There were a bunch of "studies" which extrapolated that women's marathon times will get faster than men's in very near future - in 1992 Nature published an article by physiologists Susan Ward and Brian Whipp who predicted that by 1998 (!) women will catch up to men in marathon, and in the following few decades for shorter distances.
Personally, I cannot understand how articles with premises like that can even make it into Nature. For mathematically inclined, a link below is a perfect demonstration of dangers of "blind" statistical extrapolations which often leads to such predictions: http://www.mav.vic.edu.au/curres/women/ Scroll down for the bottom line: "Thus, the world record women’s times are predicted to equal, and thereafter better, those of men on the 27th of April in the year 2021 in a time of 2 hours, 4 minutes and 26.17 seconds." This reminds me of this joke: "You wanna marry this guy, but think about it. You are 20, and he is 40. When you are 30, he'll be 60. When you turn 40, he'll be 80!" Oleg. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Martin J. Dixon Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 5:26 PM To: Track & Field List; Track Canada Subject: t-and-f: NYT nonsense re marathon record First SI and now The Paper of Record. It's not on the site so I'm just quoting an excerpt. One Jere Longman's weigh in on the women's marathon record: "...Ndereba...broke the previous mark by 59 seconds, and rekindled discussions about whether women might eventually run the marathon faster than men." Who exactly is having these discussions? Anybody on these lists? Regards, Martin
