[pct-l] The Herd is a FACT...

[Pea Hicks]

Gary Wright wrote:

> The smaller the deviation, the higher the peak.  Personally I find it
> hard to believe that an event that has 'Kickoff' in its title could
> *not* compress the distribution.
> 
> I suppose you could do the math, but the probability of 15% of hikers
> (45 out of 300) randomly choosing the same exact day to start seems  
> remote.
> Any statistician out there?

i don't think many folks are arguing that the kickoff has NO effect on 
the herd, i think the point that's being made is that, relative to the 
increasing amount of hikers and the reality of the narrow start-time 
window, whatever spike the kickoff creates is not as significant in the 
overall scheme of things as it may seem. i think the kickoff is just the 
easiest single thing to point to. but the fact is you've got a 
bell-curve effect happening, with or without the kickoff. if there was 
no significant herd problem in the years prior to the kickoff, or in the 
early years of the kickoff, i suspect that has more to do with the 
smaller numbers of hikers in those years rather than the kickoff factor 
per se.

i'll state again some numbers from a previous post i made on this topic. 
even without the kickoff, if in the coming years we have 400 hikers 
starting, and we spread them out evenly between april 15 and may 15 
start dates, that's roughly 12 hikers starting per day. to me, that 
means clump city at some point on the trail.


girlscout