okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Some notes on qualifying for WOC finals
I took the "batting average" for the peer nations and made a spreadsheet model of a series of WOC qualifying races. As a reminder, the batting average is the chance that a runner from the peer nations will qualify for a final (I used the entire group rather than each individual nation for my spreadsheet). Overall, 8.5 percent of the opportunities to qualify result in qualifying for a final.
My spreadsheet showed a single WOC. At a single WOC there are 18 opportunities to qualify (3 men and 3 women in each discipline).
I ran my little model 1,000 times. 193 times, there were no qualifiers. 807 times there were between 1 and 6 qualifiers. In other words, in roughly 80 percent of the WOCs, a nation with a qualifying percent (i.e. batting average) of 8.5 percent will get at least one runner in a WOC final.
If you've read this far...I'm wondering why? I find this stuff interesting, but I can't imagine anyone else would...anyways, I think it raises some interesting questions for another day.
Panorama of the day
Here's an autostitch snapshot looking at the bridge over the Kaw in Lawrence.
