Exploration
Project
By
Gerald Hendrix
AP Statistics
Fudge 7th
INTRODUCTION
Physical attributes are perhaps the most important aspects of athletes. Looking at
different types of sports, certain genetic lines are obviously more predetermined to
succeed at sports that utilize specific traits. Looking at football, one of the most diverse
sports to see such physical attributes at work, one can see many different body types on
the field at any given time. Linebackers tend to be bigger guys, both in weight and height,
than a running back. Rowing is no different. Crew is dominated by people who are
vertically gifted. Although shorter people can be successful (short being relative; it is
very rare to see anyone shorter than 511 competing at higher levels of competition),
those who are taller typically find themselves at an advantage when competing. Taller
people are able to extend the length of their stroke, propelling the boat through the water
for longer. Though height is an important factor in a successful oarsman, coaches take
into account other variables when looking at prospective athletes.
Rowing machines (or ergs) are an important tool for evaluating athletes. The
machine is not biased and shows an athletes individual speed based strictly off of the
amount of work he or she is putting into the machine. Although there are many
confounding variables when testing an athletes ability solely off of a rowing machine, it
does give coaches a standardized assessment for an athletes speed.
Another reason that coaches pay so much attention to an athletes erg scores is a
theory called Weight-to-Watt Ratio. The beliefs found in this theory are stated in its
title; the theory is based off of the average amount of watts an athlete pulls over a 2kilometer piece. Coaches who follow this theory will put the average number of watts
from the piece over the athletes weight. The outcome is how many times the athlete pulls
his or her body weight during the piece. An equation is shown below:
=
To give an example, say a high school athlete who weighs 160 pounds goes 2kilometers in 6 minutes and 30 seconds, meaning his average wattage was 377.6 watts
per stroke. In order for him to estimate the amount of weight that he pulled, he would set
up his equation:
377.6
= 2.36
160
What this tells the athlete is that he pulled 2.36 times his bodyweight, or 2.36
watts for every pound that he weighed.
Why is this important? According to the Weight-to-Watt ratio, every watt generated is
equivalent to a pound of pressure during the stroke. When racing, a rower must generate
enough energy to move himself, the added weight of the boat and everything in it, and his
or her teammates, plus excess power to add speed. Coaches look at athletes weight-towatt ratio to get an estimate as to how much power the athlete generates, and how
effective he or she would be in the boat, without even meeting them.
THE DATA
In order to calculate the weight-to-watt ratio of athletes, two things must be
collected: their weight, and the time it takes them to go 2-kilometers on a rowing
machine. Using a calculator provided by Concept 2 , the athletes time can then be
converted to watts and used in the Weight-to-Watt Ratio Formula.
The population that I pulled from were rowers who had signed up for a
recruiting website and had been featured in the websites most popular athletes lists. The
reason I decided to look at these lists as opposed to randomly selecting athletes from all
over the website was because the athletes on these lists represented what college coaches
wanted to see out of high school athletes, or else their profiles would not have been
clicked on.
The stats of each athlete that I collected was the athletes height, weight, and 2kilometer personal record. From this information, I was able to convert the 2-kilometer
time into average wattage and then find that athletes weight-to-watt ratio. For
standardization, I converted the height to inches and kept the weight in pounds. Weightto-watt ratios can be shown as watts generated per kilogram of weight, however to keep
the data friendly the weight-to-watt ratios are all representative of watts pulled per pound.
I collected my data by randomly selecting three months from the 2014-2015
school year and then viewed the websites Top 10 Most Popular Athletes for that
month. I would view each athletes profile and record my needed data.
The website used: www.berecruited.com
I collected the weight and 2-kilometer personal record in order to be able to
calculate that athletes weight-to-watt ratio. Although the height is not necessary for this
calculation, I believed that it would be interesting to see how the athletes height affected
his weight-to-watt ratio.
My motivation for collecting this type of data is that I am being recruited
myself, and I was interested to see the stats of other people in my recruiting class who
were getting a lot of interest from collegiate programs in order to compare myself to
them. Part of the motivation for collecting this data is to see where I should be in order to
get more collegiate attention. The data that I collected all came from male rowers who are
seniors as of fall 2015 in order to not compare the stats of an experienced senior male
rower to an inexperienced freshman female rower. Doing this, I was able to keep the data
more consistent and balanced.
FURTHER CALCULATIONS
In order to make sense of the data collected, there are multiple values that can be
found with a calculator that makes the information easier to understand. The first step it
inputting the collected data into a calculator. Hit Stat -> Edit in order to input your data
into L1. Once all data points are in the calculator, hit 2nd -> Quit in order to return to the
calculators main screen, and then again hit Stat -> Calc and scroll down to 1-Var Stats.
Make sure that List is set to L1, and then press Enter down to calculate. A list of a
numerous variables will be calculated. We will only be interested in the bottom 6
variables.
The bottom 6 variables tells us (in order from top to bottom): sample size,
minimum (smallest data value), first quartile (the middle number between the smallest
number and the median), median (middle of the data collected), the third quartile (the
middle number between the median and the largest number), and the maximum (largest
data value). The bottom 5 variables together giver us our 5 number summary.
