19 janv. 2019

Triathlon and Outliers

Looking at the last World Championship, Gold Coast 2018, we can see the triathlon outliers:  The winner of the female junior elite category; Hungary could spread its athletes’ data and it can be on the outskirts of the winning culture with its male athlete winning the junior category.   Cecilia Ramirez is clearly outside of Mexican expectations statistically.  She is an outlier.

An outlier is an observation that lies outside the overall pattern of a distribution (Moore and McCabe 1999). Usually, the presence of an outlier indicates some sort of problem. This can be a case which does not fit the model under study, or an error in measurement.

Outliers are often easy to spot in histograms. For example, the point on the far left in the above figure is an outlier.
A convenient definition of an outlier is a point which falls more than 1.5 times the interquartile range above the third quartile or below the first quartile.

Outliers can also occur when comparing relationships between two sets of data. Outliers of this type can be easily identified on a scatter diagram.
When performing least squares fitting to data, it is often best to discard outliers before computing the line of best fit. This is particularly true of outliers along the x direction, since these points may greatly influence the result.

The study of outliers gives unique information.  The case of the Italians immigrants living in Roseto, Penn has been studied, they were outliers when they first came to Pennsylvania; the coronary artery disease was no so prevalent as in the other immigrants from other ethnicities.   At the end of the study, the way of living made the difference.

It seemed like a virtual fountain of youth, with a heart attack mortality rate roughly half the rate of every surrounding community. Same water, same neighborhood, same occupational mix, same income level ranges, same races. So what was the difference and why?

Well, you had to ask the Rosetans for the answer, and the next question you ask should be, Who are the Rosetans?...

Part of the bargain: Rosetans, regardless of income and education, expressed themselves in a family-centered social life. There was a total absence of ostentation among the wealthy, meaning that those who had more money didn't flaunt it. There was nearly exclusive patronage of local businesses, even with nearby bigger shops and stores in other towns. The Italians intermarried in Roseto, from regional cities in Italy. Families were close knit, self-supportive and independent, but also relied...in bad times...on the greater community for well-defined assistance and friendly help…

In 1963, these investigators made a prescient observation: they believed that as Rosetans became more Americanized (meaning less close, less modest and less interdependent), they would also become less healthy. The wearing off of the now famous "Roseto" effect would be apparent within a generation. And so it was.

A relatively recent (1992) survey, as published in the American Journal of Public Health, confirmed this sad prediction. The officials of the AJPH, no doubt beguiled by Roseto's fate, descended on the town yet again. Again the investigators rifled through the death records of Roseto, and again they compared them with the surrounding towns of Nazareth and Bangor. The result: the Rosetans now suffer equally from the ravages of heart disease as every other town does, in the vicinity or not.

Cecilia is not doing the same as the rest of the Mexican triathlon culture.  Education for Outliers has taken place daily.  Does it exist?  We have mentioned it in the previous post.  Generic education should continue if we want to continue learning; otherwise, we are going to finish like the Rosetans, losing the advantage. Cecilia is a real outlier as well as the kids training with her.  We have written about it:


16 avr. 2014



Triathlon and Regression Toward the Mean



This is a very tricky subject.  I have touched it several times but never went over.  It is the main reason why we have to choose our partners; we can become as the ones we critized if we interact with them for a long time:

In statistics, regression toward (or to) the mean is the phenomenon that if a variable is extreme on its first measurement, it will tend to be closer to the average on its second measurement—and, paradoxically, if it is extreme on its second measurement, it will tend to have been closer to the average on its first.[1][2][3] To avoid making wrong inferences, regression toward the mean must be considered when designing scientific experiments and interpreting data.

This concept has not a translation to Spanish.  IT IS SCARRY!  This is a basic concept when we think about things scientifically; it is a sin ne quo non in science.  It is very important what could happen due to luck or to what we consider a trend in science:
The concept of regression comes from genetics and was popularized by Sir Francis Galton during the late 19th century with the publication of Regression towards mediocrity in hereditary stature.[6] Galton observed that extreme characteristics (e.g., height) in parents are not passed on completely to their offspring. Rather, the characteristics in the offspringregress towards a mediocre point (a point which has since been identified as the mean). By measuring the heights of hundreds of people, he was able to quantify regression to the mean, and estimate the size of the effect. Galton wrote that, “the average regression of the offspring is a constant fraction of their respective mid-parental deviations”.


https://deportes.televisa.com/otros-deportes/videos-cecilia-ramirez-experiencia-en-triatlon/



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