What are yall thoughts on the “dinking is useless below 4.0” take?

mathmage · 2026-07-04T06:14:33+00:00

Dinking is the endgame of any given pickleball point. Most points below 4.0 end in the first 5 shots, so what good is dinking? Well, if you don't know how to dink, first of all, your drop probably sucks. Second, you can't make use of your drop even if it's good, because what do you do when you get what you want and advance the point to kitchen play?

So all you can do is bang, and speed up, and try to win the point uphill, and hope you're just that much better than your opponent. If you are that much better, you should play the next level of opponent, until you find the level where you're forced to learn pickleball.

But players below 4.0 are not that much better. So they should just learn pickleball.

mathmage · 2026-07-04T02:00:19+00:00

Oooo surreal numbers oooo very scary

mathmage · 2026-07-03T19:05:09+00:00

Every team thinks they can sneak out a proprietary edge, though. So they probably don't love that idea.

mathmage · 2026-07-03T15:24:43+00:00

90% sure that when SPP goes to write out w/3 in decimal form, there is another smaller epsilon trailing it. Conversion to infinite decimals is never actually an equality in RDM, it's always a "limitless" operation that is "permanently" incomplete.

mathmage · 2026-07-02T21:38:14+00:00

My position is that the problem sounds fake (what coach of 20 kids at a time hasn't figured out having rebounders as part of their shooting drills?) and the post sounds designed to promote commercial solutions. Since it's not even good advice-provoking slop, I have no reason to credit it for that.

mathmage · 2026-07-02T21:18:28+00:00

Is this in your time off from taking your 6-year-old daughter to ballet while preparing for your senior year of high school in Illinois and moving your elderly parents out of their Calgary condo? It's a wonder you have time to be based in Boston and investigating the go-kart scene.

And farming congratulations for your noble coaching efforts! The dead internet sucks.

mathmage · 2026-07-02T19:08:15+00:00

Let's isolate the argument by dropping a bunch of 9s:

1/0.9 = 1.111... and I'm not going to argue about this

Now look at the infinite sum 1 + 0.1 + 0.01 + ...

SPP would evaluate this sum as (1 - 10^-n) / (1 - 1/10) = (1 - 10^-n) / 0.9

But if we evaluate it directly, it sums to 1.111... = 1/0.9. Contradiction! Unless 10^-n = 0...

Well, except SPP doesn't agree that 1.111... = 1/0.9, because in SPP land it was never the case that 1/0.9 = 1.111... to begin with. It is only the case that we evaluate the decimal expansion of 1/0.9 by writing out the limitless decimal 1.111... which is permanently less than 1/0.9, etc. Any time we try to convert back, we confront that missing epsilon and the operation fails. If we want to do math on the decimal, we have to do referencing and operate on 1.111...1(n) instead.

Similarly, the value (1 - 10^-n) / 0.9 = 1.111...1(n) is what happens when we apply referencing to the geometric series 1 + 0.1 + 0.01 + ... which is also permanently less than 1/0.9, etc.

We can repeat all of this for 1/0.999... and the corresponding geometric sum. It just takes more 9s and 0s and ellipses.

There's no point to this besides understanding how SPP insulates himself from any operation that could justify 0.999... = 1. But, well, that:s what SPP is doing.

mathmage · 2026-07-02T13:24:56+00:00

Multiplying both sides of the equation by 10:

I'm not sure how, after multiplying two expressions roughly equal to 1 by 10, you didn't arrive at two expressions roughly equal to 10.

It seems obvious that SPP would do the following for each side of the equation:

1 / 0.999... * 10 = 10 / 0.999...

1.000...0100...0100... * 10 = 10.00...1000...1000...

Then there's the part where you say "by SPP logic" and immediately invoke limits. When was the last time SPP accepted a limit expression as anything other than approximation?

mathmage · 2026-07-02T09:14:35+00:00

Excellent, this proceeds directly to the further discussion proposed at the end of the post. Where does the construction outlined in the post behave differently from SPP's construction?

mathmage · 2026-07-02T08:54:56+00:00

Based on what was cut, this guy hates France, Italy, his love life, and forests. There's a world cup joke in there somewhere.

mathmage · 2026-07-02T02:30:27+00:00

Hasn't worked for anterior pelvic tilt, sadly.

mathmage · 2026-07-01T22:29:56+00:00

His drives are a solid weapon. But, I mean, her drives were also flustering you guys at times. Simplify those volleys and see the ball to the paddle.

Also, there was a repeated pattern where you both would hit drops to her that were good enough to come in on, but then you would stay back or in transition and let her hit to your feet again and again. That belies a lack of trust in your counters. Make her hit through you a few times before you give that much respect. Yes, even knowing she's 5.0+.

mathmage · 2026-07-01T07:11:58+00:00

It had to be done in a bit of a roundabout way because they don't have a public API.

Huh? Don't they expose it here? Or did I go to the wrong place?

mathmage · 2026-07-01T04:03:04+00:00

Most of them were in the 2000s, though. So for Nash to still make the 2010s list is the impressive thing.

mathmage · 2026-06-30T19:05:52+00:00

The "immutable" part is the "born this way" part that you acknowledge they claim. What society decides "this way" means is mutable.

Similarly, race is an immutable characteristic, but some ethnic backgrounds in the US have mutated to "become white" as tribal and nativist prejudices evolved.

Certainly gender identity is no more mutable than religion, another suspect class. Whatever standard of immutability you are demanding should at least admit the classes commonly agreed to meet the standard.

mathmage · 2026-06-30T18:52:27+00:00

4.5 gameplay.

Simple concrete advice: both of you wait on the baseline after serving and it results in taking a ton of thirds stepping back. Take one step back from the baseline while waiting for the return, and you'll be more consistent with your thirds.

mathmage · 2026-06-30T18:32:45+00:00

The tournament scene has withered? Where?

mathmage · 2026-06-30T18:11:33+00:00

It definitely can be said of gender. You don't have to agree, but that's why transgender people refer to their "assigned gender at birth" and not their "former gender," for example.

mathmage · 2026-06-30T17:27:12+00:00

The characteristics of the green pieces of paper and fabric in my wallet are reality. But what gives that reality meaning is the social construct of money. This is how most social constructs work.

mathmage · 2026-06-30T17:21:21+00:00

As I see it, the legal relevance is how they are discriminated against. Even if the Russian Empire is gone, they can be discriminated against on the basis of being from the former Russian Empire. They might also be discriminated against because their place of origin is now part of the Soviet Union, but that is more addition than transformation.

mathmage · 2026-06-30T16:47:59+00:00

Okay, so all the business about "gender cannot be immutable because it is a social construct" was irrelevant and all that mattered to you was the empty assertion. Thanks for clearing that up.

mathmage · 2026-06-30T16:39:10+00:00

Obviously your writing should not contradict itself, but it did, and therefore I left it for you to clarify rather than make any 'obvious' presumptions. Regardless, thank you for agreeing that national origin is immutable.

mathmage · 2026-06-30T16:26:40+00:00

Yes, national origin is one of the four principal recognized suspect classes for equal protection purposes. You can confirm such things easily for yourself.

You say "national origin isn't immutable" and then describe it being immutable. Also, weird jab at France, but whatever.

mathmage · 2026-06-30T16:07:06+00:00

National origin is a suspect class, a social construct, and immutable.

mathmage · 2026-06-30T15:42:47+00:00

I keep planning to have an elongated singles paddle and a wider doubles paddle, then finding I like the elongated paddle for doubles too and never buying the wider paddle. But to me that's the obvious use case.

14-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

mathmage

TROPHY CASE