Talk:Derek Ibbotson

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"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)[reply]

More to the point how could it have been the first 4-minute mile, if he was fourth in the race? What times did the first 3 run? Is it supposed to be a joke because it was the first 'exactly' 4-minute mile? Feeble if so... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.113.152.102 (talk) 10:04, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's just a little joke. The official time was 4:00.00 that's all. TheMathemagician (talk) 10:26, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]