Square Dance Experimentation

[bjarvis]

I started wondering a little while ago: who has to dance more steps, the folks dancing boy or girl? Does this vary from level to level? Do some callers make one role work harder than the other (at least in terms of dance steps)?

Tonight, the experimentation began.

Tonight was a rare 5th Thursday so DC Lambda Squares hosted an A2/C1 club night with Ett McAtee calling. I put pedometers on at least each dancer of a particular couple and recorded their step count per tip, noting which were A2 and which were C1.

While the pedometers are of the same manufacturer and lot, they have different sensitivity. I'm trusting that by randomly switching these between dancers across the course of the experiment, the variation will average out in a sufficiently large sample space.

The raw numbers aren't meaningful yet. I'll write more on this when I have a much larger sample. Who knows... it may be good filler in a slow news quarter for the GCA journal. :-)

Comments

[allanh.livejournal.com]

filler? FILLER?!

No, I think this is more along the lines of a feature article. Light-hearted, perhaps ... but I still think it'd be a fun article.

I'll add it to my list of expected articles for the next issue.

Thank you! [smiling oh-so-sweetly]

[fuzzygruf.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't think that at MS/Plus you'd need the pedometers. Swing your partner, Ladies Chain, Ladies Rollaway, Teacup Chain all have girls doing more steps.

I'm interested in seeing the A2/C1 stats, though!

[tdjohnsn.livejournal.com]

Are these the same pedometers that you and Kent wore all day that said you had walked to DC and back and that he had spend the day in a chair...?

[cuyahogarvr.livejournal.com]

It will be interesting to analyze your results. As a bi-dancer in MS/Plus, I've "assumed" that the female took many more steps. However, tdjohnson makes some very good observations in his first post that makes me wonder if it's not more equal. Definitely post your findings.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

Just to be clear, the pedometer measures roughly the NUMBER of steps, not the distance traveled per step?

I've never actually seen one close up.

dance for 1

[mediamutt.livejournal.com]

It's a shame my bf doesn't like country dancing. The short year I did it was very fun.

Oh, and I've changed my LiveJournal handle from "pavlenyi" to "mediamutt". You might want to update your friends' list accordingly.