the difference in level of difficulty between a 5.13a and 5.13b is not equivalent to the difference in level of difficulty between a 5.10a and 5.10b? That's the only reason I can think of for an exponential point system. But if that's the case it means there's a deficiency in the Yosemite Decimal Rating System, right?

I would say that is exactly correct. 10a to 10b is easier than 11a to 11b which is easier than 12a to 12b which is easier than 13a to 13b....as the grades jump, minor subtleties increase the grade.

I always thought that was pretty much understood anyway. The difference between a 5.7 and a 5.8 is much much closer than a 5.11 and a 5.12. I think I head someone say once going from a .7 to an .8 was about as hard as increasing a letter grade in the higher parts of the YDS.

Sorry for making your eyes pop out of your head Ray. What I was trying to say is that the climbing grade scale could be linear based on some objective measure of forces etc, but each individual will have personal non-linear improvement with respect to effort and time spent practicing. But this would be different for everyone. Some people may be stuck trying to go from 10a to 10b early in their climbing but then go from 12a to 12b very easily while for others the opposite may be true. But, there will always be some barrier at each persons peak that they are not able to overcome and they will die knowing they suck.

Danny, if I grow a cool beard like yours will I be able to understand what the hell you're talking about?

Just ignore me. I think I'm just confused and trying to unconfuse myself. But then again since I'm confused you might want to ignore ingoring me and go ahead and grow a beard and see if it works. But then again ...

I think Danny makes sense. Although the difficulty is linear, the distribution of climbers' ability would be close to a bell curve. Which is why going from 15a to 15b may be the same net difference in terms of theoretical absolute difficulty compared to 10a to 10b, but making the leap to 15b will require much more training (and/or good genetics), hence why fewer people can do it, and why some would argue the linear point distribution doesn't make sense.

But this is all kind of silly, anyway. Let's just go climb rocks.

I'd be up for making it exponential. This is strange though. Take a look at what 8a.nu uses. I can't make any sense of it. They give more points for going from 7b to 7c than they do going from 8b to 8b+.

8b+
1150

8b
1100

8a+
1050

8a
1000

7c+
950

7c
900

7b
800

7a
700

6b+
550

6a
400

5a
250

I'm not arguing it should be changed (it would only hurt me).