hmmm. mr day puts up a link to a study done independantly on the effect of PC’s on cyclists, and guys come out of the woodwork to critique the premise, conclusion, variables, execution, blah blah of the work.
mr empfield puts up a, article wherin he attempts to correlate the comfort factor of different frame materials and running times across the board ( ??? ) and i am wondering where you guys went.
mind you now - i myself retain stuff from stats class for all of 2 seconds, and buy my research papers off the internet but come on now. does not the " frame materials comfort/across the board run time " study possess more holes than substance - a veritable noodle strainer of scientific insight ?
One day, a corporation sets out to hire an independant research firm to perform some testing an analysis on their product. They have narrowed the number of firms to three. The president of the large corporation decides to conduct an interview of the head researcher from each of the competing firms. He interviews the first researcher: “So, tell me, what is two plus two?”
So the research scientist from the second company comes in:
President: "What's two plus two?"
Researcher: "Well, it falls within a range of 3.9 and 4.1, depending on circumstances."
President: "Thank you, good bye."
Lastly, the scientist from the third company sits down to the interview:
President: "What's two plus two?"
Researcher: "What do you want it to be?"
President: "Congratulations, you get the contract!"
The desire to present conclusions was certainly there, but as pointed out in the article… there were no ‘absolute’ conclusions raised. Although there was an adequite sample size (of >=100) for all 3 models, the variation between bikes (geometry) was too varied.
It might be interesting to look at the analysis again with a smaller sample size, for example only tri geometry kestrels, lightspeeds and cervelos. I don’t think we are interested publishing the results in the Journal of Statistical blah blah, more we are trying to equate frame material to comfort and therefore performance.
All I know is that I feel silly buying a new KM40 when all I had to do was to put a new neoprene saddle cover onto my 7 year old Cannondale R700.