I'd be willing to bet that 7C is either already too low a bar, or will be very soon though. I think it should be 8A personally. Is the men's one 8B? I wonder if there's much difference in the women's numbers for 8A and for 7C+?Edit: no diss to Elle as that looks like a great problem, I'm just musing here!
Yeah the men's list is 8B and above. There's a lot more people on the men's list than the women's so unless there's loads of people missing from the women's list, or ascents at that grade are deemed un-noteworthy enough the no one knows about them, then I think it makes sense to keep it at 7C.
Quote from: remus on April 19, 2023, 02:55:47 pmYeah the men's list is 8B and above. There's a lot more people on the men's list than the women's so unless there's loads of people missing from the women's list, or ascents at that grade are deemed un-noteworthy enough the no one knows about them, then I think it makes sense to keep it at 7C.Stats people, let me know if I've got this wrong but by my amateur statistics brain...If you create 2 separate groups for your reporting (men group, women group), and those group sizes are unequal. Then reporting an equal number for each group of people who are deemed to have met a benchmark of 'significant' performance - in an activity where the number of participants in those two groups is unequal by a significant ratio - would result in the benchmark for 'significance' being significantly less difficult to achieve in the smaller group then in the larger group. Wouldn't it? I don't know the number of women versus men participating in outdoor bouldering - my unqualified wavy finger in the air guess made within roughly 15 seconds of thinking about it is that men might outnumber women by 3:1 in outdoors bouldering? That could be wildly off - I'm guessing here without much too much thought put into it. Say it is 3:1. In any activity where 'significance' is based on difficulty, and difficulty is by proxy represented by grade, then you would expect that ratio to be reflected in proportionally fewer people achieving the 'significant' benchmark grade from the group with fewer numbers compared to the group with greater numbers. If you make the numbers meeting 'significant' equal between unequal group sizes, then you've effectively made the benchmark easier by moving it to the left on the distribution bell-curve. Which may or may not be be what you want to achieve.Final thought: If the benchmark for significance is less representative of difficulty in one group than another - because the standard was lowered to promote equal numbers despite unequally-sized groups - then wouldn't that potentially risk diluting the significance of 'significance', also potentially risk lowering expectations in the smaller group?
8A isnt eactly cutting edge
In a nutshell you're right about the small group vs big group aspect. However, for me, the lists are more about 'who are the top 100 or so people in this group' and the grade boundaries are just a quick and easy way of adjusting the group size so it's around the 100 mark. Obviously you also get a lot of ascents that people would consider significant (in the big numbers sense) in there as a consequence of this, so if that's what you're interested in then you can just look at the top of the list.
I can see why you might want to list the 'top 100 people'. However it only makes sense if you know the context to put it in, by knowing roughly the number of people participating. A 'top 100 people' in a group of 500 people would have a very different meaning compared to a 'top 100 people' in a group of 10,000 people. Big fish in small ponds versus big fish in oceans.
Better to just keep it simple if you ask me.
Quote from: remus on July 08, 2022, 07:40:48 amGood updates, added those in, thanks both.https://climbing-history.org/list/4/strong-british-female-boulderersJessica Sakura Ward has bouldered 7C - Taylor Made at Dinas Rock- she is an 11 year old GB youth mini wad! Also a European champion!Video of her online
Good updates, added those in, thanks both.https://climbing-history.org/list/4/strong-british-female-boulderers