700/23 vs 700/25 tires ?

In article ,
John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:

On Sat, 07 Mar 2009 11:49:46 -0600, Tim McNamara
wrote:

OK, then. Prove it. You keep making these assertions without
backing them up with any facts. Provide us with facts. Your
continual "is too" approach is not convincing.

Chung provided stats. Sandy provided stats on power and tires.

And Ben also provided calculations. All helpful in advancing the
discussion. You've pretty much just provided dudgeon.

The closest "proof" I can provide is practice -- what is done. By
thousands of people.

Billions of people believe in one or more invisible cosmic friends.
Does that make them right?

Do you apply the same sort of skeptism in other aspects of your life?

I try to, at least where evidence exists. I try to differentiate
between faith and knowledge.

For something you don't have data on but the vast majority of people
do it one way that's differen than, say, 25 years ago, and you keep
doing it the old way just because of the lack of non-experiential
evidence? Really?

Oddly enough, bike racing isn't very different than it was 25 years ago.
Training methods are somewhat different (way better drugs, for one
thing) and equipment is a little different in design but fundamentally
the same in function (due to UCI rules, to a great extent).

In article ,
Michael Press wrote:

In article ,
Tim McNamara wrote:

It's all stochastic, man.

No, it is not.

Ooh, nice comeback. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm convinced
now. Now perhaps you might insert an illuminating fact here.

In article ,
Tim McNamara wrote:

In article ,
Michael Press wrote:

In article ,
Tim McNamara wrote:

It's all stochastic, man.

No, it is not.

Ooh, nice comeback. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm convinced
now. Now perhaps you might insert an illuminating fact here.

It is not all stochastic. Fact.

--
Michael Press

Tim McNamara wrote:
[...]
Billions of people believe in one or more invisible cosmic friends.
Does that make them right?
[...]

Only those who believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster creating the
Universe with His Noodly Appendage.

--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007
LOCAL CACTUS EATS CYCLIST - datakoll

On Mar 5, 7:18*pm, Tim McNamara wrote:
" wrote:
On Mar 3, 5:40*pm, Tim McNamara wrote:

Greg has only three other competitors in his class? *That's the
only way he'd have a 25% chance of winning each race.

This is statistically illiterate. *You believe a version of the RBR
joke that whenever there are two outcomes, the chances are always
50/50.

Chance *is* 50/50 when there are only two possible outcomes.

No it isn't. This is innumeracy.

I might win the lottery tomorrow. Or I might not.
There are two possible outcomes. Are the
chances 50/50 ?

I could arm wrestle Chuck Norris. One of us
is going to win. Would you put even odds on me?

You are restating a common misconception -
that probabilities of outcomes must necessarily
be uniform. In fact everyone knows this is not
the case; Joe Average is perfectly capable of
understanding the spread on football games.

One could imagine that in a given race, there's 2 racers with a 25%
chance of winning, 2 with a 10% change, 4 with a 5% chance, 10 with a
1% chance, and 10 with no chance at all. This is far closer to the
reality I've seen than everyone having an equal chance.

And how do you determine those chances? *Of course, you're actually
attempting to talk about probabilities in a monobuttocked way.

The exact numbers don't matter. *

????? *I see- if the proposal is sufficiently imprecise it can be bent
to support your position.

No. I put some concrete numbers in the example
so you can follow along, because this is simple math.
Then you whine. I could choose different concrete
numbers and the principles would remain the same.

If I tried to write all these statements about probability
down in a general algebraic form, it would be hard to
read in ASCII usenet, and you wouldn't be able to
follow as well because it would be abstract rather than
a concrete example.

Unless you can come up with your own concrete
numerical counterexample, quit bitching.

All I am saying is that there are effects that would
be considered significant but cannot be demonstrated
at 3 sigma because the sample size of one season
is too small. An improvement in winning chance from
5 to 10%, or 25 to 35%, is like that.

If you have experience in outcome-based health care
assessment, you should understand this principle.
It may take a trial with hundreds of people to determine
that a procedure works, because the improvement
that it makes is not decisive (e.g. it doesn't save everybody's
life). However, _for each individual person_, the
additional chance of a positive outcome is
important, so if the cost/benefit of the procedure is
good, it is indicated. Even though you may not be able
to later determine that the additional procedure is what
made the difference for an individual patient. That is, you
may know that 10 out of 100 patients were helped,
but you don't know which ones.

