I'm doing some research on trick difficulty, and if you have time...
Rank the difficulty of "juggling" this many balls from (1 - infinity):
3 -
4 -
5 -
6 -
7 -
8 -
9 -
10 -
11 -
12 -
13 -
14 -
Thanks in advance if you decided to do this. :]
No you don't, because I did really do it.
7 is harder than 6, which is harder than 5.....
My scale is logical and consistent. Which I don't think a scale that grades from 1-infinty can be.
Your question is poorly phrased, or imprecise.
What exactly is it that you want to know? Why do you start at 3 and stop at 14? Who is funding your research? Are you doing a double blind trial? Can you tell a hawk from a handsaw, and if so, under which meteorological conditions?
I very specifically phrased my question to be vague, as to get what I feel are the most "pure" results.
I want to know exactly what I asked, and I started at 3 because that is arguably the most basic 2-handed juggle, and stopped at 14 because it is lying right on the limits of current juggling ability.
You're hilarious, by the way.
yeh, okey ..
2 - lowest difficulty, 2b-shower Ss: 31, = 1 or 0 or 0.5 . ( Maybe rate wimpy (2x,2x), or Ss: 330 even easier, = 0.25 or 0.3, 'cos hands don't do mainly same movement? )
3 - 1 or basic 3 - one more ball than you have hands, but mainly only one ball in the air.
4 - 18 (?) .. see 5 balls. Then ( 4 "ball"-factors + 1 "moreball"-factor + 1 "no_crossing_point"-factor [see below] ), make 6 times three-period = 18 difficulty: Every run of 4 balls after flash would be worth 18 catches of 2 balls. A cascade having o n e crossing point to focus on, whereas the fountains need t w o points or imagined poles or verticals to aim at or along them, in my little experience with these, makes the fountains slightly more difficult, than the cascade, i think ..
5 - 21 - for #n+2 more balls, each ball juggled ( + a 'bonus' of the two more balls added? ) is worth a whole period juggled with the lower number of balls : one period of Fives cascade after the flash, 5555555555.. thus would be worth 5 "ball"-factors + the two more balls multiplied with period runs of #n-2 = ( 5 "ball"-factors + 2 "moreballs"-factor) * 3 period = 21 catches ) of a three cascade, 333333..
6 - 32 (?) - =(6+1+1)*4
7 - 45 - =(7+2)*5
8 - 60 (?) - =(8+1+1)*6
9 - 77 - =(9+2)*7
a.s.o. .. so, e v e r y 9b period run (999999999) after the flash would be worth 77 catches of 7b. Every period run of 7b (7777777) would be worth 45 catches of 5b, 28 catches (21 catches after flash) of 7b would already be worth 135 catches of 5b, made up like that. All the while 135 catches of 5b (130 after flash) would be worth 26 periods * 21 difficulty = 546 catches of 3 balls.
.. as the limits and hurdles to overcome at very high throws, like there are air-resistance, weight of ball, surface + drag-coefficient, muscle force & unlike higher skills needed, the difficulty should increase by another modifying factor, so maybe gravity formula should then be used as modifying factor on top .. on the other hand the more balls make up e.g. only two/ninth of 9b for going up to 11b, so the difference from going to 5b from 3b is bigger (two/thirds balls more) than going from 9b to 11b (only two/ninths balls more) .. O.o
.. all assuming, one can choose to juggle the pattern that suits them easiest
and something else occurred to me judging flashes, qualifies and period runs .. no matter if starting your cascade as a ladder or doing the right height from the start with more balls' weight in the starting hands, only the third period will be thoroughly juggled in endurance mode, and even that only provided you do a fourth period run, not going into collect after third period:
- first period, flash - ladder or more balls' weight and [22..] in starting hands in any case.
- second period, qualify - you are correcting the different beat of the ladder throws or you're handling the balls at one balls' weight only for the first time.
- third period - only now are you coping with originally juggled props at their right height in the right beat (& at one props' weight only).
- fourth period - if not juggled on, but a collect, the preceding third period wasn't juggled thoroughly q.e.d. :o)
Little Paul - - Parent #
What units are you using? Teaspoons per fortnight?
So a wiffle ball? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiffle_ball
yw! .. but I just see, I calculated that wrong .. for 4 balls I did #n+1 (that is 3b+1) compared to 3b-casc, where it should be compared to 2b+2. Then - comparing 6b to 4b and 8b to 6b - it would be 2 "moreballs" (not just one) .. the line would then read 2b - 0.5 3b - 3 4b - 14 (4 "ball"-factors + 2 "moreballs" + 1 "no_crossing"-factor) * 2 = 14 . 5b - 21 6b - 36 (6+2+1)*4 7b - 45 8b - 66 (8+2+1)*6 9b - 77 .. for the wimpy - which to me seems easier than the fountains - I'd take off again that "no-crossing-factor", then 6b = 32 difficulty, 8b = 60 again. .. But I'm still highly unsatisfied with completely ignoring e.g. needed skills / techniques andor e.g. gravity (=unlike faster speed of high balls landing) and aswell pretty arbitrary rating of "balls" and "moreballs" for mere sake of getting a number as result. But I do understand the wish to calculate difficulties.
