4x100 Medley Relay
How it Works?
The four by one hundred medley relay is a fun, fast paced competition in which four swimmers rotate through four types of swimming- backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle, with a length of 100 meters per leg.
Study Goals
In this study, the goal is to find out when women will surpass men in terms of speed for the 4x100 medley relay. Currently, men have a substantially faster time and have had so since 1976, when the competition was first included in the Olympics. Over the years, both the men and women's times are improving, and the study will hopefully tell us when the women will have better times than the men.
Data!
This data table shows the mens and women's total time for all four legs of the relay from 1976 to 1988. As you can see, the men have an overall faster time- also, both the men and women's times are improving as the years go by.
More Data!
This is simply a continuation of the data table from above- this table includes the Olympics games from years 1988 to 2000. This table also shows that while the men have an overall faster time, both the men and women's times are improving.
Even More Data!
This table is also a continuation, showing the olympics games and overall men and women's times from years 2000 to 2012.
Linear Regression
These lines of best fit represent the trend for men's and women's gold medalist times for the 4x100 medley relay. The red represents women's, and the blue is men's. As you can see, the women have a significantly higher overall time, but both sexes have rapidly decreasing times over the years.
Intersection Point
What This Means
This intersection tells us a few things. The x axis is like a calendar- it shows us the years of the olympics, starting from 1976 when the relay was added to the games. The y axis is more like a stopwatch. By using the data from the past games, it predicted what the overall time would be -640.38 seconds when the men's and women's times are the same. However, this is obviously impossible, as you cannot complete something in negative time. This means that the men's and women's time will never intersect, as long as the current trend continues.
Axes
Although the above paragraph kind of explained, let me clear up what the axes mean. The x axis works as a calendar; all it did was lay out the olympics dates, which are every four years. The y axes, like I said earlier, is somewhat like a stopwatch. The calculator used the data I input, which was the times from past competitions, to predict the overall time for the competition when both the men and women's times were equal. The x coordinate is 3858, (years)and the y coordinate is -640.38 seconds or -10.67 minutes. They show us that if the pattern continues, the overall times will only overlap once they are in the negative. Therefore, they show us that the times will never overlap, at least as long as this trend continues.