A coin flips. Lady Luck waves a hand and smiles. There’s a tingle as the coin hits the floor. It balances on its side, unsure what to do.
“No! Not this time,” Karma growls. Her slender hand soars through the air, slapping Lady Luck hard across the cheek. The coin decides and topples. Karma is a bitch.
“Polar bears on ice” is an ice skating spectacle for the whole family, starring Olympic level polar bear sledding, a formula to calculate the distance of culinary decadence, awkward introductions with Olympic celebrities and, in the lead role, a skill game of mathematical proportions.
When it comes to winning games and contests I have to rely on skill, because Lady Luck is not on my side. Contrary to what probability predicts, my odds of winning a coin flip are about 30%. When I roll a die, it’s naturally weighted to land wrong side up. And when I play video games, the random number generator decides to have me killed by the first stray bullet nine times out of ten. Karma has one hell of a time restoring the balance upset by Lady Luck. But when she slaps, she does it well. With the flat of the hand and fingers burning on the cheek for an hour.
It was my first year of university, during exams. My notes for Discrete Mathematics, next day’s exam, lay open on my desk. I’d finished studying early that day and wondered what to do. Should I go over my notes one more time or try to relax before going to bed? So what’s the first thing a student does when faced with such procrastination? Drink beer? Stress out and send a million texts to his or her best friend? Curl into a ball and cry? They go look for silliness on the internet. You can’t spell “procrastination” without “internet” – shush, you English majors.
My search for internet silliness led me to a short game hosted on the website of a popular soda company, with the goal to race a sledding polar bear down a snowy mountain in the shortest possible time. It took me 15 minutes and about ten attempts to get a place in the leader-board top ten. That’s when I first noticed that there was a prize to be won by reaching first place by 10 P.M. that exact date; the last day of a three month long competition. I glanced at my clock. It was 9:15 P.M.
I performed some Discrete Mathematics in my head, used Combinatorics to arrange Number Theory with Graph Theory, calculated the statistical probabilities of success and then applied Game Theory to see if it would be possible to reach first place in 45 minutes. Although that previous sentence made ABSOLUTELY no sense and probably put a couple of mathematicians in the hospital, I believed I could make it to first place.
Over the next 45 minutes I didn’t steer the polar bear; I became the polar bear – roaring and slapping my paws at the keyboard; a mental picture that is now implanted in your brain. I studied every corner, every slope, every rock on the course. With only ten minutes left on the timer I was beating every competitor’s time, darting through the snow like a polar bear ballerina – another great mental picture.
With five minutes left on the clock I reached first place. But when I checked the scoreboard I saw that another try-hard just beat my record. I had time for one more run to beat that. There was a certain artistic beauty in watching the polar bear make that last, perfect run, and it crossed the finish line with a four second lead on my competitor.
The clock struck 10 P.M. Nothing happened. The game was still playable. No notification? Doubt crept up on me. Should I keep playing? I gave it another couple of tries, but never even got close to my record. Fortunately, neither did any of the other players.
I decided to give up after 15 minutes and went to bed, dreaming of furry white bears. The next day however, after completing the exam, I came home to find an email declaring me the winner of the competition. Hurray!
The prize was a one day journey to the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, for myself and a friend. This day included the flight from Brussels, a lunch in the Palazzo Barolo, transport while in Turin and tickets to see the men figure skating finale.
Nothing says “winning is equally important to participating” than winning a €1000 trip to the Olympics by sledding a polar bear down a snowy mountain, at home in pyjamas.
Ironically, Discrete Mathematics was the only exam I passed that semester. Discrete Mathematics, which is the study of Game Theory and Probability, among other things.
“Karma, thou art a female dog!”
Read about the Olympic experience in Turin in part 2.