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dunninla said:
It's been 30 years since I took statistics but doesn't the sample have to be random in order for the n=30 or greater heuristic to be valid? If the two women who failed weren't random female marines, but a subset of the larger cohort, then the sample size argument is irrelevant.
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Thanks DHinNH for addressing this. The samples have to random and independant. The population that the samples are pulled from is also improtant (normal and continuous). For my analysis I ASSUME (yes all stats make an --- out you an me) That the repsonse variable (female and male success) is from single population that is bimodal (pass, fail). The data set sampled has a 12% failure rate. Comparing the results 2/2 and 12/108 faliure/total sample size of group rejects the hyposis that the two group are different....


I bring this up because one concern that can be asked is the endurance of females compared to males and how endurance crittical to many missions. I tryied to find data that compared females to males in terms of endurance. The data I found was from the WS100 mile 2012 race (316 racers finished the 100 mile running race - 52 female and 264 males) When looking at the finish times of the two groups there is NO statistical differnce between the male and female finishing times (women - average time 24 hours 15 minutes, males 24 hours 43 minutes)

I can remember when I was in high school there was still a debate if women should be allowed to run long distances as they "were" not made for it. So much for that debate!!!
 
pathnottaken said:
The population that the samples are pulled from is also improtant (normal and continuous).
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The samples can come from any distribution.

( I could talk about this all day, but that's probably enough probability & statistics for most of you, isn't it? :thumb: )
 
DHinNH said:
The samples can come from any distribution.

( I could talk about this all day, but that's probably enough probability & statistics for most of you, isn't it? :thumb: )
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I had my first taste of stats in New Hampster, at the knee of Dr. L. Nelson. He tells of story of him and his wife would sit up at night on thier vacation in the north woods and count cricket chirps They developed a strong correlationship between temperature and number of chirps per minute! So I guess they talked stats day and NIGHT....
 
When looking at the finish times of the two groups there is NO statistical differnce between the male and female finishing times (women - average time 24 hours 15 minutes, males 24 hours 43 minutes)
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I think to get a better picture of the difference between the average times, you would need to take the 52 women finishers and compare their average to the top 52 male finishers. I think the difference in average time would be a bit different.

I can remember when I was in high school there was still a debate if women should be allowed to run long distances as they "were" not made for it. So much for that debate!!!
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I agree with you here, that was a silly debate.
 
Jcleppe said:
I think to get a better picture of the difference between the average times, you would need to take the 52 women finishers and compare their average to the top 52 male finishers. I think the difference in average time would be a bit different.
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Eh? Statistically, that would be an invalid sampling method and comparison and doesn't make any sense! Take the best of one subpopulation compared to the complete set of another subpopulation and you have a completely invalid study!

As someone who recently completed about 4 courses in statistics and econometrics as well as using this stuff in RAND quality research now - I'm apt to side with PNT. ;)
 
hornetguy said:
As someone who recently completed about 4 courses in statistics and econometrics as well as using this stuff in RAND quality research now - I'm apt to side with PNT. ;)
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Well now statistically a 52 person sample isn't much more than a focus group.... but I wouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu... Oh sorry, I must have passed out midway through that sentence. :biggrin:
 
Jcleppe said:
I think to get a better picture of the difference between the average times, you would need to take the 52 women finishers and compare their average to the top 52 male finishers. I think the difference in average time would be a bit different.



I agree with you here, that was a silly debate.
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DHinNH would say looking at the 52 women runners and comparing them to the top 52 male runners is not comparing two equal random samples one is the running time of the average women the other is the running time of the top 25% male runners...I would not expect these to be equal and they are not the top 25% easily is better than the average. (18:30 compared to 24:15) One can look at the top 25% female and compare them to the top 25% males runners. Doing this one finds that average time for the top 25% of each group is the same (~18 hours 30 minutes).
 
hornetguy said:
Eh? Statistically, that would be an invalid sampling method and comparison and doesn't make any sense! Take the best of one subpopulation compared to the complete set of another subpopulation and you have a completely invalid study!

