UKC

I asked myself this question many times, and I ended up analysing an entire dataset of logged ascents to figure out the answer. The analysis ended up becoming a video and I thought you might enjoy it

Let me know what you think

youtube.com/watch?v=p19-G2sBl1k&

I think you're a bit too concerned with treating 'data' as data.

Unless everyone who has climbed 8a had the express goal of climbing 8a from their first day of climbing onwards, and kept an accurate log of it, a graph on its own doesn't really tell you anything meaningful.

25 and counting here

You will likely find climbing much more enjoyable and sustainable when you focus on the experience-the views, rock, people and positions-rather than the raw grade. This is coming from someone who definitely spent (and likely still spends) too much time focused on big number good.

I'm curious about what you mean by this.

Years???? Your belayer must be very patient.

I'm going to give you some support and encouragement on this. Interesting work. 

No methodology is going to be perfect but you are using reasonable methods to try to answer interesting questions.

Some questions I'd be interested in the answer to:

At what age does the average person make their hardest ascent?  

Has the performance gap between men and women decreased or increased over time (eg in the last 15years)- both in the elite and average ability categories.

Do countries with few traditional climbers (eg the france) climb harder than countries with many traditional climbers (eg the UK). 

42

I assume the point is that there's the dataset that you need in order to answer the question, and the dataset you have available to you, and that sometimes people don't really recognize the distinction.

I've not watched this video, but as an alternate example - people sometimes try to use the logbook stats to answer what the average lead grade is (the average max lead grade, that is). The average sport grade in the logbooks is flat at 6a+ over many years. But that's the average of routes logged, not of people's max lead grade. If I look at my own data, I've climbed in the 7s every year for about the past 15, but my average grade climbed each year, which is what is feeding the 6a+ average, has fluctuated in the 6b-c range for most of that time. You can analyse the data all you like, but fundamentally it's the wrong data for the question you're trying to answer.

Or as another example - the same poster did a video analysing whether 7a or 7A was harder, right? There's no way for any well rounded climber that the latter is easier. If the data suggests otherwise, it's data that's from a biased sample or otherwise the wrong data to answer the question.

Some interesting analysis, but without adjusting for massive confounders like weight, it's application is limited. Looking forwards to your next video.

38

Since there's no such person*, it's not a meaningful question. You *could* ask the average age at which climbers (term to be defined) climb their hardest grade, but that's not the same thing. But even that's not obvious. For a start you could only include dead climbers (since you don't know when a live climber may climb harder than currently). Also an average without some well defined variance (a measure of how much confidence you might take in that average  being statistically significant) also really tells you nothing.

There's lots of ways of getting some numbers (aka 'data'), but it's much harder to acquire 'knowledge'. Never mind 'wisdom'.

* The reason is that people are multi-dimensional (in terms of characteristics) so what would an average person be? You can't assume that you can simply average each of the characteristic independently, since they tend to be non-linear correlated (e.g., an person of average height is not of average weight). 

I think he was referring to the difference between 'data' and 'knowledge' as in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIKW_pyramid

It's all to common to confuse the two.

I think it's pretty obvious that is what was intended!

But still meaningless. If you ask a badly formed question, you won't be able to interpret the answer.

Who gives a flying feck in the jungle.

Could have phrased it better. I meant that to extrapolate something interesting like how long you might expect that it will take based on how long it has taken, you'd want more and better information than 8a.nu logbooks provide. Are keepers of 8a.nu logbooks self-selecting in any way? How many of the logbooks are actually historically complete? Do most users spend their entire climbing career striving for harder grades, or did they take twelve years out and then smash their way to 8a in the space of a year? Etc.

I guess it's interesting in a limited way nonetheless, and I enjoyed the narration.

What was clearly intended is a perfectly well formed question. You just have to collect the data appropriately to answer it (by, as you say, only including dead climbers, or, more likely, those who are clearly past their best).

To infinity and beyond for me

This might be of interest to you then. Unless you wrote it. Lol I’m which case great work.
 

https://www.alessandromasullo.com/blog/analysis-of-4-million-climbing-ascen...

really quite interesting review of climbing data. 

It depends whether the climber is motivated by and focused on 8a. Most people aren’t. I imagine someone who is motivated, focused and has sufficient time and ability can get to 8a within 5 years of starting climbing. Some will do it quicker. 

Thank for for the comment! I'm going to discuss age in my next video

Yep, that was my article

I decided to transform it into youtube videos as an experiment

And very much depends on what they were doing before they wanted to climb 8a.  I spent around ten years almost entirely bouldering with sport climbing limited to infrequent climbing trips abroad - odd fortnights of sunny on-sighting during the UK winter. I took up sport climbing when I moved near to Malham and Kilnsey and got from around 7a to 8a in 3 years (maybe a little less - depends on downgrades!).  And, I could probably have done so quicker, but I had no fixation on the 8a grade and worked my way incrementally through all the 3-star classics at each intervening grades. 

Indeed. Although I was referring to starting climbing from scratch - but assuming a background in some other sport (hence being in decent shape and knowing how to try hard) and not picking up any injuries along the way despite putting significant load on tendons etc relatively quickly (hence probably starting in late teens or 20s).

Interesting questions. Despite Marek's contention that your first question can only include people who are dead, I think I can confidently include myself. I am at least 99.9% sure I have already led my hardest route (E2) and did that first when I was 36 and last at around 50.  I'm 72 now. 

For question 2 you would need to consider what you mean by "gap", and whether the gap between , say, HVS and E2 is the same as between E8 and E10. 

For question 3, when you say "climb harder" do you mean "climb harder trad" or "climb harder sport". 

Martin

By looking at the data that I analysed in the video, it seems like the difficulty between grades increases parabolically. So the difference between E8 and E10 is probably higher than between HVS and E2

The answer is nine years if you are Adam Ondra (red pointed 8a aged nine) or never if you are me.

Your time prediction fits my timescale to 8a perfectly (5 yrs, started at 19).