okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Looking at US and Canada WOC qualifying results (2003-2012)

I came up with a really simple way to try to forecast the U.S. WOC results last summer and called it SPROUT. I've been planning to improve the system a bit, mostly by adding 2012 results and by more carefully collecting some historic data. This weekend, I spent some time putting together a spreadsheet with all of the U.S. WOC qualifying race results from 2003-2012.* In response to a tweet, I also added Canadian results.

I have some ideas about how to refine SPROUT, but before I do anything with that, I thought it would be interesting to share some of the basic information.

The first graph shows shows Canada and the U.S. qualifying race places across 10 years of WOC qualifying races.

The second graph shows the same information, but I've added some straight trend lines.

One of the things that you notice looking at both of the graphs is that the difference between Canada and the U.S. is pretty small. Another thing you'll notice is that the women have done better than the men. Neither of those things is a surprise if you've been following North Americans at the World Champs.

I also took a look at how the nations have done by discipline. In the graph below you can see results for the long (lq), middle (mq) and sprint (sq) qualifying races.

It can be fun to play around with data like this, but it is a bit rough. There aren't all that many races and using "place" as the only measure of a performance is a bit rough. Still, place is the defining result in qualifying races, so it is important.

Now it is time to get away from the computer and head out into the forest.

* I used to sources for WOC results - the World of O' WOC team overviews and Maprunner's WOC results database.

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posted by Michael | 11:09 AM

2 comments

Comments:

Great info./stats.

# posted by

Anthony Hopper : 4:04 PM

FYI, I've found a few errors in the data. Mainly I missed the middle distance US women in 2005. I don't think it'd change the graphs significantly, but I've made the changes to my spreadsheet.

Michael

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:11 PM

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