Bowhunting Contest Stats
02-19-2007, 01:54 PM
#11
Typical Buck
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Yukon, OK
Posts: 722
RE: Bowhunting Contest Stats
Very nicely laid out. You remind me of me during softball stats!! I was late to get into the tourney this past season, but am looking forward to it next year! Congrats to everyone who made it in the field and gave it their all!!
02-20-2007, 08:46 AM
#14
Typical Buck
Thread Starter
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Nanjemoy, MD
Posts: 998
RE: Bowhunting Contest Stats
Some more useless information/thoughts:
What it will take to win the 2007 contest.
The 0.266 reported success is just an average of the number of hunters who properly registered bucks in the contest page. This figure has all sorts of problems with it as an "estimator of hunter success", (contest bias, first buck only, etc) but it will dofor the time being. In my first post, I noted thata team ofindividuals each with the average success rate (0.266),would have a hard time winning the contest (1 in ~1650 odds), if"winning" requiredany one team to post 8 "average" bucks. So one immediate thought is that the individuals making up Team 17 are better than average (duh?). So how good do you and your team mates have to be to win next year?
Suppose you and your team mates haveindividualsuccess rates of 0.6 (on average, eachmember takes at least one buck, 6out of 10 years)? Binomial statistics allows one to make estimates of theodds of posting 8 or more bucks,even if we never know the true values of hunter success. This plot shows the odds of posting 8 or more bucks, as a function of true hunter success. A team with 0.6 success has just a ~15% chance of posting 8 or more bucks. (Note that if Team 17's true hunter success is 0.8, that they have ~68% chance to repeat). We know Team XX came close this year, but it looks like Team 17 will be tough to beat by a team drawnrandomly from the pool of contestants. Just food for thought!
It alsopoints out (imo) thatthe contest should just allow one team to advance; this limits the number of "skilled"hunterspulled out of thepopulation ofcontestants that makeup the other teams.(I did a lot of this "crap", before I retired - this is a refresher on the use-it-or-lose-it issue for me, lol). -fsh
What it will take to win the 2007 contest.
The 0.266 reported success is just an average of the number of hunters who properly registered bucks in the contest page. This figure has all sorts of problems with it as an "estimator of hunter success", (contest bias, first buck only, etc) but it will dofor the time being. In my first post, I noted thata team ofindividuals each with the average success rate (0.266),would have a hard time winning the contest (1 in ~1650 odds), if"winning" requiredany one team to post 8 "average" bucks. So one immediate thought is that the individuals making up Team 17 are better than average (duh?). So how good do you and your team mates have to be to win next year?
Suppose you and your team mates haveindividualsuccess rates of 0.6 (on average, eachmember takes at least one buck, 6out of 10 years)? Binomial statistics allows one to make estimates of theodds of posting 8 or more bucks,even if we never know the true values of hunter success. This plot shows the odds of posting 8 or more bucks, as a function of true hunter success. A team with 0.6 success has just a ~15% chance of posting 8 or more bucks. (Note that if Team 17's true hunter success is 0.8, that they have ~68% chance to repeat). We know Team XX came close this year, but it looks like Team 17 will be tough to beat by a team drawnrandomly from the pool of contestants. Just food for thought!
It alsopoints out (imo) thatthe contest should just allow one team to advance; this limits the number of "skilled"hunterspulled out of thepopulation ofcontestants that makeup the other teams.(I did a lot of this "crap", before I retired - this is a refresher on the use-it-or-lose-it issue for me, lol). -fsh
02-20-2007, 09:55 AM
#15
Giant Nontypical
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Posts: 7,208
RE: Bowhunting Contest Stats
In the 3 years the contest has been, its taken 7, 8 and 8 bucks to win. We (XX) have a pretty consistant group of hunters, and we failed to post back to back seasons of 8 bucks down. I think that feat is more difficult to accomplish, than any single team to do it once.
02-20-2007, 04:42 PM
#16
Typical Buck
Thread Starter
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Nanjemoy, MD
Posts: 998
RE: Bowhunting Contest Stats
More senseless statistical thinking.
(Please ignore this thread if statistics makes you drowsy,or have thoughtsof mortgaging your house to play powerball, lol)
-fsh:
The structure of the contest will eventually lead to an (almost) unbeatable team.