For my data:
Sample Size: 30
Five Number Summary:
o Minimum: 1.653
o First Quartile: 1.894
o Median:2.109
o Third Quartile: 2.227
o Maximum: 2.409
In order to find the mean and standard variation, all you have to do is scroll back
up. The mean is the very top variable (x with a line over it). Standard deviation is given
twice: Sx gives the sample standard deviation, while x gives the population standard
deviation. (Standard Deviation and Variance on a Graphing Calculator, 2013)
Since I used data taken from a sample, I will use Sx as my standard deviation.
The range of a set of data is taken by subtracting the minimum value from the
maximum value. This gives the distance on the number line that all of the data falls on.
Range:
2.409 1.653 = .756
The variance is simply the standard deviation squared. After you have
determined which standard deviation to use, hit 2nd -> Quit to return the calculator home
screen and type in the value of the standard deviation and then hit x2 - > to find variance.
Variance:
. 2022 = .041
Frequency
FREQUENCY OF
WEIGHT-TO-WATT
RATIOS
10
8
6
4
2
0
9
5
1
6
4
2
0
1 . 6 5 3 1 . 7 9 3 1 . 9 3 3 2 . 0 7 3 2 . 2 1 3 2 . 3 5 3 2 . 4 9 3M O R E
0000111111222223333344
Key:
1 6
1.6
While observing the new trends for this data, I noticed that the mean and the
median both increased with the data by exactly 100, since they both are used to
describe the data directly. The standard deviation, on the other hand, stayed the same
as the original because it is used to describe more of the patterns of the data, which
hadnt changed.
Frequency
8
6
6
5
4
4
2
2
1
0
0
101.653 101.793 101.933 102.073 102.213 102.353 102.492 MORE
6
The data is skewed left. The
spread was only .756. The
median was 102.109. There
were no outliers.
101.6
FREQUENCY OF WEIGHT-TO-WATT
RATIOS (+50%)
9
Frequency
7
6
5
4
3
2
0
2.48
2.68
2.88
3.08
3.28
3.48
3.68
10
MORE
DISTRIBUTION
In order to find the number of people who are 5 units above my mean, I first
must decide on the unit I will use. In order to keep it simple, we will round to the nearest
hundredth for each data point.
To figure out how many of my original data points are 5 units above the mean, I
am going to need my sample size as well as the original mean:
Sample Size: 30
Mean: 2.081
Now all that we have to do is count the number of figures 5 units (hundredths)
above 2.081.
2.254
1.894
1.653
2.107
2.196
2.194
2.111
2.218
2.304
2.275
2.185
2.227
1.707
1.979
2.176
2.024
1.887
1.831
2.292
2.261
1.876
1.889
2.397
2.409
2.078
1.736
2.102
2.067
1.961
2.147
There are 13 figures that are greater than 2.081 plus 5 units (2.131).
13
= 43.33%
30
The next step will be a bit tricky; we are going to find the percentage that are 3
hundredths below the mean and 2 hundredths above the mean. To calculate the range of
where the weight-to-watt ratios will fall:
2.081 .03 = 2.051
2.081 + .02 = 2.101
In order for a weight-to-watt ratio to be counted it must fall between:
2.254
2.218
2.176
1.889
1.961
2.194
2.304
2.024
2.397
2.147
1.894
2.275
1.887
2.409
2.051 2.101
1.653
2.107
2.185
2.227
1.831
2.292
2.078
1.736
2.111
1.707
2.261
2.102
2.196
1.979
1.876
2.067
11
30
=3
10
There are 3 units required to be in the top 10%. These units are: 2.409, 2.397,
and 2.304.
CONCLUSION
After having studied the data thoroughly for hours, we can come to the
conclusion that weight-to-watt ratio does increase a coachs interest. Many of the subjects
that data was collected on were well above pulling 2.1x their bodyweight over 2kilometers. Although there are confounding variables, such as the persons experience
rowing, and their fat-to-muscle ratio, the Weight-to-Watt Ratio theory is a good predictor
as it what a person can bring to the coachs team, in regards to speed. There were a few
rowers whom I took data on who did not have the best weight-to-watt ratio, but looking
back at the data you can see that they were just really fast on a rowing machine.
Despite the few ratios that were relatively low, a majority of the rowers on the
Most Popular Athlete lists tend to pull at least twice their bodyweight. Despite many
confounding variables, athletes who can pull a good weight-to-watt ratio can grab the
attention of many collegiate coaches. Unless they are just plain fast, athletes who have
good weight-to-watt ratios show coaches that they are just as good on the water as on the
machine, which is ultimately where they will end up racing.
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REFERENCES
Quartiles. (n.d.). Retrieved from Math Is Fun:
https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/quartiles.html
Standard Deviation and Variance on a Graphing Calculator. (2013, April 17). Retrieved
from Math Bootcamps RSS: http://www.mathbootcamps.com/how-to-find-thestandard-deviation-and-variance-with-a-graphing-calculator-ti83-or-ti84/
Stapel, E. (n.d.). Box-and-Whisker Plots: Interquartile Ranges and Outliers. Retrieved
from Purplemath: http://www.purplemath.com/modules/boxwhisk3.htm
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