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.



Back to okansas.blogspot.com.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:24 PM

    I find it interesting.

    Probably because I like numbers.

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  2. Anonymous2:04 AM

    Me too. I think it's another interesting approach to sports.

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  3. Anonymous5:37 AM

    What would happen if the final field would be reduced to 30 Runners? Would it be to discouraging for the 'peer nations'?

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  4. Anonymous9:33 AM

    as always I enjoy your interesting analysis.

    WOC field to 45 was discouraging.
    30 would be even more discouraging.

    ReplyDelete