Re: Energy used in a 50 by LW vs HW by your formula

["Joe Long" <jlong@mti.net>]

On Fri, 6 Mar 1998 09:40:33 -0800, Steph Teeter <step@fsr.com> wrote:

>Mike - do you feel that there is a bias towards HW riders in
>the BC award? 

This question comes up from time to time.  It's a trait of human psychology that
we take note of some occurences more than others, so that trends or biases are
often perceived where they do not actually exist.

When the AERC first established a BC system considering weight, the ratio was
one point per pound.  The following season we ran a statistical analyis of rider
weight distribution vs. BC winner distribution and found that the heavy riders
were favored; the one point per pound was too much.  So we changed to one-half
point per pound, and ran some more statistical analyses.  These showed that at
one-half point per pound and one point per minute, the distribution of the
weights of riders matched the distribution of weights of BC winners quite well.

It's been a while, though, so if Mike or anyone wants to run a new analysis
based on, say, 1997 data it should be doable -- but I doubt that the results
will be any different.

-- 

Joe Long
jlong@mti.net
Business Page  http://www.mti.net
Personal Page  http://www.rnbw.com