Don't anyone credit me with these handicaps! Gees - I'm a mathematician and, anyway, since when did this board ever listen to me??? :-) My comments and questions follow...
"Bruce P. Lowe" wrote: > OBC Handicap Time Trial > > Last year, one member complained in a series of e-mail messages that the > method of handicapping moved "women even further down in the overall > rankings than they would otherwise be". That was me! But you also missed the main important point that by separating this open race into two separate events you were reducing the competition for all... ... > The member also wasn't happy about the original decision to have > separate male and female trophies. That was NOT me!!! I indicated that the "improvement" (mathematically, sociologically, competitively, etc.) which I was suggesting in terms of adding a gender handicap did NOT have any effect whatsoever on the placings within each gender and that I had absolutely no problem with two trophies... Perhaps some confusion resulted when I discussed other handicapping methods as well which might be fun for those who try hard but aren't as genetically advantaged. My apologies - I always see many solutions, many possible improvements. Bruce: Some questions on the new handicapping system: 1. Can you justify this new handicapping system to us statiscally? If so, please do! 2. What data did you use to come up with your handicaps? Hermann and Mary are certainly NOT average 65 and 62 year olds If you are using results for these two exceptional athletes in a small sample size you would certainly be skewing the results. This event is, after all, supposed to recognise excellence with respect to age - So we don't want to adopt the policy that "Gee, they're so good for their age that we have to make sure that they don't win!". (Certainly Hermann will have cometition enough from Rick, Paul and Aaron if the handicaps are properly done!). 3. Do you really believe that people's times will tend to slow down by the same number of seconds every year after age 40??? 4. Do you realize that IF you really believe the above (and certainly you seem to, as that's how you're doing the handicapping!) you are actually asserting mathematically(!) that people degrade more slowly as they age past 40??? In particular, you are giving the same 5 second handicap per year even though the asusmption is that the person gets slower per year (ie., travels less far in that period of time). This means that you are giving a better advantage to a 40 year old rider than to a 65 year old rider of the same fitness level. It's just simple mathematics, but don't worry - there's a simple mathematical fix (see 6, below). To demonstrate the mathematical abberation caused by your method, here are your predicted age-handicapped speeds and percentages of non-degraded time for a rider who at age 39 can do 45km/h and through ages 40 to 65: 44.81(99.59%) 44.63(99.17%) 44.44(98.77%) 44.26(98.36%) 44.08(97.96%) 43.90(97.56%) 43.72(97.17%) 43.55(96.77%) 43.37(96.39%) 43.20(96.00%) 43.03(95.62%) 42.86(95.24%) 42.69(94.86%) 42.52(94.49%) 42.35(94.12%) 42.19(93.75%) 42.02(93.39%) 41.86(93.02%) 41.70(92.66%) 41.54(92.31%) 41.38(91.95%) 41.22(91.60%) 41.06(91.25%) 40.91(90.91%) 40.75(90.57%) 40.60(90.23%) As you can see, the 40 year old is assumed to have lost .41% in aging from 39 to 40, whereas the 65 year old is assumed to have lost only .34% in aging from 64 to 65. This is not the way most of us think/feel that aging occurs!!! 5. Do you really believe that men and women have the same degredation wrt age and that the degradation starts at the same age? I'd love to see some good stats here but wasn't able to find any. 6. Do you think that it would make more sense to handicap by increasing the speed by a particular handicap percentage rather than just to give the same number of seconds handicap to each rider of a particular age? Again, if you have two riders of the same age who get a handicap of x seconds and one is faster than the other, the faster rider will go farther in the x seconds than the slower rider. Hence the slower rider is getting less of an advantage from his/her age handicap than the faster rider is. Obviously the faster rider should (and will) place ahead of the slower rider of the same age, but the point is that you may place the slower rider inappropriately (in terms of age-handicapped quality) amongst the riders of other ages. This is simple mathematics, and it is fixable through the application of simple mathematics (percentages). 7. Do you think that the TIME slowdown per year for women should be the same as that for men? Again, if we believe that a woman is slower than a man of the same fitness level (Chris Boardman's 56.375 km male hour record was ridden 17% faster than the (likely equally motivated/elite/fit) Jeannie Longo's 48.159 km female hour record. This and countless other world and olympic record times seem to imply a considerable difference!), shouldn't the women's time age-handicap be bigger than the 5 seconds per year which you are giving to the men over 40? As mentioned above, you really should NOT use a constant time difference - It just does NOT make sense mathematically. Probably a percentage increase in speed would be more appropriate... 8. Since this is an OPEN (male/female) event which IS testing our QUALITY independent of AGE (since we are age-handicapping) AND even GENDER(!) (since you wish to segregate the results on the basis of gender), doesn't it make good sense to give overall rankings which bring the women and men into the same race by applying a gender adjustment to the women's speeds? - 17% seems like a reasonable speed adjustment to apply (AFTER the age adjustment, of course (math)), and it's trivial for me to program this (and the other mathematical corrections I'm suggesting in here) - much easier, actually than to segregate the results! AGAIN - DON'T PANIC - Of course we can still give men's and women's trophies (and it makes sense to - we can see the difference!) - EVERTHING is the SAME except the fact that the women get to see how good their performance is within the whole pack when both the nefarious effects of age AND gender are adjusted for. WHY NOT DO THIS? It is supposed to be an OPEN series - If we wanted a separate women's only age-handicapped race, we could put one in the WTT series. 9. All of the same sorts of questions should be asked as to how the sub-25 year olds are being handicapped. I think that you probably understand how to do this. 10. Another suggestion - Rather than having this as a one-day event which might get rained out or which might not see all of the riders out or at their prime, why not consider having this as another obc series competition like the BAR competition - How about calling it the BAG (Best Age Gender) Competition (Hopefully Hermann and Mary won't mind being called the "Old BAG's if they win - what will we call any of our talented youngsters who come out on top?). This would also be easier to administer than the current one-day event. I would have no problem producing a BAG page (updated immediately after every Thursday night TT) - but I'd certainly want to have the age/gender handicapping done in a way that is mathematically and statistically reasonable. Friendly competition is fun. Let's maximize it. Celia > On behalf of the Board I looked at the > e-mail messages to determine whether any changes were necessary. I also > reviewed the method of handicapping in light of the performances over the > past couple of years. At the Board's August meeting I presented my > findings. > > Since reintroducing the handicapped TT championships event two years ago, > we have awarded separate men's and women's trophies. I recommended that > they be retained and result lists be published separately as was originally > intended. I suggested a slight modification to the handicap calculation to > make it slightly fairer to younger riders and thus more competitive across > age groupings. > > The deduction for men and women will be 12 seconds for each year under 25 > years of age or 5 seconds for each year over 39 years of age. Scratch (zero > deduction) riders are those from 25 to 39 years of age. Calculation: > > Handicap > (in seconds) > > under 25 12*(25 - age) > 25 - 39 zero > 40 plus 5*(age - 39) > > (Age is as at birthday 2002) > > Bruce Lowe > Vice-President > > PS. As was noted to the Board at the August Meeting, I apologies for the > delay in filing my findings. > > -- > Bruce Lowe > Ottawa, Ontario > e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ------------------------------------------------- > For list help, please send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Club Office: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (613) 230-1064 > Website: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cyberus.ca/~obcweb > Newsletter: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ------------------------------------------------- > ------------------------------------------------- For list help, please send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Club Office: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (613) 230-1064 Website: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cyberus.ca/~obcweb Newsletter: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------- ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?aVxiDo.a2i8p1 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
