UKC

Someone in a recent thread on here was wondering about the grade spread in the UKC logbooks, and it made me curious, to the point where I couldn't resist working it out. According to the ticks listed on the crag pages (eg http://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/showcrag.html?climb=315&q=Pentire+Poi... ) it breaks down like this:

M: 5450 (2.15%)
D: 16137 (8.51%)
HD: 695 (8.78%)
VD: 31352 (21.14%)
HVD: 7199 (23.98%)
MS: 887 (24.33%)
S: 34116 (37.78%)
HS: 23811 (47.17%)
MVS: 1093 (47.60%)
VS: 52346 (68.23%)
HVS: 30750 (80.35%)
E1: 19635 (88.09%)
E2: 13227 (93.31%)
E3: 7866 (96.41%)
E4: 4703 (98.26%)
E5: 2971 (99.43%)
E6: 1010 (99.83%)
E7: 323 (99.96%)
E8: 78 (99.99%)
E9: 19 (100.00%)
E10: 2 (100.00%)
E11: 4 (100.00%)

F2: 476 (0.92%)
F3: 1834 (4.49%)
F4: 4896 (14.00%)
F5: 9381 (32.22%)
F6a: 10744 (53.10%)
F6b: 7634 (67.93%)
F6c: 5410 (78.44%)
F7a: 5713 (89.53%)
F7b: 3065 (95.49%)
F7c: 1346 (98.10%)
F8a: 717 (99.50%)
F8b: 203 (99.89%)
F8c: 45 (99.98%)
F9a: 11 (100.00%)

VB: 1572 (9.80%)
V0: 4973 (40.80%)
V1: 2661 (57.39%)
V2: 2253 (71.43%)
V3: 1513 (80.86%)
V4: 980 (86.97%)
V5: 678 (91.20%)
V6: 527 (94.48%)
V7: 371 (96.80%)
V8: 256 (98.39%)
V9: 138 (99.25%)
V10: 67 (99.67%)
V11: 33 (99.88%)
V12: 10 (99.94%)
V13: 5 (99.97%)
V14: 2 (99.98%)
V15: 3 (100.00%)

I don't think there's a way of formatting that up any better on here.

I only did trad, sport and V-graded boulders.

A few things to note:

- The numbers are just the number of ticks at that grade, of any kind, from onsight solo to troprope dog and even failed attempts.

- They're routes done, not hardest routes done by each person - an E3 leader might solo the odd V Diff and that gets counted too.

- The percentages are the running total including that grade divided by the total, eg 80.35% of the ticks recorded are at HVS or below. That doesn't mean 80% of us climb that grade, they're ticks not people.

There it is - interesting but ultimately meaningless.

In reply to Adam Greenwood: Interesting but rather meaningless. What would be interesting is the ratio of ticks to routes.

Basically if you can take your count of the ticks and divide by the number of routes at that grade you would be able to find out how much each grade is climbed.

Are VSs climbed the most? or are there just more VSs?

In reply to Mark Stevenson:

Wouldn't that be even more meaningless? The numbers above are the number of times someone has climbed a route at each grade (and logged it obviously). If there happen to be twenty times as many VS's as E6s, dividing by number of routes will make it even more random?

In reply to Adam Greenwood:

*THIS THREAD IS USELESS WITHOUT BARCHARTS*

In reply to Fiend:

I know, but I figured if I was sad enough to do the numbers, someone else would be sad enough to draw a chart

In reply to Adam Greenwood:

I just don't get it...

In reply to Adam Greenwood:

This is a very interesting piece of statistics. It seems that VS is the most popular trad grade. I am also impressed that there are 11 ticks for F9a!

Looking at the numbers closely it is easy to visualize a bar plot from the data. Nice work. Would there be any way to split it further, say, by onsights, etc.?

In reply to JLS:

Me neither. what is the percentage of what?

In reply to dycotiles:

There's lots you could do, but I think it's better for the UKC guys to do the more comprehensive bits rather then me ripping the info off the site (even though I was quite careful to spread the hits out instead of just grabbing it all in one big lump). Doing this was also just a quick hack script, it'd end up mutating into proper code to do any more, and becoming another TimeSponge(tm).

In reply to Adam Greenwood:

Perhaps if you add up the total number of ticks and express the ratio ticks for each grade against the total number of ticks you might have something meaningful...

