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Re: RC: Re: Re: physiology of weight/Absolutes? Nah.



Several years ago when this issue came up and was beat to death, I decided to run some numbers. First to get BC a horse has to top 10. So I looked at top 10. Given the number or riders in each weight division in a ride it is very easy to calculate the probability of each configuration of top 10. You use a hypergeometric distribution
and is the same one you would use to calculate the probability of a poker hand. It's also a quite common distribution in quality control sampling.  The differences in the number or riders in each category is factored by the defintion of the distribution. This is one of the first distributions one meets in a elementry statistics
course.

If weight doesn't matter, on the average the distribution of the top 10 should match this distribution. You can throw up some confidence intervals and test that hypothesis - which is what I did by poking into my computer the results of several rides carefully selected to minimize the overlap of riders as to not bias the results.
After crunching the numbers the results say that with a confidence 99.9% you can reject the hypothesis that weight doesn't impact the ride placement in top 10, that is the distribution of the actual rides do not fit the hypergeometric model with a confidence of 99.9%. In fact what the statistics indicate is HW's finish in the top 10
less often that predicted by the model.  If you charterize HW and MW as one class and LW and FW as another class, LW and FW will top 10 more often and HW and MW less often than predicted by this model according to the statistics calculated. The rides used were for the 1999 season with a sampling of rides from each region with over 50
riders.

So weight does impact top 10 on the average and you can not stand for BC unless you top 10. If weight impacts the distribution of top 10 on the average, then it impacts the outcome of BC on the average.

I am, however, not sure that trying to use statistical data will have any impact on this discussion. Like most discussion in this sport, they quickly trun into arguments based more on emotion and preconceived notions what "ought" to be rahter than on logical analysis of the supporting data.

Cheers
Truman

Merryben@aol.com wrote:

> I know a bunch of heavyweights who ride
> lightly, in balance, and conversely I know some who ride like the
> proverbial sack of potatoes.
>
> In my last post I did neglect to mention that Heather and Becky are both superb riders.  I have found that I try to stay in the middle of my horse front to back and side to side.  This sounds simplistic but it is hard to do.  Also riding "light" is a must.  You find sacks of potatoes everywhere.  I know one who is a junior.....mb
>
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