Another interesting data-centric post appeared over at NCCSEF, and when it comes to data, I just can’t help myself but comment. This time we’ve got some slides that seem to be trying to draw a relationship between WJC results and winning a medal at (I believe) the Vancouver Olympic Games. We’re only shown the (partial) […]
Also tagged Analysis, medals, podium, predictionIn a word, no. Â But the relationship between consistency and speed is a little subtle. Â To look at this question let’s take the distance results from major international competitions (OWG, WSC or World Cups) and restrict ourselves to those times when an athlete did at least ten races in a particular season. Â Then for each […]
Also tagged Analysis, variability, variationSo there was this post a while back where I looked at the oft repeated CW that Andrew Newell tends to qualify rather fast and then slip back a bit in the heats. Â My goal was just to see whether and to what degree this actually happens. Â It turns out that my attempt to tackle […]
Also tagged Analysis, andrew newell, heats, qualification, SprintThe third in the series, looking at differences in performance in skating vs. classic races for particular nations. Â We’ve already done Japan and Italy. Â Now, by request, we have Norway. To avoid repeating myself, I’m going to skip much of the introduction and explanation for the methodology and graphs. Â Go read the Italy post if […]
Also tagged Analysis, Distance, men, norway, Sprint, technique preference, womenMy post on the differing performance of Japanese skiers by technique (classic vs. freestyle) got a lot of positive responses and a few requests that I use the same methods on some other countries. Â First up is Italy. I’ve tweaked and refined my model a fair bit, hopefully for the better. Â The basic idea is […]
Also tagged Analysis, Distance, italy, men, Sprint, technique preference, womenIn my race recap for the Davos distance race I noted the strong performance of Masako Ishida, and pointed out what an extreme classic specialist she is. Â A certain world famous XC skiing journalist wanted to know if the conventional wisdom he’d heard was correct, that Japan’s skiers typically do better in classic skiing overall. […]
Also tagged Analysis, classic, japan, RWhen most people say that World Cup skiers are animals, they probably mean they are fierce, strong competitors. Â I got my PhD in statistics in a department that found itself working quite often with very strong wildlife biology and ecology departments, so for me that reference leads me to think, “Well, what if they really […]
Also tagged Analysis, Distance, R, survival, World Cup