World games mixed stats...
it seems like there is quite a bru-ha-ha about the involvement of women in the coed game. i remember thinking about this during the world games as i looked at some of goals scored and assist data being reported from the tourney. as i understand it, those games were all played with 4 men and 3 women on the field at all times. this allows us to set some expectations about each gender's involvement in the number of goals.
i made an assumption of randomness, meaning that i expected that any player on the field was equally likely to throw a goal and each receiver was equally likely to receive a goal, which allowed us to group by gender. of course it isn't true that each player has the same likelihood of throwing/receiving a goal, whether the game is same-sex or mixed, but for the purpose of argument let's just go with it. under random conditions we would expect that 4 out of 7 goals would be thrown by men, and that their goals would be evenly split between men and women (because when a guy has the disc, 3 of his receivers are male and 3 are female). 3 out of 7 goals should be thrown by women and two-thirds of their goals should go to men and only one-third should go to women. so for a given goal, the probability of it being:
i think that you'll actually find that the US team was one of the better balanced among the teams in attendance. a quick look at the 3rd place gamesheet shows that the canadian women threw 2 of their 15 goals, with men on the receiving end of all their goals.
i made an assumption of randomness, meaning that i expected that any player on the field was equally likely to throw a goal and each receiver was equally likely to receive a goal, which allowed us to group by gender. of course it isn't true that each player has the same likelihood of throwing/receiving a goal, whether the game is same-sex or mixed, but for the purpose of argument let's just go with it. under random conditions we would expect that 4 out of 7 goals would be thrown by men, and that their goals would be evenly split between men and women (because when a guy has the disc, 3 of his receivers are male and 3 are female). 3 out of 7 goals should be thrown by women and two-thirds of their goals should go to men and only one-third should go to women. so for a given goal, the probability of it being:
- man to man = (4/7) * 0.5 = 0.2857
- man to woman = (4/7) * 0.5 = 0.2857
- woman to man = (3/7) * (2/3) = 0.2857
- woman to woman = (3/7) * (1/3) = 0.1428
- man to man = (8, 9, 7, 8, 7, 7) 46
- man to woman = (1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1) 10
- woman to man = (2, 2, 4, 4, 3, 5) 20
- woman to woman = (2, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0) 4
i think that you'll actually find that the US team was one of the better balanced among the teams in attendance. a quick look at the 3rd place gamesheet shows that the canadian women threw 2 of their 15 goals, with men on the receiving end of all their goals.
posted by greg at
4:23 PM
9 Comments:
Welcome.
I think you might have goals and assists mixed up. The scoresheet listed goals (caught) first, I believe. The women caught more than they threw.
You should get a hit counter. Go to blogger.com and see how to get one from sitemeter.
By
parinella, at 12/01/2005 6:30 AM
thanks for visiting. (corey must have been blabbing his mouth about this site). anyway, i think you're right about me mixing up goals caught/thrown. so i guess reverse the man to woman, and woman to man stats. the others stay the same.
maybe that means the questions i should be asking are "why are men able to throw to women, but women aren't able to throw to them?" or something like that. maybe i should say something more controversial to improve hitcounts like "it's obvious from the numbers that women don't know how to throw for goals".
okay, first major post and first major mistake all at once. off to a flying start. i'll look into that hitcount.
By
greg, at 12/01/2005 7:44 AM
Yes, it was Corey. But apparently some other people have found out, too.
You could look into a few related things:
a. Are women thrown to an "average" amount?
b. Of the passes they are involved in, do they throw/catch an average number of goals?
c. Is there any way to tell whether they are being used optimally? (Expected answer: Yes, but only if you tracked thousands of games over many levels.)
By
parinella, at 12/02/2005 8:19 AM
Welcome aboard. You might also want to set up your comments so that it opens a separate window, so people don't have to flip back and forth between articles and comments screens. That is one of the template settings under comments.
Speaking from personal experience, and this is not at the highest level of coed, it is much more difficult to throw to a woman than to a man, because the range of error is far smaller. Interpret this as you will. I would expect that women who have played a lot of coed, and thrown a lot of throws to men, might have the same problems adjusting their throws back to women after having gained some additional error margin throwing to the men. I expect I might get flamed for these comments, and obviously there are exceptions to any rule, but I think this might be a good explanation. I might have to expand this to a post (since I've been pretty dry these days, to the extend that I'm drafting a post about Goaltimate).
By
Alex de Frondeville, at 12/02/2005 10:08 AM
Playing with Team USA at practices and Potlatch, the things I noticed first were:
-despite being a confident thrower in the women's game, I did not throw nearly as many upfield throws on Team USA
-despite getting lots of touches when cutting as a receiver in the women's game, I was not thrown to as often on Team USA as a downfield cutter
From various conversations, I think that most of the women on the team would probably agree with those statements. I think that both of them were direct results of the differences in speed of the women's and men's game. For instance, I did not have much practice gauging the speed of men cutters and (more importantly) their defenders, so was more hesitant to throw to men as downfield cutters. Additionally, the guys on the team had to adjust to how open women cutters were despite fewer yards of separation from their defenders.
