Is the Sky the Limit in Track and Field: Answers in Measurement and Evaluation

1
Is the Sky the Limit in Track and Field Answers
in Measurement and Evaluation?

• Yuanlong Liu
• Department of Health, Physical Education and
  Recreation
• Western Michigan University

2009
2
Who am I?
3
Introduction
Motto?
Faster Higher Stronger
Men now run 40 sec. faster in 1500m run and jump
54 centimeters higher in high jump than one
hundred years ago
4
Introduction

• Human being has been running faster and jumping
  higher through the would
• Whether the improvement trend would continue and
  when is the end?
• Can ME specialists help?

5
Richest Data

• One hundred more years world annual best
  performances
• Best world athletes performances
• Male Female
• Races Regions

6
Track and Field Performances Past and
Present(continue)

• World best performances

? Because of the asymptotic trend, the general
performances trend would not have much
space for improvement in the new century
7
Track and Field PerformancesComparison between
East and West

8
What Can ME Specialists Do?

• Linear regression model
• Non-linear regression model
• What else?

9
Results of regression models

• Linear model
• The nonlinear regression models
• the exponential model was the best fitting model
  in all the selected events.
• An asymptotic level has been achieved in all the
  selected events

10
Results of regression models(continue)

• the autoregressive integrated moving average
  model (ARIMA) in time-series analysis were used
  to fit the data
• An ARIMA(0.0.0) model was identified for the last
  two decades data.

11
So, No New World Record?

• Any ideas?
• How about weather forecasting model?
• Random sampling model
• Assuming true score mean of the top performances
  now stabilized
• Tested on mens 1500m (foster Stuart procedure)
• Records are set up by outliers
• A Monte Carlo program to estimate future records
  and waiting times
• Extreme value theory, utilizing an exponential
  distribution, was used to model the ordered
  extreme performances and generate new world
  records
• History has shown us to be very close with the
  date and the records

12
Conclusions?

• No
• The future holds surprising changes, in
  equipment, in technology, in performance
  enhancing drugs, in social and economic status,
  etc.
• It is true that predicting future tack and field
  performances is good fun, and probably about as
  exact as some the uses of statistics and
  mathematics is put to elsewhere