Freitag, 8. Oktober 2010

off topic --> Skiing & The Acceleration of Time

Another thing I was looking into was sports. I just have this vague memory of seeing some Austrian guy winning the slalom world championship in the 50's even though he had to track back for a second as he almost missed a gate.

As we all know, that does not really happen anymore today. (Missing gates: yes. Missing gates, backtracking and winning: nope.)

So I got myself the finishing times of the best 6 skiers in all World Championship and Olympic slalom events. Then I plotted some graphs. I found the results quite fascinating. I will show all graphs first with regular scales and then with logarithmic scales.

  • Graph one shows the difference in time between first and second
  • Graph two shows the difference in time between the first and the average of the first 6 (I included the first in this average, which is a bit silly, I just realized, but oh well...)
  • Graph three shows the difference between the first and the sixth person to cross the finish





Whats really interesting here, IMHO is that these graphs don't look like some random development, governed by society and technological development. These graphs look more like something following a natural law.

I find the level of correlation quite spooky, to be honest. Take a look at these logarithmic charts...









The numbers in the graph is difference in time, measured in seconds.

Anyway. I would love to hear what other people have to say to the things I'm posting. I know people are reading this, and there is a comment function. Feel free to use it :-)

1 Kommentar:

  1. Hmm.... I'll seriously have to discuss those graphs with you in a personal / phone conversation any time soon!!

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