If you don't understand this, take a refresher class.
Seriously.

Ben

On Mar 6, 9:23*am, Tim McNamara wrote:
In article ,
*John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:

On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:20:04 -0600, Tim McNamara
wrote:

Of those 2000+ races, how many more did you win because of that 1%
improvement that you wouldn't have won otherwise? *And how do you
know it was *that* 1% improvement?

it can't be known with certainty because races are too complex. *

What Ben has shown us is that it can't be known if the effect size of
the improvement is smaller than the error of measurement. *This is a
well-known problem in statistics and is a good working definition of
negligibility.

All I showed is that Frank's proposed experiment
had too small a sample size to detect a reasonable
effect.

That is not a good working definition of "negligible"
because it depends on sample size.

Bret's 2000 races would be a somewhat better
sample size, but there is no way to control
an experiment retroactively. If there was some
small change - for example, maybe he trained
smarter than everyone else all those years - that
allowed him to increase his winning chance by 1%,
though, that would be 20 races, which most would
not consider negligible.

Another example: the house in casino gambling
typically has an advantage of just a few percent in
any given bet (for many casino games, not slots).
If you didn't know this, and placed 10 or 20 bets,
you'd win close to half, and lose close to half.
You wouldn't be able to tell that the house had
an advantage. Does this mean that the house's
advantage is negligible? In the long run, over
many bets and many bettors, the house does
not think so.

Of course, if all you ever do in the casino is
make 10 small bets and then leave, maybe you
don't care that the house is taking a little from
you on average. Cheap entertainment and
all that. But if you care about winning, or
losing as slowly as possible to prolong the
entertainment, then you might care about
small differences in the odds. Casinos have
better odds than state lotteries; blackjack
has better odds than roulette; both have better
odds than slots. There are entire websites
devoted to this, so somebody doesn't think
it's negligible.

Ben

On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:18:33 -0500, Tim McNamara
wrote:

In article ,
John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
For something you don't have data on but the vast majority of people
do it one way that's differen than, say, 25 years ago, and you keep
doing it the old way just because of the lack of non-experiential
evidence? Really?

Oddly enough, bike racing isn't very different than it was 25 years ago.
Training methods are somewhat different (way better drugs, for one
thing) and equipment is a little different in design but fundamentally
the same in function (due to UCI rules, to a great extent).

It's interesting how you throw up stuff like this. Has anyone here
said bikes are "fundamentally" different? You're like Frank K,
"arguing" that fast bikes are very important in recreational rides.

Also interesting that you don't answer my question, which is not about
fundamental differences, but small differences.

On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:18:33 -0500, Tim McNamara
wrote:


Billions of people believe in one or more invisible cosmic friends.
Does that make them right?

Oh yeah, because many people overestimate the effect of bikes,
therefore bikes don't have much effect at all. The reactionarism of
RBT is always amusing.

On 9 Mar, 01:40, Tom Sherman wrote:
wrote:
On Mar 6, 7:55 pm, Tom Sherman
wrote:
"jeffreybike" wrote:
Is there any real difference between 23mm and 25mm tires as far as
speed. Will 2mm make you that slower or faster?
thanks, Jeff
Should have skipped the thanks, since no good answer has been provided
as of yet.

Bad questions reap a bountiful harvest of bad answers,
and predicating it on a false dichotomy is like slowly moving
upstream with a long line of hooks out.

The answer is 35.

No, it is 42.

--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007
LOCAL CACTUS EATS CYCLIST - datakoll

23 + 19 tyre or 24+18 spokes

TJ

Nick L Plate aka Trevor Jeffrey wrote:
On 9 Mar, 01:40, Tom Sherman wrote:
wrote:
On Mar 6, 7:55 pm, Tom Sherman
wrote:
"jeffreybike" wrote:
Is there any real difference between 23mm and 25mm tires as far as
speed. Will 2mm make you that slower or faster?
thanks, Jeff
Should have skipped the thanks, since no good answer has been provided
as of yet.
Bad questions reap a bountiful harvest of bad answers,
and predicating it on a false dichotomy is like slowly moving
upstream with a long line of hooks out.
The answer is 35.
No, it is 42.


Please honor the signature separator (i.e. "-- ").

23 + 19 tyre or 24+18 spokes

Do not throw the letter Q in a privet bush, or we will never find out.

--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007
LOCAL CACTUS EATS CYCLIST - datakoll