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Just thought I'd share a chart which I made and found interesting enough to share. It simply shows the average reaction times reported from every top level meet I could find for the period 2018 to 2022 (plus the 2017 WC). Notes under the chart.
RT 2018-2022.jpg
I put the data together in the wake of the 2022 WC reaction time fiasco - there are plenty of threads on the 'current events' forum to provide opinions on that. I thought that there were some other interesting observations to make here.
1. Several meets are still using a 'loud' gun, where reaction times generally vary between 0.160 and 0.175 depending on the placement of the starter. The average reaction time of 0.182 seconds at the 2022 Mt SAC meet (Walnut) is unusually high even for a loud gun.
2. Average reaction times vary quite a lot between meets, but mostly within a range from 0.144 and 0.155 seconds.
3. Generally, if one event at a meet has fast reaction times then the other events will as well - there are definitely meets where the reaction times are faster and meets where they are slower. The variation is more than would be expected from simple statistical 'noise'. I am trying to come up with a way to do a formal statistical measurement of this (e.g. ANOVA) but its complicated by the fact that most meets don't include every event. The reason for the differences between events is an interesting question - I expect that the equipment setup varies a little from meet to meet, probably through calibration of the signal out of the blocks to the timing of the starting 'gun' (which I speculate is what was messed up in Eugene 22).
4. If you know of data for reaction times from meets not included in the chart then let me know!
Technical note: reaction times are from the men's and women's 100, 200 and high hurdles. They have been scaled slightly to allow for minor differences in general trends (e.g. reaction times for the 200m are a little slower on average than for the 100 metres). Meets with less than 20 reported reaction times are not included.
RT 2018-2022.jpg
I put the data together in the wake of the 2022 WC reaction time fiasco - there are plenty of threads on the 'current events' forum to provide opinions on that. I thought that there were some other interesting observations to make here.
1. Several meets are still using a 'loud' gun, where reaction times generally vary between 0.160 and 0.175 depending on the placement of the starter. The average reaction time of 0.182 seconds at the 2022 Mt SAC meet (Walnut) is unusually high even for a loud gun.
2. Average reaction times vary quite a lot between meets, but mostly within a range from 0.144 and 0.155 seconds.
3. Generally, if one event at a meet has fast reaction times then the other events will as well - there are definitely meets where the reaction times are faster and meets where they are slower. The variation is more than would be expected from simple statistical 'noise'. I am trying to come up with a way to do a formal statistical measurement of this (e.g. ANOVA) but its complicated by the fact that most meets don't include every event. The reason for the differences between events is an interesting question - I expect that the equipment setup varies a little from meet to meet, probably through calibration of the signal out of the blocks to the timing of the starting 'gun' (which I speculate is what was messed up in Eugene 22).
4. If you know of data for reaction times from meets not included in the chart then let me know!
Technical note: reaction times are from the men's and women's 100, 200 and high hurdles. They have been scaled slightly to allow for minor differences in general trends (e.g. reaction times for the 200m are a little slower on average than for the 100 metres). Meets with less than 20 reported reaction times are not included.
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