I was walking home yesterday and walked past a girls soccer team practicing. The coach blew his whistle and they all started running around the circumference of the field. Naturally this brought up unpleasant memories of doing the same thing in basketball practice. But then I noticed something I hadn't noticed in basketball practice. I wish I had my camera with me.
As they ran, they began to strew out—that annoying short girl with boundless energy in front, a pack of normal girls in the middle, and the tall and/or not-very-fit girls in the back (you can guess where I usually fell). What struck me is that even with a sample size of only about 15 girls, it was almost immediately very obviously a normal distribution. As they continued running, they got more strewn out, but the bell curve remained essentially intact. (It got a little bimodal for a bit, but give them a break—they're only middle school girls.)
Is it sad that I think beauty in nature is noticing statistical truths everywhere?
