Blog on Rock Climbing and Data Analytics

Hi together,

As a passionate rock climber and a data enthusiast, I have started a blog "Climbstat" focusing on data analytics for rock climbing and bouldering.

Let me please share my blog with you. I discuss there, for example, the role of height and weight for rock climbing performance.

You can find the blog here: climbstat.blogspot.com

Future topics will include the question of a critical period to start with climbing to become excellent, or a statistical investigation which popular crags are grade inflated or sandbagged.

Please let me know what you think. Remarks or criticism are very welcome :-)

Arne

That's pretty cool. Nice work.

As a 44yo climber thst started climbing a little more than a year ago I think I’ll stay clear of your website

Very cool! Is there a way to follow ? 

Jeremy Bauman wrote: Very cool! Is there a way to follow ? 

Good point, thanks. I added an email subscription form to the right panel. Feel free to subscribe :-)

Wow.  Really nice.  Now I know just how much my climbing sucks.

Is there any way to get those 3D plots to stop rotating so I can actually look at the data?

Bill Czajkowski wrote: Is there any way to get those 3D plots to stop rotating so I can actually look at the data?

Seriously, those rotating plots are awkward. I really like the concept, but I would like it so much more if I could rotate the plot myself, or at least slow it down or speed it up. 

Also, while I don't disagree with the data presented there which says that weight is the larger factor (as opposed to height) in determining overall climbing grade and that the larger/heavier climbers are at an overall disadvantage in terms of overall difficulty, I find that presentation of the data fails to capture what most people are talking about when they claim 'climbing is easier for the tall'. When people say 'climbing is easier for the tall' they mean that a taller climber can have a lower power to weight ratio and still climb any particular grade, not that the ceiling of achievement for taller climbers is higher than it is for shorter climbers.

Awesome blog! I subscribed to get updates, keep up the good work!

OK, kind of i guess but is there really a point to it, or a real need.

Kevinmurray wrote: OK, kind of i guess but is there really a point to it, or a real need.

Hold on kev, let me translate your comment:

Kevinmurray wrote: I have different interests.

Generally in climbing people are spouting crap of all kinds of conjecture asserting it is correct. I find it nice for someone to bring some analysis along, a thing that we're generally starved of. I think we should have more of this sort of stuff.

Yeah I do find statistics mind numbing. But climbing is something we do for fun, or we wouldn't do it right, so does it need to be dissected to a mere number and equation.

Kevinmurray wrote: Yeah I do find statistics mind numbing. But climbing is something we do for fun, or we wouldn't do it right, so does it need to be dissected to a mere number and equation.

Numbers and equations are fun to some people, if this isn’t fun to you then move on. Duh. 

Super interesting! I'm curious how you got the data from 8a.nu? I've always been interested in building something with the treasure trove that exists, but I've heard Lars is quite aggressive with his lawyers when someone crawls his website to extract data.

Abogado Chris wrote:

Numbers and equations are fun to some people, if this isn’t fun to you then move on. Duh. 

I think the problem is that number dorks tend to take things only at face value and miss everything else.

Very cool site, what tech are you using to build your models and viz?

Tradiban wrote:

I think the problem is that number dorks tend to take things only at face value and miss everything else.

In contrast to the other kind of dorks and their mind-blinding biases.

Phil Lauffen wrote: Super interesting! I'm curious how you got the data from 8a.nu? I've always been interested in building something with the treasure trove that exists, but I've heard Lars is quite aggressive with his lawyers when someone crawls his website to extract data.

Looks like the data was scraped and posted to Kaggle by some other guy in 2017, who was then threatened with legal action and took the data down.

Generally in climbing people are spouting crap of all kinds of conjecture asserting it is correct. I find it nice for someone to bring some analysis along, a thing that we're generally starved of. I think we should have more of this sort of stuff.

Bingo.

Neato stuff there.

For what it's worth, after a quick scan I'm mostly curious about how things break down by age.  For instance, I didn't start making climbing a priority in my life until last year when my kiddo graduated high school and liberated me to go do what I want.  If you're looking for stuff to prioritize, the "how many years does it take to climb 7a" charts examined by age would be interesting to me.

My Cal At Last wrote: Very cool site, what tech are you using to build your models and viz?

The rotating plots look like they were generating using persp() in R.