About a year ago, a friend and I were discussing The Karate Kid over zoom (both the original movies and Cobra Kai, the netflix series). He asked a simple question, “Should you sweep the leg?”, and we had an in-depth discussion that I would like to share a little about here.
If you haven’t seen the movie, essentially, the antagonist is told to sweep the leg, or “play within the rules, but dirty”, in order to try and further injure his opponent, and win the final rounds, in a karate match. So the question, “Should you sweep the leg?” is really, “Should you do anything, within the rules, to win?”.
Should one Sweep The Leg?
There are a lot of ways to view this question. If you are a fan of the movies or show, you might have some knee-jerk reactions to this depending on if you side with the Miyagi-Do school or Cobra Kai (the two main fictional karate factions of Reseda, CA). I really only want to touch on a couple:
- The subjective or moral answer
- The objective or answer that the data informs
On Morality
This is obviously a quandary. Everyone is going to have feelings about this one, and the answer is personal. Is it ok do to anything to win? Should you obey your sensei, even if it is an unjust order? Should you be honorable towards your opponent in a fight?
All of these play in to the morality of the question. And that I can’t answer for you.
On Data-driven decisions
Ultimately my answer was No, you shouldn’t. But not for moral reasons. Lets look at the data:
Immediately, as seen in the clip above, there was some pay-off. Johnny sweeps the leg and gains a point against LaRusso, injuring his leg further.
However, in the last round, LaRusso not only defends himself against the sweep, but Crane Kicks Johnny in the face, winning the championship.
The success rate of sweeping the leg is roughly 50% in this instance. It was only effective in one out of two rounds. For my solutions, I definitely look for more success than a 50% solution 😅.
Furthermore the leg-sweeping didn’t payoff when it counted that is to say, the final round had more weight to the success criteria of the match. Tied 2-2 (I believe), the last round is in some ways equally important and more important than the rounds preceding. In this instance the Sweeping of the Leg attempt in the final match ended in Johnny getting Crane Kicked in the face.
So.. should one sweep the leg?
No, you will get crane kicked in the face half of the time, according to the data.
Who Am I?
I am a usability maximalist, persistent accessibility bull, and utter Vue noob, and I want to get better at sharing about the stuff I'm working on. Including silly thoughts that I have on my morning walks and wanted to take a little time to share. Thanks for reading 🎉