Dashing Through the Decades
Intense Acceleration+Extreme Top Speed=100 Meter Legend
On Your Marks, Get Set, Go!!!!
The 100 meter dash is perhaps the most famous Olympic sport. Competitors sprint to the finish line, just over a football field's length away. Currently, women are well more than a full second slower than men. But surely men and women once ran equal 100 meter dashes, right? Or will in the future? That's exactly the point of this article. I decided to figure out, using linear regression, when they will or when they did have equal 100 meter dashes based on the 100 meter dash gold medal times for men and women over the past 40 years.
Data
Entering in the first bit of data...
More Data
Getting there...
Final Data
All done! Now to plot it!
Men's Data
Notice how the time is going down. The women's times decrease much slower.
Women's Data
Notice how the slope of best fit will have a very gradual slope. The men's times decrease much quicker.
Plotted Together
Now that the times are together, notice how the men's times are significantly quicker. When will (or were) the times be the same?
The Slope of Best Fit: Combined View
This picture shows the lines of best fit for the women's and men's times: men in red, and women in blue. If we follow the lines to their intersection point, we can find when the times were predictably the same on the X-Axis of the intersection point and the time it would take on the Y-Axis. Let's sprint to the intersection point!
Email: myfakeemailaddress@gmail.com
Website: olympic.org
Location: Summer Olympic Games
Phone: 489324181342880943209834280934218904389043210000000000000000000000000000891230498-129843248093421890142380934218903421809234198043129803412890809423423919804239804231980423098423198023413-214
There It Is!
Finally, the intersection point! Using G-Solve, we can determine that men's and women's times were the same in the year 1850. If there had been an Olympic Games in that year, the times would be the same.
But What Do the X and Y Coordinates Mean?
Well, we already figured out that the X coordinate was the year men's and women's times were equal. But I'm going to blow your mind with what the Y coordinate is. Are you ready? Yes? Well here goes, get ready...it is what their 100 meter dash time would have been. Crazy, right?! So in 165 years, the men have improved by about 12.5%, and the women by 8.33%. The men are improving at a rate about 50% faster than the women. So it is unlikely the women will ever catch up.
Sweet Finish!
Because it is a linear regression, it is possible for there to be errors. Eventually, it would show humans running the 100 meter dash in 0 seconds. But that is obviously impossible. You would have to then use another type of regression to overcome that issue. Another variable to the data is if a runner was injured, so they couldn't run very fast. Yet another one is at the very core of the Olympics: traveling. Because the Summer Olympics occur in different places every four years, the variable can't be controlled. The climate might cause the runners to become congested, thus slowing down, or vice versa. Then the data would be different than if it was gathered in the same facility or a controlled environment.
Sources Cited
Thanks to the following sites for providing Olympic pictures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9j1H6SEWgw