Excell Nerdery
Let me just preface this post by reminding you that I went to Michigan Tech and got a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I love skiing, but i really liked all that nerdy engineer stuff too. Especially large data sets. Basically, I love Excell, and well…ever once an a while, i totally nerd out and crunch some semi pointless data.
So when I saw this graph on Fasterskier...well...guess what happened next...
I found my FIS points list history, averaged the 5or6 lists a year, and plotted them verses my age. Semi interesting, especially noticing the general downswing in the time since i graduated and joined CXC Elite. But still…to be really relevant, i would need to compare against the others. So I downloaded some other histories I’m interested in, crunched them, and got this:
Well dang nasty, isn’t that a pretty graph? It’s kinda interesting to see some of the histories laid out like this. For instance…look at Compton. She’s doing very well now, but there was definitely a hump in there that she had to ride out. And Winters…she just quit CXC and competitive racing, but her history shows the same kind of straight improvement as the US team girls.
And just in case anyone else is as big of a nerd as I am, and doesn’t want to waste the obsene amount of time I did, here’s my excell file. (Click Here to Download)
2 Responses “Excell Nerdery”
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Not enough data points for real meaningful results. Okay so all the girls got faster with age but other than that not much to see. Hope life is going well.
right…but our knowledge of skiers in general tells us that the curve is parabolic in nature, with the minimum (and peak performance) occurring probably no later than the age of 30. So then, even a small sample of the the decreasing side of the curve gives us some idea of what that minimum could possibly be. If a 19 year old and a 27 year old are at the same level, the 19 year old has a stronger potential of reaching elite greatness, because she has longer until she hits her minimum.