Discussion: Jorgen Martensson on route choice

I just finished a translation (its a bit rough) of an interview with Jorgen Martensson on route choice. You can read my translation at http://www.geocities.com/okansas.geo/jm.html

Michael, Thank you for the translation. I specially love "the walk to the first control" comment :) Remember the first control syndrome :)

A while ago I took a look at some splits and results to see if orienteers are more likely to "boom" the first control. What I found is that there seem to be fewer mistakes on the first control. The following is part of what I wrote after I looked at split times....
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A common bit of advice for orienteers is to be careful with the first control. Go slowly. Give yourself time to "get into the map." The idea is that it is especially difficult to find the first control. So it is especially important to find it without making a mistake. It makes some sense. You are likely to be a bit nervous at the beginning of a race. You haven't yet had a chance to "get into the map." You aren't yet tired, so you might run too fast.

I wondered -- how often do people make mistakes on the first control?

I decided I would take a quick look at some split times from several races and see if I could see a pattern. Do people make a lot of mistakes on the first control?

I looked at the split times from ten races. I looked at several different categories (from F16 to world cup men). All of the races were in Europe. I counted the number of errors on each of the first five legs. I then calculated the percent of runners who made errors on each leg.

It looks like there is no tendency to have more errors on the first control. If anything, it looks like there is a tendency to have relatively few errors on the first control. On the average, 17 percent of the runners made a mistake on the first control. The average for the second through fifth controls varied from 16 to 34 percent.

I haven't looked at enough results to be sure of my result. I didn't try to make the selection random and I didn't test for statistical significance (it is not like I'm an actuary or PhD in astronomy). But, I thought the result was interesting. It was not what I expected. I expected to see a clear tendency for a lot of people to miss the first control.

Even if runners don't miss the first control often, it may still make a lot of sense to have a strategy of trying to take the first control slowly and carefully.
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Michael,
Your statistical data is making sense :) Since everybody knows about first control - therefore less errors people are making at the first control because they try to execute it carefully :)