← Back to context

Comment by hackingonempty

17 hours ago

There are thousands of these high schools all across the USA. The top high schoolers in California so far this year are doing 1600m in 4m7s.

https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/rankings/list/168546/...

3 comments

hackingonempty

Reply
PaulDavisThe1st  16 hours ago

OK, so let's do the math. There's about 25k high schools in the USA. Let's suppose they all have a track team, and let's assume that they all have 5 team members who can break 04:30 for 1600m. Sure, at some schools that's too few, but at others it is too many.

That gives us 125k high schoolers in the USA who can break 04:30 for 1600m. There are about 18M high school students. So of just the high school population alone, about 0.7% of them can do this.

Assuming there are the 4x as many adults that can do this as there are high school students, that gives us slightly less than 0.2% of the total US population capable of this.

I rest my case.

  • hackingonempty  8 hours ago

    We just have different ideas of what constitutes "mere mortals." 1 in 150 high school students or even 1 in 500 from the general population doesn't sound super human to me at all. Talented, yes but not god like.