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Originally Posted by rainmaker
Because of some family issues, I had decided not to check the board for a while, and look what happens while I'm gone!?!
Ray, I appreciate your approach to this. I want to point out one thing, though. For some reason, women don't tend to stick around on this board. I'm not sure why (unless it has to do with all the grunting and flea-picking y'all neanderthals do here). But I'd guess that associations where the ratio is more in the 10:1 ir 5:1 range are less likely to have people looking at this board simply because they will tend to have more women and thus fewer chances of being represented. So I suspect that you won't get a fair picture of the total situation throughout the United States.
For instance, I know for sure that all girls' ball in Seattle, and Philadelphia at the hs level is assigned by an association that is only for girls' ball. Both those associations have numbers more in the 5:1 or even 3:1 range, and they are both fairly large associations so the numbers will have more impact on national ratios.
I would think that the NFHS, and possibly the NCAA would have statistics we could refer to. Any clue how to do that research?
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There is no doubt that my poll is unscientific. The sample size is too small, and the sample population not random enough. Plus there's no way to know if people from the same association/area have answered and thus duplicated some data (or worse, provided conflicting data).
But I find the results, flawed though they may be, interesting nonetheless. With 45 respondents, there is a very heavy cluster at 25:1 and 50:1. Over 60%, in fact. A further 24% fall into the 75:1 and 100:1 range. For a grand total of 85% (ish) or responses falling well below the proposed 10:1 national ratio. So whatever the scientific margin of error is, the results would have to be hugely, wildl skewed for 10:1 to even be possible.
I had a look around the NFHS website and was unable to find any statistics about officials. However, in looking at my state's online directory we have 516 basketball officials. Assuming the percentage of the US population that officiates high school basketball is uniform and equal to Utah's, using estimated census data for 2006, and doing some rudimentary math we come up with ... roughly 62,000 high school basketball officials in the US.
On that basis, those officials' associations in Seatlle and Philly would have to be ENORMOUS to have the slightest impact on the national ratio. It's the classic elephant and goldfish problem.
Getting some genuine stats from the NFHS would be illuminating, possibly even authoritative. But I doubt they collect that information. Maybe an email to Ms. Struckhoff?
The NCAA is almost certain to have the information, but it would far more suspect because college staffs are less representative of the larger officiating population. In particular, they more aggressively recruit and promote women officials. And because the number of NCAA officials is so small compared to larger officiating population, the NCAA ratio could be quite skewed.
I'm not sure what all that adds up to, but my gut feel is that 10:1 is way high. 25:1 or 35:1 is probably much more accurate. 100:1 was almost certainly way low, but then I was just reaching into my nether region to extract a number to yank yer chain a bit
