Abstract
Improvements in the results of athletic competitions are often considered to stem from better training and equipment, but elements of chance are always present in athletics and these also contribute. Here we distinguish between these two effects by estimating the range into which athletic records would have fallen in the absence of systematic progress and then comparing this with actual performance results. We find that only 4 out of 22 disciplines have shown a systematic improvement, and that annual best results worldwide1 show saturation in some disciplines.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Koponen, M. The Track and Field Athlete of the Century According to the Statistics (Atk-Pike, Asikkala, Finland, 2000).
David, H. A. Order Statistics (Wiley, New York, 1970).
Scherer, K. A. Chronik Handbuch, Sportgeschichte in Zahlen (Chronik, Munich, 1997).
Steinmetz, F. Deutsche Meisterschaften, Band 1–4 (Hornberger, Waldfischbach, Germany, 2000).
Galambos, J. The Asymptotic Theory of Extreme Order Statistics (Wiley, New York, 1978).
Hammond, K. A. & Diamond, J. Nature 386, 457–462 (1997).
Tryfos, P. & Blackmore, R. J. Am. Stat. Assoc. 80, 46–50 (1985).
Gammaitoni, L., Hänggi, P., Jung, P. & Marchesoni, F. Rev. Mod. Phys. 70, 223–287 (1998).
Gembris, D. et al. Magn. Reson. Med. 43, 259–268 (2000).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gembris, D., Taylor, J. & Suter, D. Trends and random fluctuations in athletics. Nature 417, 506 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/417506a
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/417506a
This article is cited by
-
Universal statistics of the knockout tournament
Scientific Reports (2013)
-
Randomness in Competitions
Journal of Statistical Physics (2013)
-
Correlations Between Record Events in Sequences of Random Variables with a Linear Trend
Journal of Statistical Physics (2011)
-
Chance breaks world records
Nature (2002)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.