400m Freestyle
Swimming, Swimming, and more Swimming
Intelligent, Strong, Disciplined: The Best Athletes on The Planet
The 400m freestyle is one of the oldest olympic events, dating all the way back to the first olympic games. This is considered one of the hardest swimming events there is and rightfully so! It requires someone with the speed and strength to swim quickly as well as some one with the brains and discipline to know not to go all out and preserve energy. If you're looking for a smart, strong, and durable athlete, you'll find them at the 400m freestyle.
A Tale of Two Genders
Swimming is a sport of strength and stamina so shouldn't men have the upper hand? Will women ever overcome them? Nobody knows the future but we can predict all the things we want, and that's what I'm here to do.
What's the point?
I will be determining through linear graphs and mathematical calculations if women will ever pass men at the 400m freestyle.
The Data
In the table we have the year starting at 1976, as well as the winning mens and women's times from each of the games since.
More data
rest of table
More Data
rest of table
The Scatter Plot
The pink squares represent the mens winner, the blue x represents the women's winner. We can already see some important information here as it is clear to see the men are currently faster then the women and have been the whole time.
Linear Regression (Line of Best Fit)
These lines show the trend that both genders are on. They both seem to be slowly getting faster and faster with each olympics.
The Turn of the Tide
This is the most important information to the study as it reveals a great deal about our investigation. The blue line is the men which as we can see is decreasing at a greater rate then the red line of the females. That means that the men are becoming faster at this event than the women are. Prior to the point of intersection, the women were faster, after the intersection the men gained the upper hand. This shows the trends together and puts into perspective how much faster men are than women.
The X Intercept
The x intercept is 1875 which means that in the closest olympics to that year the men became faster, however as the Olympics hadn't been invented yet men have always been faster.
The Y Intercept
The y intercept is 267.07 seconds which would be the gold medal times for both genders in the closest olympics to the year 1875. 267.07 seconds translates to 4:27.07. As I did state previously there were no olympics then so men have always been faster.