The team did not have that many opportunities to practice and play together (5 weekends before going to Germany), so I think that gender adjustments were still a factor in play by the time of the World Games. Differences from player to player were dependent on how fast each of us were able to adjust to various differences in the mixed game. Out of the women, Deb Cussen adjusted the quickest to be able to consistently and accurately throw to male and female cutters and her large number of touches reflected that ability as she was one of the players to pick up the disc in stopped disc situations.
With more practice I think the team's endzone offense would have matured too. At Potlatch, it usually ended up being whoever cut the most definitively in the endzone got thrown to. The men on the team seemed to do this more than the women.
Bottomline is that I think the stats of Team USA would have had different breakdowns if the team had an entire season of practicing together on a weekly basis.
--Gwen
By
Gambler, at 12/02/2005 1:37 PM
it seems that there's a lot of theories, and maybe everyone's adjustment will be different. it seems that gambler had trouble adjusting to the speed of men cutters. i could see this being a problem for men throwing to women too, along the lines of "she wasn't cutting hard", because the pace might be slower. jim's questions about the optimal use of women seem to get at this, but i wonder how variable the answers will be. what i mean is, against certain opponents it might be better to use your women more than against others, so there might not be a static answer that applies to all teams, or even a single team against different opponents. is this strategy much more variable than strategies in a single-sex game?
i think alex's point about the window/range of women receivers being smaller is a big issue. and this got me to thinking about the relative throwing abilities of men/women. let's just imagine some weird world where the thrower was always male, but all the receivers were female, and every time a receiver touched the disc, she turned into a male counterpart. do we think that the scoring efficiency of the team in this alter universe (with male throwing skills and female receiving skills) would be better than the current women's team? would we see 50+ turnovers in the first 4 points of the national championship game (i stole this stat from someone else...so blame him)? would all the girls start crying when al yells at them for not getting open? wait, disregard that last question. i ask this because one question that comes to mind is are women better throwers since their targets are smaller?
i have a lot more questions than answers because i haven't played competitive mixed ultimate. and actually only watched competitive women's ultimate for the first time this season (and in limited quantities at best).
By
greg, at 12/02/2005 1:59 PM
Greg you seem really interested in the coed game. Are you thinking about playing coed next year? I've been playing coed at the highest level for the past few years and would love to match up against you. Hopefully I'll see you on the field next year.
By
Anonymous, at 12/02/2005 3:01 PM
Just a brief defense...:) Again, this is only summer league coed, but I find that I throw to our women more often than most of the guys on our team. Yes, I get the disc more often than most guys, but I'm talking about throws per open female cutter. I'm definitely aware of the number of times teammates look off open women, and I consciously try to avoid the same. Depending on the situation, I may adjust the throw (in particular long), but I usually throw it as I would throw it to a guy, especially on the comeback cuts. Of course, this leads to some internal teeth gnashing when it maybe sails a little, or it is coming in pretty hard, and it is a throw that a guy wouldn't even think about not easily catching, and yet the woman fails to adjust enough, or read it, or whatever, and it is a turnover. I prefer to play gender neutral in my non-long throws. Unsurprisingly, the throw they have the most difficulty catching is my hammer (some would say blade), which I have never bothered to flatten out, but I rarely look off an opportunity to throw it because it is a woman instead of a guy.
However, it can get pretty frustrating.
By
Alex de Frondeville, at 12/02/2005 6:09 PM
When was the last time Al looked off a hammer? Anyone? Anyone?
There are cases that illustrate some of the adjustments to be made for both women and men in the Mixed game. Some of the throwing adjustments have come out in the previous comments: in particular, dealing with range differences for away passes or the dreaded horizontal cut. It’s less of an adjustment making throws to real In cuts, as long as you aren't bouncing them too high. All of which is related to the obvious points about range and margin for error.
Many of the adjustments have more to do with timing than placement, though. One example that I have seen is the "post cut", i.e., the “out” or cone route going up-field from alongside or behind the thrower. Throwing this pass to men usually requires releasing this pass earlier than throwing it to women. I’ve seen a few women come over from high-level women’s disc and turn these over by throwing them late enough for the man’s defender to get. Shorter passes like this tend to be one that men overthrow more consistently to women as well.
But that’s micro-level stuff. I suspect Gwen is right that more practice would result in somewhat more even involvement. However, there still tend to be times that people just go back to the “big guns”, usually meaning their most athletic or farthest-throwing players. Usually, the big guns are the men. This tends to happen in the worst conditions or when less experienced leaders just get myopically stressed out by important moments.
[And welcome to the blogosphere.]
By
Marshall, at 12/06/2005 11:06 AM
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