Crowding at the Front of the Marathon Packs
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
2008-04-23 v2 Popular Physics
Abstract
We study the crowding of near-extreme events in the time gaps between successive finishers in major international marathons. Naively, one might expect these gaps to become progressively larger for better-placing finishers. While such an increase does indeed occur from the middle of the finishing pack down to approximately 20th place, the gaps saturate for the first 10-20 finishers. We give a probabilistic account of this feature. However, the data suggests that the gaps have a weak maximum around the 10th place, a feature that seems to have a sociological origin.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0802.1702,
title = {Crowding at the Front of the Marathon Packs},
author = {Sanjib Sabhapandit and Satya N. Majumdar and S. Redner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0802.1702},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
5 pages, 2 figures; version 2: published manuscript with various changes in response to referee comments and some additional improvements