This is all completely dependant on the person. I really hope that if you are doing research on this you're collecting data about each person e.g.
1. What is their dominant hand (left, right, ambidextrous)
2. How long have they been juggling
3. What is the maximum number of balls they can juggle (as their feedback is only really valid up to what they can currently do)
4. Do they do any other activity that promotes hand-eye co-ordination (another sport, artist/architect, engineer)
5. Age (I'm sure there'd be a correlation between this and max balls, those young ones can be depressingly good).
6. Eyesight (odd one, but I have found it increasingly difficult to juggler without my glasses)
Any good research should have a sufficient about of meta data for each subject. It helps to put into perspective the data they provide you otherwise none of the data can be weighed against a common set of attributes.
Oh, and lastly, always use a scale when measuring anything. 1 - infinite will really skew any results and no one will have a common basis on how to compare what is difficult. Instead you can either give them a a scale (1-20), or in this case ordering them by difficulty (most people would go 3,4,5,6,7 etc, however I don't). Always remember when designing surveys how you're going to actually interpret the data and never design it based on a preconceived notion as to what you think the results will yeild.
As for myself (left-handed, 8 years, 7(ish), engineer/artist, <30, awkward)
2 - 1
3 - 2
4 - 3
5 - 4
6 - 6
7 - 5
Bonus, siteswap throws:
1 - 5 (zip)
2 - 0
3 - 3
4 - 4
5 - 5
6 - 6
7 - 8
Lastly, I'm not sure (as a juggler) I would call juggling X number of balls in a cascade a trick. A trick* is something that should differ from the norm. As an example I often juggle shuffles (not slams), which confuse the hell out of jugglers trying to learn them.
*a cunning or skillful act or scheme intended to deceive or outwit someone.
6. Eyesight (odd one, but I have found it increasingly difficult to juggler without my glasses)
It shouldn't be odd, because glasses are supposed to correct vision impairments to a rough standard. However, despite being unable to focus clearly as high as my 7 ball pattern I can't juggle with my glasses because I get distracted by the extra balls that appear (as the balls move past the scope of your lenses you seen one image inside the lense & one outside).
Little Paul - - Parent #
One thing I've had to get used to with the golf club trick is that the balance happens above my glasses and all the important stuff is out of focus.
I tried it a few months back while wearing contacts and I couldn't do it because it was all weird
I tried it a few months back while wearing contacts and I couldn't do it because it was all weird
Now, has that ever stopped you before??
You are absolutely right about getting some metadata for this survey. In the beginning I only was trying to get a rough consensus in the juggling community of the "difficulty" of juggling x number of balls, but I think I will add more to that now.
1. Is an interesting one, have you noticed a right handed vs. left handed difference in ability to juggle symmetrical base patterns?
3. I absolutely agree. I do want to accept estimates for the higher numbers, though, because otherwise data on 10+ objects would be pretty bare. I'm also interested in people's outlook on the difficulty of numbers that haven't been done yet, like 14, and why some people say 15 will never be done.
4. This one I feel would be really hard to quantify. Hm
5. This often depresses me, and makes me wonder how much "good juggling time" I have left
I really considered putting a limit on the scale, but then I started running into problems. For example, if 9 balls is 100,000 times harder than 3 balls, a scale of 1-10 or even 1-100 would be silly. I settled on an infinite scale for a few reasons, but I may have made a mistake there. Do you have any suggestions?
And yes, I even knew of my mistake of using the word "trick" when I typed it. Anyway, awesome stuff. I'm going to start up this survey again on here when I get everything nailed down.
1. Quick bit of context. In sport left-handers have the advantage, not because being left-handed means you're better at hand-eye co-rdination, but because you're the minority. This means that left-handers get used to and often play against right-handers, often enough their weaken (e.g. backhand in tennis or squash) can end up being better than their forehand (certainly is in my case).
However, there is a link between left-handers and being ambidextrous (a small link, and I can't remember the study), which would help learning tricks symmetrically.
For me, being left-handed made learning tricks easier purely because I was able to mirror whomever I was learning from. Meaning that I would learn with my dominant hand whilst a teacher (or video) would show me a trick from a right-handed point of view. Since there are more right-handers then left-handers I've found it quite...handy.
3. Hmm, the issue with this is that you'll need to be able to look at your results in two views, 1. being ratings based purely on what people can do (this'll be more accurate). 2. ratings based on people guessing difficultly on what they can't do. There a danger that by combining 1 and 2 the results will be skewed or at worst made void.
4. This doesn't actually have to be quantifiable. You could end up with some interesting data. For example determining the average balls juggled by engineers vs artists, or event the range in difficult that each group might perceive. (I'd guess that science based background would provide more consistent ball difficulties than non-sciecne ((on average))).
5. Time worrying is time you could be juggling! Don't worry about what could have been, concentrate on what you can make happen! (I'm sure that's from a fortune cookie or something).
