Parents Am I the only (MS) Excel weirdo?

[reluctant]

I have to admit that 7 years into this insanity, I don't even write the scores down anymore, and I am so much happier.

 

[jillc]

I am glad I am not the only Excel geek!
I am also a math/stats geek, which might be a helpful reference when I explain how I use a Excel.

It will probably sound crazy, but I started an Excel workbook when my DD was asked to join team — before she had a single team practice, and it help me learn so much!

I essentially built back the history of her team as far back as I could using data from online scoring sites.

It has scores in it, but the scores aren’t really what I used!

At first it help me learn really basic (but super useful) things like:
What level do they start competing?
When is “meet season”?
How many meets?
How far do they travel?
How many girls are at each level?
What is the highest level that trains at this gym? Do they have elite?

That was good enough for a while, but as we got into meet season I learned wanted to know more. So I built a team roll forward with the data I had.

How many new people join a year?
Where do they come from? Are they new to competing? Come from another gym? Which gyms?? Do they ever come from the Xcel team?

How many people leave in a year? Do they go somewhere else? If so where? Move out of the area or go to another gym in the area? So they ever go to the Xcel team? Is it common to move at a certain level?

The people that stay.., How common is repeating levels? How tight do they stick to the “score guideline” for move up that is in our team handbook? How common is progressing more than one level a year? Does it look like they do score out meets?Do they complete Level 6? How does the 5 to 7 transition work (after I found out they have different meet seasons)?

It isn’t perfect — because sometimes I can’t figure out where people came from or if they are moved teams — but it has gotten me pretty good answers to the questions above. I completely realize that the data doesn’t really show the whole story, but it does help me somewhat understand how things work at this gym if my DD decides to keep with this sport.

 

[LindyHopper]

I am glad I am not the only Excel geek!
I am also a math/stats geek, which might be a helpful reference when I explain how I use a Excel.

It will probably sound crazy, but I started an Excel workbook when my DD was asked to join team — before she had a single team practice, and it help me learn so much!

I essentially built back the history of her team as far back as I could using data from online scoring sites.

It has scores in it, but the scores aren’t really what I used!

At first it help me learn really basic (but super useful) things like:
What level do they start competing?
When is “meet season”?
How many meets?
How far do they travel?
How many girls are at each level?
What is the highest level that trains at this gym? Do they have elite?

That was good enough for a while, but as we got into meet season I learned wanted to know more. So I built a team roll forward with the data I had.

How many new people join a year?
Where do they come from? Are they new to competing? Come from another gym? Which gyms?? Do they ever come from the Xcel team?

How many people leave in a year? Do they go somewhere else? If so where? Move out of the area or go to another gym in the area? So they ever go to the Xcel team? Is it common to move at a certain level?

The people that stay.., How common is repeating levels? How tight do they stick to the “score guideline” for move up that is in our team handbook? How common is progressing more than one level a year? Does it look like they do score out meets?Do they complete Level 6? How does the 5 to 7 transition work (after I found out they have different meet seasons)?

It isn’t perfect — because sometimes I can’t figure out where people came from or if they are moved teams — but it has gotten me pretty good answers to the questions above. I completely realize that the data doesn’t really show the whole story, but it does help me somewhat understand how things work at this gym if my DD decides to keep with this sport.

Impressive! Yeah, when you tell us everything you track... statistics are how you understand the world, right? Or at least that helps you understand. Very cool.

 

[Deleted member 18037]

I essentially built back the history of her team as far back as I could using data from online scoring sites.
.

The minute it takes to type in her scores is sometimes a stretch. Rest of the team, no. Backwards, I’m like Rafiki, it doesn’t matter, it’s in the past.

A quick check on my meetscores gives me enough information when I need it. For things like what’s it going to take to get to regionals or where is our team going end up at States.

 

[reluctant]

Do any of the Excel nerds want to take on a project? I'd like to know if gymnasts typically score higher at level 7 if they compete 5 or if they compete 6. Seems like you could look at two sequential years of state meet data for just one state. I hear arguments both ways.

 

[profmom]

Could be done, Reluctant, but I think you'd actually want to look at three groups: athletes who go 4 to 5 to 7, athletes who go 4 to 6 to 7, and athletes who go 4 to 5 to 6 to 7. If you wanted to be rigorous, you'd probably also figure out a way to hold constant years in level. If you were to look at gyms (i.e., gyms who compete only 5 and skip 6 entirely or perhaps almost entirely versus gyms who avoid 5 and compete 6 after 4), you could come up with correlations, but the correlations couldn't explain whether the causal factor was the level chosen or the gym's training plan.

