- Joined
- Nov 18, 2014
Since I apparently have too much time on my hands, I compared the start numbers of this year's SP for both the men's and women's events to last year's. (Or: I did the women's because I was tinfoil-hatting and then it was fun to analyze so I did the men, too. 
) Here are some absolutely meaningless things that I learned from this analysis:
- Only one skater has drawn the exact same start position as last year: Yuma Kagiyama, skating 28th. One can hope this is a favorable position for him since he did very well last year.
- Several other skaters were only one or two start places removed from the one they drew last year: Shun Sato (23 last yer -> 24 this year), Tatsuya Tsuboi (20 last year -> 21 this year), and Kao Miura (22nd last year -> 20th this year) are the ones I noticed.
- 33% of this year's competitors did not compete at last year's Nationals. The newcomers (or returners) this year are Shunya Matsuoka, Shuntaro Asaga, Shun Uemura, Shun Kobayashi, Ryushin Yamada, Ryusei Kikuchi, Ryoto Mori, Nobunari Oda, Haruto Toda, and Haruki Honda.
- There are also three Shuns, a Shuntaro, a Shunsuke, and a Shunya in this field. That's 1/5 of the field with a Shun- name, so I guess those were super popular between ~1998 and 2007...
(I am reading the results in English but are they all the same kanji...?)
- If you were to try to use the start places of last year's SP leaders to arbitrarily predict this year's results, the top three after the SP would be:
1. Sota Yamamoto (st. 29, same as 2023 leader Shoma Uno)
2. Tatsuya Tsuboi (st. 21, same as 2023 2nd place Sota Yamamoto)
3. Yuma Kagiyama (st. 28, his own start place from last year when he was also 3rd)
- And if you were to go by the overall medalists' SP start positions, you would get:
1. Sota Yamamoto (st. 29, same as 2023 winner Shoma Uno)
2. Yuma Kagiyama (st. 28, same as last year when he won silver)
3. Tatsuya Tsuboi (st. 21, same as 2023 bronze medalist Sota Yamamoto)
Which...while I wouldn't necessarily expect it, would not be at all out of the realm of possibility? So there actually might be some merit to this method of predicting results
I have no idea why I enjoy crunching meaningless numbers so much, but this was fun I will be very curious to see if anything about the start order is remotely predictive, other than the fact that a lot of the strongest skaters tend to end up clustered in the later warmup groups.
) Here are some absolutely meaningless things that I learned from this analysis: - Only one skater has drawn the exact same start position as last year: Yuma Kagiyama, skating 28th. One can hope this is a favorable position for him since he did very well last year.
- Several other skaters were only one or two start places removed from the one they drew last year: Shun Sato (23 last yer -> 24 this year), Tatsuya Tsuboi (20 last year -> 21 this year), and Kao Miura (22nd last year -> 20th this year) are the ones I noticed.
- 33% of this year's competitors did not compete at last year's Nationals. The newcomers (or returners) this year are Shunya Matsuoka, Shuntaro Asaga, Shun Uemura, Shun Kobayashi, Ryushin Yamada, Ryusei Kikuchi, Ryoto Mori, Nobunari Oda, Haruto Toda, and Haruki Honda.
- There are also three Shuns, a Shuntaro, a Shunsuke, and a Shunya in this field. That's 1/5 of the field with a Shun- name, so I guess those were super popular between ~1998 and 2007...
(I am reading the results in English but are they all the same kanji...?)- If you were to try to use the start places of last year's SP leaders to arbitrarily predict this year's results, the top three after the SP would be:
1. Sota Yamamoto (st. 29, same as 2023 leader Shoma Uno)
2. Tatsuya Tsuboi (st. 21, same as 2023 2nd place Sota Yamamoto)
3. Yuma Kagiyama (st. 28, his own start place from last year when he was also 3rd)
- And if you were to go by the overall medalists' SP start positions, you would get:
1. Sota Yamamoto (st. 29, same as 2023 winner Shoma Uno)
2. Yuma Kagiyama (st. 28, same as last year when he won silver)
3. Tatsuya Tsuboi (st. 21, same as 2023 bronze medalist Sota Yamamoto)
Which...while I wouldn't necessarily expect it, would not be at all out of the realm of possibility? So there actually might be some merit to this method of predicting results
I have no idea why I enjoy crunching meaningless numbers so much, but this was fun
I will be very curious to see if anything about the start order is remotely predictive, other than the fact that a lot of the strongest skaters tend to end up clustered in the later warmup groups.
