17 August 2008

Chess Players Prefer to Be Born in February

Continuing with Chess Players Have Birthdays, I took the data from the year 2002, counted the number of players born in each month, corrected for the number of days in a month (January = 31.00; February = 28.25, etc.), and derived the following table.


For each month it shows the average number of players born on a day in that month. It appears that more chess players are born in the first half of the year than in the second half. How significant are these numbers statistically?

1 comment:

Ryan said...

I'm not a statistician but I did see a recent TV program about the athlete Colin Jackson which included the fact that most top athletes are born in the winter months.

I guess there may be many factors at play, but it seems that being born at certain times of the year can mean that your competitive peers during childhood are younger than you, thus giving you an edge.

I'm pleased to say I was born in February, but it speaking as a chess patzer, it doesn't seem to have done me much good! :)