If I were to hypothesize, I would hypothesize that the athletes going from 5 to 7 do best, but that this is primarily because they come from gyms that emphasize mastery of the skill set competed in compulsories. You get a further wash effect because those gyms would likely hold back at 6 athletes who are not ready for 7.

 

[Deleted member 18037]

Do any of the Excel nerds want to take on a project? I'd like to know if gymnasts typically score higher at level 7 if they compete 5 or if they compete 6. Seems like you could look at two sequential years of state meet data for just one state. I hear arguments both ways.

It really depends on far too many things, that scores wouldn't reflect.

Hours training, uptraining, injuries just a few considerations.

 

[profmom]

If you picked a large enough state, you'd have a big enough N to get plenty of variation on other individual-level variables, though as I've said, you wouldn't be able to present a causal explanation. Just looking at scores would tell you something interesting about the nature of gyms that do 5 rather than 6 and vice versa, though this wouldn't necessarily enable you to say that competing one level or the other in and of itself prepares you better for L7.

 

[jillc]

Do any of the Excel nerds want to take on a project? I'd like to know if gymnasts typically score higher at level 7 if they compete 5 or if they compete 6. Seems like you could look at two sequential years of state meet data for just one state. I hear arguments both ways.

Ok I tried it.

I took the State of California (which is not where I live -- so this is really all just numbers to me).

I pulled the North and South State meets from Fall 2014 through Spring 2017. My matching is purely on the name -- so if the names were entered differently, I didn't pick them up.

There were 518 girls that competed all 4 events in Spring of 2017 at the level 7 meets.

I divided them into 6 groups:

Group 1: Had competed in Level 7 states previously
Group 2: Had competed in both Level 6 states and Level 5 states during the time period
Group 3: Had competed in Level 6 states but not Level 5 states during the time period
Group 4A: Had competed in Level 5 states but not level 6. DID NOT COMPETE 5 in Fall 0f 2016 (so waited at least a year between 5&7)
Group 4B: Had competed in Level 5 states but not level 6. Competed level 5 in Fall of 2016 (So, back to back seasons)
Group 5: Competed neither in Level 5 or Level 6 states during the time period -- but I did find them in level 3 or 4
Group 6: Never found them in any other JO CA state meet during the time period (I did find one from Xcel).

I then took the median score. I also looked at the average score, and the results were similar.
Results
ETA: I took the median score from the 2017 Spring State meets

The data is still very biased, in my opinion.

By only pulling data for state meets, it doesn't capture those who didn't meet the qualification to go to state (whatever the heck that is for CA).
So if fewer people make it to state via a certain route, I think you would want to know that.

It was also interesting to see that those who go directly from 5 to 7 had the highest scores in this study. Only 15 of the 94 repeated level 5 -- so I'm guessing most of them are just really good and that is why they are moving fast and getting high scores???

The group with no data was the lowest -- this could have people who simply didn't qualify to states in other years, driving it low??

Then like someone else mentioned -- I didn't hold something like constant (like which team they were on) -- as I didn't think there was enough data to really be able to do that.

If people liked this, I would probably be willing to try one more state -- if you have a suggested one.

 

[profmom]

My hypothesis would be that the top gyms are competing their best athletes at L5 and then skipping them to L7. The difference between the only 6 and the only 5 medians isn't huge, however, so it might be that the "we do L5 rather than L6 because competing the highest compulsory level prepares them better for optionals" may not be as strongly true as some coaches believe. Clearly some gyms are able to get their girls ready for L7 without doing L5. It's also interesting that -- to infer a bit -- the coaches seem to be doing a good job of identifying the girls who can make that huge jump from L4 or L3! to L7, as their median is the second highest in the group.

Without digging further, the biggest takeaway for me is that there are a number of different workable paths to get to the same relatively successful place.

(Thanks, BTW, for reporting medians.)

 

[reluctant]

Thanks for doing this. My observation is that the scores are all really high, and not that different. (I didn't do the math.) But I am going to pretend that this"proves" that doing Level 5 instead of 6 is worthwhile. It is what our gym does and it is rare in our area.