In reply to Chris F:

It's the percentage of total ticks (for that style ie trad sport boulder) at that grade or below. So the HVS one is 80% of the ticks logged are HVS or below. Please don't ask me why though... because I could?

In reply to Adam Greenwood:

...20% of ticked climbs are VS...

M: 5450 (2.15%)
D: 16137 (6.36%)
HD: 695 (0.27%)
VD: 31352 (12.36%)
HVD: 7199 (2.84%)
MS: 887 (0.35%)
S: 34116 (13.45%)
HS: 23811 (9.39%)
MVS: 1093 (0.43%)
VS: 52346 (20.64%)
HVS: 30750 (12.12%)
E1: 19635 (7.74%)
E2: 13227 (5.21%)
E3: 7866 (3.10%)
E4: 4703 (1.85%)
E5: 2971 (1.17%)
E6: 1010 (0.40%)
E7: 323 (0.13%)
E8: 78 (0.03%)
E9: 19 (0.01%)
E10: 2 (0.00%)
E11: 4 (0.00%)

All 253674 (100.00%)

In reply to JLS:

Found a small bug, makes little difference though given the general vagueness of it all:


M: 4987 (2.23%)
D: 14837 (8.88%)
HD: 619 (9.16%)
VD: 29139 (22.21%)
HVD: 6870 (25.29%)
MS: 751 (25.62%)
S: 31478 (39.72%)
HS: 21993 (49.58%)
MVS: 896 (49.98%)
VS: 47593 (71.30%)
HVS: 26674 (83.25%)
E1: 16703 (90.73%)
E2: 10463 (95.41%)
E3: 5541 (97.90%)
E4: 2818 (99.16%)
E5: 1411 (99.79%)
E6: 339 (99.94%)
E7: 96 (99.99%)
E8: 24 (100.00%)
E9: 5 (100.00%)
E10: 0 (100.00%)
E11: 3 (100.00%)

In reply to Fiend:

This is a useless thread...who cares!?!?!?

In reply to anthonyecc:

>"who cares!?!?!?"

Perhaps people in the climbing industry who need to understand what their main market are up to with the kit and services they provide.

In reply to Adam Greenwood:

I find that vaguely interesting. I think "cumulative frequency" is the word for the number you are putting in brackets. It helps us identify median grades ticked, being at the 50%tile. ie VS, F6a (just), V1. What that tells us about average 'peak' performance is open to debate.

In reply to JLS: "Perhaps if you add up the total number of ticks and express the ratio ticks for each grade against the total number of ticks you might have something meaningful..."

That's exactly what he did, that is what the percentage figures mean!

In reply to dycotiles:

Sorry I'm not getting what you mean. Can you explain...

E8: 24 (100.00%)
E9: 5 (100.00%)
E10: 0 (100.00%)
E11: 3 (100.00%)

For E8: 24 is a 100% of what?

In reply to JLS:

100% of climbs are below E8...should have more decimal places I guess .

In reply to JLS:

I understood the % as a cumulative total - ie 100.00% of the climbs done are E8 or below - it's obviously slightly less than that but rounded to two decimal places - does it make more sense if you see something like:

E8: 99.99953%
E9: 99.99984%
E10:99.99984%
E11:100.00%

Round it all to 2 d.p. and all the numbers are 100.00%

In reply to thomasadixon:

I would have thought that was obvious. Does this tell us anything?

Presumibly other similar statistics would be
100% of people not dead are living
100% of tinned tomatoes cost less that £1000
100% of all cars have a maximum speed less than the speed of light

In reply to quadmyre:

Ok, get it now. It's just not the way my brain expects things to be expressed. I think - E10 rare - expect small percentage.

In reply to Adam Greenwood: Eh? Didn't you see this page, that already provides all the information with nice bar graphs???!

http://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/graphs.html

In reply to Nick Smith - UKC:

Did it always have the breakdown by grade? When the subject came up originally a while ago I though that wasn't on there. It's obviously where it ought to be, maybe I somehow missed it before - doesn't really matter.

In reply to Nick Smith - UKC:

I like the way you have expressed the climbs by grade percentage...

:¬)

In reply to Adam Greenwood:

Last update to that script was April 2006, so it was probably added then.