200m Dash
How Men and Women's 200m Dash's Compare in History
What is the 200 meter dash?
One of the most popular events in the Olympics, the 200 meter dash tests the speed of only the fastest athletes across the world to see who can run the fastest in 200 meters. This event has been documented beginning in 1900, in Paris. These athletes run 200 meters on a track, with the fastest 3 people getting medals; gold, silver, and bronze.
Women competing in the 200 meter dash.
Usain Bolt sets a record time of 19.32 seconds (2012 Olympics.)
Men competing in the 200 meter dash.
So how do men and women compare?
Men and women don't compete against each other in the Olympics; however, we can compare their data by combining the info. By doing this, we can find interesting information, such as when women are projected to surpass men as the faster gender.
The Purpose
Using linear regression, line of best fit, and trends, we can predict if women may begin to outperform men in this event, and when it would occur.
Data
List one is the years used, and I went back to 1976 for the purpose of this project. List two are the men's winning (or gold) times for each year, and line three is the women's winning times.
Data
Data
The Scatter Plot
The blue squares represent the male times and the Xs represent the female times.
Linear Regression
Blue represents the male line of best fit (the trend), and the red line represents the female trend.
When do women and men have the same time?
Simply put, never. According to the mathematics, men have been faster since 1875; and they will always have faster times than women. The first Olympic games were in the summer of 1896, and the 200 meter dash has been documented since 1900. Hypothetically, if the Olympics and this event were to take place previously, women would have faster than men in 1872, the most recent Olympic games that would've taken place before 1875.
What do the X and Y coordinates represent?
The x-coordinate represents the year that women and men would have the same finishing winning time. This is my independent value. As stated previously, the Olympics didn't exist back when men and women would have hypothetically had the same finishing time, therefore, men should continue to perform better than women.
The y-coordinate represents the finishing time for men and women in the year where they would both finish with the same winning time. It would have been projected to be approximately 22.33 seconds, were they to compete at the exact time given, which is my x-coordinate.