My 5K PR is 15:45. Am I the median for Letsrun?

15:04... twice on the track... never could break it. 14:49 road.

once an IDIOT wrote:

12:57.23

Great work Worku! Nice run in Rome, shame you didn't quite break the world or Ethiopian record (I'm a nerd who looks up statistics).

For me I'm at 15:47, a once off, a long time ago and I must have been on something because my next best is about 16:25. I'm surprised that there aren't a lot of guys between 18 and 20 minutes. Don't casual 'fun runners' check out 'letsrun'?

17:39 1988

Current - ~25 min, but at least still going (actually still ran 18:04 3 years ago, but 3 years of PF later)

Bdubs wrote:

Where is statman carothers when you need him.

Both Median and Mean are "averages."

Statistically speaking, the median has n/2 observations higher and n/2 lower (depending if there are an even or odd number of observations)

The mean has half of the combined values above, and half below. It would be the balancing point of the distribution, a visual of the pdf would give the statistician an idea of "skewness."

Medians take large numbers out of the picture. Since the fastest time a runner could report is limited (1237 being the low), and the highest number is somewhat infinite (sometimes my 55 minute 5k walker grandma posts), the median is probably a better "average" in this case.

Because the letsrun community is pretty savvy statistics wise, some confusion is no surprising. However, there are probably a lot of pricks just trying to be pedantic. Me included?

thanks for clearing that up Bdubs.

i don't know what kind of "stats" class the other poster just took but your professor might have skipped the part about there being 3 ways to calculate "average"

mean,

median, and

mode.

mean is by far the most common.

by the way, the next time your local school district is fighting over a salary increase and junior xyz school board member tells the community that the "average" teachers salary is $60,000 try asking them how they calcualted their "average."

it's a simple way to show that, for the most part, teachers salaries are very biased towards those that have 20+ years of service, and that when school boards make the above kind of statements public it infuriates the local voting public who believe that every teacher makes AT LEAST $60,000 because some jackass just stated the "average."

15:23

I didn't even bring up mode since we're talking about a continuous variable. The probability that two posters have the exact pr is zero. Thus, there really isn't a mode.

I am a stats teacher!. How good is up for debate.

14:19.

Kenny B wrote:

12:37... I can go faster.

hahahha whats up Keneisa.Am i the first one to catch that? Kenny B. clever. too bad your prolly just some random dueshbag, but good attempt at humor I must say!!

Unfortunately, I've never ran a serious 5k and I don't want to destroy your average, continue on people :-D

^o^

17:08. Assuming I'm average you are faster than the median. If not, then I'll have to change my handle.

Bdubs wrote:

The probability that two posters have the exact pr is zero.

I'd wager the probability is significantly higher than zero.

Mine is 17:58. I don't know if any other lardasses have posted similarly slow PRs, but it wouldn't shock me.

Clearly you don't know what a continuous variable is. Your time wasn't 17:58 exactly. So if another poster has a pr of 17:58, they're merely rounded to the same number. 17:58.001 is different than 17;58.9999

Booyah!!

55-52-1

17:44

Bdubs wrote:

Clearly you don't know what a continuous variable is. Your time wasn't 17:58 exactly. So if another poster has a pr of 17:58, they're merely rounded to the same number. 17:58.001 is different than 17;58.9999

Booyah!!

I have yet to run a race where times are recorded to the 10-thousandth of a second.

In the case of official road race times, the variable isn't continuous; it's in increments of a second.

16:38

16:10

14:16

15:25

14:52