As someone who recently completed about 4 courses in statistics and econometrics as well as using this stuff in RAND quality research now - I'm apt to side with PNT. ;)
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I should have clarified my statement, it was not meant to be in any way a valid statistical representation. I was speaking from a purley coaches perspective.

5 times more males finished the race then did females, looking at that from a coaches perspective there are some large number differences. Using an exaplme of a typical High School Cross Country team, at least in my area. The male runners out number the female runners quite a bit. Not all the male runners are fast, in fact some are on the slow side. The female runners on the other hand tend to be closer in speed. When they would train and run together it would always tend to follow the same trend. There would be a group of male runners in front, the next group would be a mix of female and male runners, followed by a larger group of male runners.

If I were to take the average of all the males and then the average of all the females, the females would always have a better average run time. The issue was that there were at least 3 times the number of males and at least a third of them would come in behind the females, this would lower the male average by quite a bit.

If I was alsed to select a team of either male or female runners to compete in a race, I could not use the averages to base my decision. I would have to take an equal amount of male to female runners and compare their average. To get an accurate basis by which to select a team I would need to take the top runners from both male and female.

In the case of the race that was mentioned above, if I needed 52 runners, I would take the 52 women and the top 52 males and compare the two. I am quite confidient the 52 males would have a faster average.

When you have 212 more males finishing a race then females, you can't compare the averages on just the raw numbers.

Again this has nothing to do with statistics, just numbers. One can't look at the averages above and say that Females will run faster then males when compared evenly.
 
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LineInTheSand said:
Well now statistically a 52 person sample isn't much more than a focus group.... but I wouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu... Oh sorry, I must have passed out midway through that sentence. :biggrin:
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Fell asleep so soon with this little dip into stats....:shake:

I am sure DHinNH (by the sounds of his posts) and i could put this whole Forum into a comma discussing the nuances of probability and statistics.:thumb:
 
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Jcleppe said:
I should have clarified my statement, it was not meant to be in any way a valid statistical represetation. I was speaking from a purley coaches perspective.

5 times more males finished the race then did females, looking at that from a coaches perspective there are some large number differences. Using an exaplme of a typical High School Cross Country team, at least in my area. The male runners out number the female runners quite a bit. Not all the male runners are fast, in fact some are on the slow side. The female runners on the other hand tend to be closer in speed. When they would train and run together it would always tend to follow the same trend. There would be a group of male runners in front, the next group would be a mix of female and male runners, followed by a larger group of male runners.

If I were to take the average of all the males and then the average of all the females, the females would always have a better average run time. The issue was that there were at least 3 times the number of males and at least a third of them would come in behind the females, this would lower the male average by quite a bit.

If I was alsed to select a team of either male or female runners to compete in a race, I could not use the averages to base my decision. I would have to take an equal amount of male to female runners and compare their average. To get an accurate basis by which to select a team I would need to take the top runners from both male and female.

In the case of the race that was mentioned above, if I needed 52 runners, I would take the 52 women and the top 52 males and compare the two. I am quite confidient the 52 males would have a faster average.

When you have 212 more males finishing a race then females, you can't compare the averages on just the raw numbers.

Again this has nothing to do with statistics, just numbers. One can't look at the averages above and say that Females will run faster then males when compared evenly.
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Valid question. If you pick the top 10 runners for your team you would get 8 males and 2 females..you might look at this and say see men are faster, but not so fast, the race population consisted of only 16% female so a sampel size of ten that only contains 2 females is the most likely value.
 
One can look at the top 25% female and compare them to the top 25% males runners. Doing this one finds that average time for the top 25% of each group is the same (~18 hours 30 minutes).
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Considering that out of the top 50 finishers in that race 10 were women and 40 were men, I am not sure how the average of the top 25% of both females and males could be the same, unless your taking the top 25% from the total numbers 52 women, and 264 men, if that's the case, it in no way compares the running time of women and men equally.

