6 ms·

Looking at those record tables has me wondering what GP is referring to when they say that barely any difference exists between the sexes...

IIAOPSW 7y ago
Normalize it based on the fraction of women in the race to start with maybe?
- jtbayly 7y ago
  Go for it. Knock yourself out trying to prove there are no differences between the sexes. While you're at it normalize success at giving birth based on the fraction of men to attempt it.
  - peripitea 7y ago
    To be fair, the differences here seem to be smaller than in other sports, suggesting that while testosterone is a factor it may be less than it is in other sports. If 90% of the competitors in these races are male, that would further impact this discrepancy.
    - Godel_unicode 7y ago
      > If 90% of the competitors in these races... Why would that matter? They're not running as a group; if you're the fastest then you win. This isn't a probabilistic thing. Lots of slow men crowding the starting line isn't going to impact who finishes first.
      - IIAOPSW 7y ago
        If 90% are men, all else equal, you would expect men to win 90% of the time.
        Godel_unicode 7y ago
        That's quite the leap of logic hiding in that deceptively small "all else equal", what leads you to believe that everyone in a race has an equal chance of winning it?
        IIAOPSW 7y ago
        >what leads you to believe that everyone in a race has an equal chance of winning it? I made no such assumption. If you pull runner speeds from any distribution, and label 90% of those numbers "male" and 10% "female", 90% of the time the highest speed will be labelled "male". Even if you are pulling the female runner speeds from a slightly faster distribution, if most of the people running are men then men will still win most of the time. Failing to normalize by the population sizes at the start of the race is a blatant mathematical error. Until you fix it your argument is flawed and if you don't fix it you're willfully wrong.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        Godel_unicode 7y ago
        > I made no such assumption. You literally wrote "all else equal" in your comment. > pull runner speeds from any distribution Not true. If I pick a distribution of elite women and non-athlete men, all of the top finishers will be women. You're assuming speeds are normally distributed; they are not. Where is this data that you're citing here? It doesn't line up with any data I've seen, nor with my extensive experience in amateur racing. Most races are won by the same small group of elite runners. The size of the field is immaterial as the majority of racers have no chance of winning. Normalizing for population size might make sense if you actually had to beat everyone independently. Fortunately, you're only racing the person in first so everyone else can be safely ignored. Put another way, if Michael Phelps is racing he's going to win. You can only win by beating him, the rest of the field doesn't matter.
        IIAOPSW 7y ago
      - peripitea 7y ago
        I'm not sure I even understand your argument. It's possible we're saying different things? What I'm saying is that if X people try a sport the records they set won't be nearly as good as if 100X people are trying it. Winners are by definition outliers, and the larger your population, the more (and more extreme) outliers you will see. So if there are five times fewer women than men () competing in a sport, that will impact comparisons between women and men, even at the top levels, at least if you want to compare innate ability. Almost certainly, the women's records and top female performances would look better if there were five times as many women trying the sport as there currently are. Do you disagree with that? I pulled up the most recent Ironman race; there were 5 men for every woman in the competition. So I'm using that as a rule of the thumb. But the same logic applies to any population imbalance at the top of the funnel.
Izkata 7y ago
To quote them: > at this distance. ~~All the distances in those tables are significantly longer than the 50k this article was about.~~ Edit: Ah, I missed it due to the weird order - but my original point stands, there is no point in ignoring part of someone's comment when trying to rebut them.
- ward 7y ago
  No? The link geargrinder posted literally also has a 50 kilometer table.
  - Izkata 7y ago
    Erk, I missed it scrolling down (the distances are in a pretty random order)
- bitexploder 7y ago
  They are still slower... but the gap is a little more narrow. Men will definitely have an edge in shorter distances.
  - gji 7y ago
    Interestingly, the 100m record difference is about 10%, which is roughly the same as the gap in the ultramarathon records (and in the record mile time). So the difference is fairly consistent across distances.
    - peripitea 7y ago
      I don't think it's quite that close -- there may be sample size/participation factors involved here. For example, the top US women seems to be competitive with the top ~10 US men, which in more testosterone-dominant sports would never happen.
- emptyfile 7y ago
  Do you people have bad eyesight or something. This whole thread is weird.