Scales are very difficult when they're not measurable. Especially since it's people are easy to influence their answers. If you have time I would suggest interviewing some people with this approach:
- First ask them to rate the 3-9 cascade
- Then discuss their results, ask them how much harder going from 3-4 was and how it compared going from 4-5.
- (Do this for at least 10 or so minutes)
- Then ask them to rate the 3-9 cascade again.
What you'll find is that the results will change (obviously since they won't have remembered them), but also because you'd have just engaged with them to actively think about how difficult each X was compared to X-1.
The other option is to rate them based on the difficulty of the previous X. Going from 4-5 was twice as hard as going from 3-4, etc.
It's great that you're taking the time to do this!
Another approach: One might want to find out, how difficult it would be to program a robot to juggle well. Thus having to account for all physics of juggling and finding to some facts about difficulty and eliminating any subjective felt rating of different jugglers (with different approaches ot juggling and different experiences). So, maybe make it a topic in robotics-forum. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggling_robot .. but I fear, these robots seeming to have stiff wrists and not entirely copying human anatomics, it is another mechanical Frankenstein-juggling they do .. still though, maybe the programmers know something about difficulties of ball numbers and patterns.
that's robot-ist, I expect the robots are all looking at our juggling and discussing how sloppy it is and how we don't correctly copy robot anatomy.
A robot passing partner would be useful. Especially one that could call out my end of the pattern without confusing itself.
yeh lol :o) .. we're all so bad robots ..
(here's a promising contender for the future https://www.youtube.com/v/mXrzKDs8WnI .. found with "juggling robot -factory")
I'm not sure if this one's real .. there's confusing words like "animatronic" and "suitable animations that indicate failure" .. it (he?) does pass though ..
oops Linky: https://www.youtube.com/v/83eGcht7IiI
That's already a pretty good training aid for learning 3 balls, how long before it has an act and shows up at conventions?
I'd be happier if it had a Hello Kitty face or something instead of this disturbing impression of a creepy old man with no teeth.
Ooouh, right! .. din' even look at its face .. but one lacking a nose, I wouldn't either :o]p
It i s real btw (looked up "animatronics" on Wikipedia, a form of mechatronics)
Little Paul - - Parent #
They'd need the rights to hello kitty to do that, and Disney disnae do they?
pumpkineater23 - - Parent #
Looks a bit like Bruce Forsyth.
loganstafman - - Parent #
Nobody complains that planes don't flap their wings.
That's because we have a plane that flaps it's wings! Oh Canada...
https://www.youtube.com/v/DmzEKRSlA2k
20 seconds sounds more like slowly falling or controlled descent than flying, but I guess it is almost twice as long as the Wright Brothers first powered flight (though only 2/3 the duration of the record for a paper aeroplane).
I've also looked into this in detail. You can find a more thorough history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggling_robot but to summarize: For a long time, 2 balls in one "hand" in columns was the only pattern a robot could do. Then they made some bounce juggling robots because bounce juggling is easy(yeah, I said it), then a 3 ball cascading humanoid robot, and the now pinnacle of juggling in robots seems to lie here:
https://www.youtube.com/v/9asDO_1A27U
with a 5 ball cascading robot.
It makes me really feel really proud knowing that I can juggle far better than any machine ever made. I just watched a documentary about Garry Kasparov's infamous chess loss to the supercomputer Deep Blue in 1997, and I'm glad technology hasn't surpassed humanity in "my field" yet.
I feel like I can learn something from that robot's 5, though. I mean, I wish that when I dropped 1 ball out of the 5 ball cascade, the rest just continued in a perfect, unaffected 55550 like that. Until I KICKED IT UP... Wow.
Here's also a video survey of 'em all by David Cain on IJA: http://ezine.juggle.org/2015/02/07/juggling-robots-and-machines-a-video-survey/
.. concerning diffculty, one would expect a r o b o t to juggle any pattern and many whatever props (just like any virtual 2d or 3d software we got by now) as there's only physics of throw involved, .. but actually they all do but one andor easy patterns or simply "play catch" .. so it can't be that easy to construct & program a "Deep Varicolor" juggling bot ..
I also reckon that for e.g. JugglingLab, the °difficulty° of a 5 and an f (15 props) cascade is fairly same rated in "number_of_lines_of_code" or "events" andor "catch-paths", but a 645 or already only a simple 4-fountain needs more like double amount of "lines of code" andor "paths & events" .. so the real difficulty of 'human' juggling seems to lie in coordination, perception, anatomy, motorics, brain, adaptation and many more .. revealing another sort of complexity as mere physics & mathematics of the throw (trajectory, ballistics, a.s.o.) require.
Can't be long.
Combine it with Google's robot donkey and we'll have a robot that can joggle better than you too.
Kasparov's defeat and the prevailing of chess-programs didn't and doesn't keep anyone from playing chess and using puters as tool for analysis and study .. it would be shocking at first, to see a humanoid do 'your' pattern perfect with double as much balls in triple speed and break all human records with the easy of e.g. JugglingLab, but we'd soon get used to them and find them an enrichment and like the idea to b u y yourself a passing & feeding partner [citing emilyw] and use them for study, practice and analysis or as luxurious metronome ..
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