I'm getting a Math headache. Let's do batting averages next.
 
pathnottaken said:
Valid question. If you pick the top 10 runners for your team you would get 8 males and 2 females..you might look at this and say see men are faster, but not so fast, the race population consisted of only 16% female so a sampel size of ten that only contains 2 females is the most likely value.
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Nope, I'd have 10 males.
 
Jcleppe said:
When you have 212 more males finishing a race then females, you can't compare the averages on just the raw numbers.

Again this has nothing to do with statistics, just numbers. One can't look at the averages above and say that Females will run faster then males when compared evenly.
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But of course you can! Where you see the discrepancies is in the Stan. Dev/Err, but you can certainly run a two-tailed t-test on the difference of means of two population with differing n.

This thread is dead. We put everyone to sleep. :)
 
This thread is dead. We put everyone to sleep. :)
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Aaaw come on, it was fun while it lasted.

You have to admit, it did at least steer the conversation away from the female reproductive system, something good came from it.
 
hornetguy said:
But of course you can! Where you see the discrepancies is in the Stan. Dev/Err, but you can certainly run a two-tailed t-test on the difference of means of two population with differing n.

This thread is dead. We put everyone to sleep. :)
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Maybe a quick douse of Hypergeometric distribution would wake everyone up!

(How to calculate the odds of winning powerball) :yllol:
 
Jcleppe said:
A very disgusted high school student apparently.
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A disgusted high schooler who happens to have family members in special operations, please, don't talk down to me. You don't have the slightest clue as to what you're talking about. This is detrimental, and our operational capability of our various SOF units will decrease dramatically and for what? For "equality"? Women can't live up to the standards, those standards will drop, and the operational integrity and overall effectiveness will decrease dramatically. Despite what some posters on here want to believe, many of which have no experience in SOF, that is the fact of the matter...these are the sentiments I've hard time and time again from every person I know.
 
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jct95 said:
A disgusted high schooler who happens to have family members in special operations, please, don't talk down to me. You don't have the slightest clue as to what you're talking about.
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WHOA! Look at that. My dad's a doctor. Guess I'll go practice medicine. "Do you agree Doctor?"

First, as a disclaimer, I also "haven't a clue." I served in the military, but I certainly wasn't, and never wanted to be, in special operations.

That said, I had a college classmate who was a Navy SEAL (we dated the same girl at different times, so that almost makes us relatives... right?). One of my best friend's brothers-in-law was a SEAL (I know, I know... I won't get into 3 degrees of separation anymore). I have a family member that was an E-9 in the Army Special Forces, so I guess that's a decent connection.

In my official capacity I've attended some fairly light and totally unclassified briefings, both at USSOC HQ and some component special operations commands in North Carolina, Florida, southern California and Germany (and a fairly interesting taste of another country's special operations capabilities in Colombia).

So with all of that.... let me tell you this, no one needs, or likes, a high schooler living through the good deeds of his relatives to come on here, and lecture people who HAVE actually served about "talking down" to them not having the "slightest clue." Stapping on a helmet so you can camp out in your bed room tent while daddy tells you bed time stories about his service doesn't mean you "have a clue." Save the EMO trash for your pre-Twilight viewing parties.

My dad has been a doctor for 30+ years. My wife is a pharmacist. My mother is a counselor. My mother-in-law is a pharmacist. I haven't a CLUE about half the stuff their experts in. Despite living with them for long periods of time. Despite all of the stories and the lives we lived I'm still not an expert.

So there you go.

Clueless, Down Talking Vet Sends.
 
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jct95 said:
A disgusted high schooler who happens to have family members in special operations, please, don't talk down to me. You don't have the slightest clue as to what you're talking about. This is detrimental, and our operational capability of our various SOF units will decrease dramatically and for what? For "equality"? Women can't live up to the standards, those standards will drop, and the operational integrity and overall effectiveness will decrease dramatically. Despite what some posters on here want to believe, many of which have no experience in SOF, that is the fact of the matter...these are the sentiments I've hard time and time again from every person I know.
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If you think women can't keep up with the "big" boys check this person out

http://www.recordholders.org/en/list/chinups-weber.html

fast strong and smart
 
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