Saturday 29 September 2012

Statistics on the "dominant left"

The "dominant left" is not a political thing. I wrote about it back in August. Instead, it refers to the apparent preference for us to move in a counter-clockwise direction.

I ride around The Bay twice a day. Or at least 1/3 of it. There's a bike/pedestrian path that loops around the whole thing - it's a very pleasant 7km trek.

On Friday, I decided to count the number of people going clockwise and the number going counter-clockwise to see how much truth there might be in this theory.

In the early stages, the dominant left was up 18-7, and I thought the theory was really on a roll. But then I hit a few gaggles of people coming the other way, and it ended up being 35-28. That's really not dominant at all.

It's not much of a sample either - I only covered 1/3 of the loop, and I did the count once. If I remember, I'll do some more counts next week and we'll see what we end up with.

Another problem is sorting out those who are doing the loop versus those who are only using part of the trail to get somewhere else (like me). In the morning, I ride counter-clockwise to get to work. In the evening, I ride clockwise. The direction I travel is not governed by a dominant anything.

That said, when I ride around Homebush, I always go counter-clockwise. I can't think of a single time I have gone the other way. That holds true for individual and group rides. How weird is that?

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