HNIstartedthe 2006 contestwith one team (XX) with a likelybetter than average "capablity" (I use this term loosely, as it can encompass hunters, skilled or otherwise, who have the opportunity to hunt primoland andtherefore have better than "average opportunities" to harvest a buck; and there are likely other factors too besides raw hunting skill). All other teamshave membershipselected at random from the population of hunters (entrants). The most likely reasonfor Team XX to have lost this year is because it lost to a team with better "capabilities" (Team 17).You can also argue that Team XX and Team 17 are roughly equally capable, but Team XXhad aworse thanwhat is normally their "average season", while Team 17 had a better thanwhat would be normally be their "average season". The worse the true "capabilities" of Team 17 are relative to the true "capabilities" of TeamTeam XX, the more unlikely thiswould haveoccured -- however the probability of a "poor" team beating a bunch of "pros" is still not zero!, just not very likely.Team 17 now gets to pit its skill against a numberof new teams randomly selected from the population of entrants. Given that almost 3/4 of the individuals who participated in 2006contestdid not enter a deer, it will be difficult to randomly draw a team of 10 hunters from this population as capable as Team 17. If a new champ does arise, the winnowing cycle is repeated. Over time, it will be statistically increasingly difficult for anew team contructed from the random population to beat out the winner, and a dynasty will be created. (This assumes that the average hunter success rate remains constant, of course).
One solution (if you think this is a problem??)would be to let the champsrule for no more than two years, and then start every team from ground zero. Another alternativeis to shrink the size of the teams - say to5 or 6 members.
---------------------------------------
How many more months to bow season??
(Please ignore this thread if statistics makes you drowsy,or have thoughtsof mortgaging your house to play powerball, lol)
-fsh:
The structure of the contest will eventually lead to an (almost) unbeatable team.
HNIstartedthe 2006 contestwith one team (XX) with a likelybetter than average "capablity" (I use this term loosely, as it can encompass hunters, skilled or otherwise, who have the opportunity to hunt primoland andtherefore have better than "average opportunities" to harvest a buck; and there are likely other factors too besides raw hunting skill). All other teamshave membershipselected at random from the population of hunters (entrants). The most likely reasonfor Team XX to have lost this year is because it lost to a team with better "capabilities" (Team 17).You can also argue that Team XX and Team 17 are roughly equally capable, but Team XXhad aworse thanwhat is normally their "average season", while Team 17 had a better thanwhat would be normally be their "average season". The worse the true "capabilities" of Team 17 are relative to the true "capabilities" of TeamTeam XX, the more unlikely thiswould haveoccured -- however the probability of a "poor" team beating a bunch of "pros" is still not zero!, just not very likely.Team 17 now gets to pit its skill against a numberof new teams randomly selected from the population of entrants. Given that almost 3/4 of the individuals who participated in 2006contestdid not enter a deer, it will be difficult to randomly draw a team of 10 hunters from this population as capable as Team 17. If a new champ does arise, the winnowing cycle is repeated. Over time, it will be statistically increasingly difficult for anew team contructed from the random population to beat out the winner, and a dynasty will be created. (This assumes that the average hunter success rate remains constant, of course).
One solution (if you think this is a problem??)would be to let the champsrule for no more than two years, and then start every team from ground zero. Another alternativeis to shrink the size of the teams - say to5 or 6 members.
---------------------------------------
How many more months to bow season??
02-20-2007, 05:23 PM
#17
Giant Nontypical
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Jackson, Missouri
Posts: 7,051
RE: Bowhunting Contest Stats
fshfly, awesome work!!! I know just enough about Excel to know that all this would be easy if I knew what I were doing! [8D]As it stands, it's impressive!
Thanks so much for taking the time to share!
Thanks so much for taking the time to share!
02-20-2007, 07:43 PM
#18
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Northwest suburbs, Illinois
Posts: 2,075
RE: Bowhunting Contest Stats
Daaaanng! Fshfly.. that's awesome work. Extremely interesting. What's more.. it actually follows the line of articles I've read about bowhunters success rate. I know of another article I once read stating a 26% success rate for bowhunters. Our own contest just went over that 26% mark.. that's pretty neat.
02-20-2007, 11:07 PM
#19
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Northern Idaho's Panhandle
Posts: 4,436
RE: Bowhunting Contest Stats
ORIGINAL: rybohunter
In the 3 years the contest has been, its taken 7, 8 and 8 bucks to win. We (XX) have a pretty consistant group of hunters, and we failed to post back to back seasons of 8 bucks down. I think that feat is more difficult to accomplish, than any single team to do it once.
In the 3 years the contest has been, its taken 7, 8 and 8 bucks to win. We (XX) have a pretty consistant group of hunters, and we failed to post back to back seasons of 8 bucks down. I think that feat is more difficult to accomplish, than any single team to do it once.
Great Stats... Thanks Fshfly