IIAOPSW 7y ago

Normalize it based on the fraction of women in the race to start with maybe?

jtbayly 7y ago
Go for it. Knock yourself out trying to prove there are no differences between the sexes. While you're at it normalize success at giving birth based on the fraction of men to attempt it.
- peripitea 7y ago
  To be fair, the differences here seem to be smaller than in other sports, suggesting that while testosterone is a factor it may be less than it is in other sports. If 90% of the competitors in these races are male, that would further impact this discrepancy.
  - Godel_unicode 7y ago
    > If 90% of the competitors in these races... Why would that matter? They're not running as a group; if you're the fastest then you win. This isn't a probabilistic thing. Lots of slow men crowding the starting line isn't going to impact who finishes first.
    - IIAOPSW 7y ago
      If 90% are men, all else equal, you would expect men to win 90% of the time.
      - Godel_unicode 7y ago
        That's quite the leap of logic hiding in that deceptively small "all else equal", what leads you to believe that everyone in a race has an equal chance of winning it?
        IIAOPSW 7y ago
        >what leads you to believe that everyone in a race has an equal chance of winning it? I made no such assumption. If you pull runner speeds from any distribution, and label 90% of those numbers "male" and 10% "female", 90% of the time the highest speed will be labelled "male". Even if you are pulling the female runner speeds from a slightly faster distribution, if most of the people running are men then men will still win most of the time. Failing to normalize by the population sizes at the start of the race is a blatant mathematical error. Until you fix it your argument is flawed and if you don't fix it you're willfully wrong.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        Godel_unicode 7y ago
        > I made no such assumption. You literally wrote "all else equal" in your comment. > pull runner speeds from any distribution Not true. If I pick a distribution of elite women and non-athlete men, all of the top finishers will be women. You're assuming speeds are normally distributed; they are not. Where is this data that you're citing here? It doesn't line up with any data I've seen, nor with my extensive experience in amateur racing. Most races are won by the same small group of elite runners. The size of the field is immaterial as the majority of racers have no chance of winning. Normalizing for population size might make sense if you actually had to beat everyone independently. Fortunately, you're only racing the person in first so everyone else can be safely ignored. Put another way, if Michael Phelps is racing he's going to win. You can only win by beating him, the rest of the field doesn't matter.
        IIAOPSW 7y ago
    - peripitea 7y ago
      I'm not sure I even understand your argument. It's possible we're saying different things? What I'm saying is that if X people try a sport the records they set won't be nearly as good as if 100X people are trying it. Winners are by definition outliers, and the larger your population, the more (and more extreme) outliers you will see. So if there are five times fewer women than men () competing in a sport, that will impact comparisons between women and men, even at the top levels, at least if you want to compare innate ability. Almost certainly, the women's records and top female performances would look better if there were five times as many women trying the sport as there currently are. Do you disagree with that? I pulled up the most recent Ironman race; there were 5 men for every woman in the competition. So I'm using that as a rule of the thumb. But the same logic applies to any population imbalance at the top of the funnel.

Izkata 7y ago

To quote them: > at this distance. ~~All the distances in those tables are significantly longer than the 50k this article was about.~~ Edit: Ah, I missed it due to the weird order - but my original point stands, there is no point in ignoring part of someone's comment when trying to rebut them.

ward 7y ago
No? The link geargrinder posted literally also has a 50 kilometer table.
- Izkata 7y ago
  Erk, I missed it scrolling down (the distances are in a pretty random order)
bitexploder 7y ago
They are still slower... but the gap is a little more narrow. Men will definitely have an edge in shorter distances.
- gji 7y ago
  Interestingly, the 100m record difference is about 10%, which is roughly the same as the gap in the ultramarathon records (and in the record mile time). So the difference is fairly consistent across distances.
  - peripitea 7y ago
    I don't think it's quite that close -- there may be sample size/participation factors involved here. For example, the top US women seems to be competitive with the top ~10 US men, which in more testosterone-dominant sports would never happen.
emptyfile 7y ago
Do you people have bad eyesight or something. This whole thread is weird.