A 14:19 5k means you're "One in 40,074" in the U.S.

Darryl Dorkman wrote:

Steve Chu wrote:

Let's see this list.

23 Cheseret, Robert 13:47.5

I'm pretty sure Robert Chesert is not an American (yet), but I could be wrong.

Aside from the negativity on this board, letsrun is actually a pretty good place for running-related resources. Maybe the person who quoted the 168 number can provide a link to back that up, and chances are there will be similar lists for 2005, 2004, etc...

Using those lists you can probably estimate the number of new people that dip under the 14:20 mark by comparing lists from consecutive years, that should be a better estimate.

To account for the people that died off, you can probably just use a life table. The average age of these people is probably 24-30 years old. I randomly flipped open an old actuarial mathematics textbook and saw that about half of the people that survive to their 25th birthday also survive to their 80th. So basically you can say that if 50 people broke 14:20 in 1950 as 25-year-olds, about half of them are still alive. (and apply similar percentages to people that did it in other years) This is the general population in general, you might have to figure that runners probably have a better survival rate.

Yes, as many of my esteemed colleagues have pointed out--your data collection process and methodology are severely flawed. Let me lend you a helping hand. (I won't even charge you my consulting billing fees for this)

If I were you I'd at least use a mortality table to project how many of those who historically ran a sub 14:20 are still alive. See link below.

Have fun...

I know your analysis is way off because at least 40,000 LetsRun posters say they have broken 14:00.

This weekend, at ACC's, 4 out of 36 runners broke 14:20 in the 5k. Two were U.S. born, two foreign national. Excluding foreign born nationals is proper since they are selected specifically for skill at running and not representative of the rate at which those skills appear in the general population.

One U.S. born runner broke 9:00 in the steeple 2/14 and one U.S. born runner broke 30:00 in the 10k. For the sake of argument, add them to the list of those capable of breaking 14:20.

That leaves 4 runners out of a total undergraduate population of 185,000. This is already 1:46,000.

Only about a quarter of the U.S. population receives a bachelor's degree, although I suspect that the rates at which people attend college are closer to 33%. Assuming that no one in the remaining 66% of the population can break 14:20 leaves you with 4 runners out of 555,000, or 1:111,000, who can break 14:20.

This number still seems ridiculously low.

Steve Chu wrote: Maybe the person who quoted the 168 number can provide a link to back that up, and chances are there will be similar lists for 2005, 2004, etc...

I second that...such a list would be helpful

Actuary wrote:

your data collection process and methodology are severely flawed.

Flawed, yes, but "severely flawed", I don't think so. As I was saying above, this was an "order of magnitude" exercise. My "One in 40,000" estimate is closer to the real answer than say, one in 4,000 or one in 400,000. Read:

How about this?

As somebody noted already:

In 2006 168 Americans broke 14:20 for 5000 meters in 2006.

There are guys who could have but didn't; the 10km guys who didn't do a 5km, the 3steeple guys, some XC guys; at most another 132 and that's pushing it. That brings the total to 300. There are 300 million americans; if you can break 14:20 you are 1 in million!

If you take time frames it gets fuzzy as to what your hypothesis is. i.e. "At some point in their lives of all the people alive right now in the US only one in X could break 14:19."

Just a suggestion.

Mandingo is one in a million for an alltogether different reason...

so how many sub 14.20 in 2007 so far?

Jenna Jameson wrote:

Mandingo is one in a million for an alltogether different reason...

Jenna, you said you wouldn't kiss and tell! I don't want Mrs. Mandingo getting jealous.

i would think you could start compiling your lists by simply using any and all national meet results. i'm talking about d1, d2, d3, naia, juco, usa, maybe even some masters could do it. then you take a look at the national performance lists at all the previously mentioned levels. that will give you a rather large amount of individuals who have cracked the barrier. this must be done for both indoor/outdoor seasons and championship meets. then you move down to some larger invitational meets that are going to have some good results like mt sac, stanford, texas relays, ku relays, penn relays, drake relays, hillsdale, those northeast high performance meets, large conference meets (big 12, sec, pac 10, etc) and ncaa regional meets. if you want to get high school times just get on dyestat and they will have something for 5k.

even though that is a rather large amount of data collecting i would venture a guess and say it would account for at 95% or more of the sub 1420 times. hell, the performance lists probably could show you 80% of those times alone. i'm too lazy to do any of this but its just a suggestion.

Well actually he wouldn't have to remove the foreigners from his list because the 300 million in population is the US population, not the "american population living in the united states" so that would throw his statistics way off if he was trying to find just the americans.

One huge flaw is that you do not take into account repeats. If about 150 do it in 05, I doubt that it is an entire new stock in 06. There would have to be significant overlap. Just another flaw.

Um, why didn't you include these people? And God knows how many others you left out. People are right, your list does suck, how on earth did you get it?

1 Kemboi, David Norfolk Stat 13:58.51

2 Fitzgerald, Ian Unattached 13:59.36

3 Landry, Christo William & Ma 14:01.08

4 Crews, John NC State 14:07.03

why not start here for your top 30?http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/lists/display_list.php?list_id=2&sex_id=M&year=2006

kartelite wrote:

Um, why didn't you include these people? And God knows how many others you left out. People are right, your list does suck, how on earth did you get it?

1 Kemboi, David Norfolk Stat 13:58.51

2 Fitzgerald, Ian Unattached 13:59.36

3 Landry, Christo William & Ma 14:01.08

4 Crews, John NC State 14:07.03

And yes I know Kemboi is not American before anyone says anything, I just left him up there.

I agree with this person, you obviously didnt check the NCAA list from 2006 or you deleted people who where americans that you thought, in your stupidy and lack of real committment to your little statistic

What about Americans who run faster than 14:20, but not in America. For example,

Abdirahman Abdihakem USA 13:18.89

Also, Martin Fagan and Scott Overall are not Americans.

dont lie about your research wrote:

I agree with this person, you obviously didnt check the NCAA list from 2006 or you deleted people who where americans that you thought, in your stupidy and lack of real committment to your little statistic

Instead of just bitching why don't you provide us a link to "the NCAA list from 2006"?

I've already said I only committed one hour to this analysis. If you can do better in one hour, then by all means.