Summary by Frank Cerwin of an article authored by Katherine Douglass, Augustus Lamb, Jerry Lu, Ken Ono, and William Tenpas
If you are hooked on watching Olympic events like I am, you probably saw Kate Douglass swim to a gold medal in the 200-Meter Individual Medley and the 4X100 Medley Relay at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. She also won 3 silver and 2 bronze medals in other races. Quite an accomplishment for this 22-year-old athlete. But you probably didn’t know that Kate is also in the Department of Statistics at the University of Virginia and co-authored an article entitled “Swimming in Data” detailing how mathematics, physics, and technology leveraging data has revolutionized the sport.
Consider that medals are often contested by thousandths of a second and every factor counts in winning a race. So, honing these factors can make the difference between being on the medals stand or hearing someone else’s national anthem being played. The rules governing the math used to measure and improve performance are based on Issac Newton’s laws of kinematics. The advent of sensor technology and the generated data combined with Newton’s laws produce the actions to address the primary obstacle swimmers must overcome – drag – the frictional forces that push back against the forward motion. The article provides details about the math, technology, and data. Sensors are placed on the swimmers’ wrists, ankles and back to collect data that quantifies swimmer acceleration. Athletes perform a battery of tests with sensitive accelerometer devices and the collected sensor data is used to create “digital twins” of the athletes. The digital twin captures an athlete’s movements down to the millisecond and quantifies the severity of a flaw to predict time savings that be expected with a given change. High-definition underwater video is combined with sensor data to provide a complete perspective. Data analysis also led to the carbon-fiber-reinforced tech suits that are crafted to the swimmers’ bodies like a second layer of skin. Being data-driven is not just a business objective.
I encourage everyone to read the full article found on this link – Swimming in Data | The Mathematical Intelligencer (springer.com).