Talk:Derek Ibbotson

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[edit] "exactly" 4 minutes???

The article says that in 1958 Derek Ibbotson ran the mile in "exactly" 4:00:00 minutes. This statement is absurd and ridiculous, because time is not neatly divided into hundredths of a second, even if that is the precision to which it is measured by customary race timing devices.

There is an infinity of instants of time within the 1/100 of a second that would cause such a timing device to register 4:00:00, and the probability that Ibbotson ran "exactly" 4:00:00 is exactly zero. (Not to mention that the concept of the exact duration for a runner to run a fixed distance is a fuzzy concept, not amenable to exact times.)

O.K., this is a picayune point, perhaps one that only a mathematician would bother mentioning, but it is still true.Daqu 15:42, 13 November 2007 (UTC)