On: American Runners Have Never Been Slower

[_qhtn]

> I thought to myself "well yeah, Americans have also never been fatter,"

Do fat Americans run?

[eesmith → _qhtn]

Some do.

But "fatter" != "fat". http://www.webmd.com/men/news/20041027/average-weight-for-am... points out that Americans are over 10kg heavier than the previous generation, but that's classified as "overweight" not "obese".

[revelation → eesmith]

It's not a discrete scale, ceteris paribus every single kg will make you slower and increase injury risk. It's continuous.

[eesmith → revelation]

If you wish to phrase things that way then feel free to reinterpret the discussion chain thusly:

1) spyhi used a continuous scale: "also never been fatter"

2) _qhtn switched to a discrete scale: "Do fat Americans run"

3) I replied to that question, that yes, "fat Americans run", objected to _qhtn's discretization of a continuous scale, and gave a pointer to a paper regarding BMI, which assigns categories like "overweight" and "obese" to the continuous scale.

Your comment comes across like you think I didn't know the difference between continuous and discrete, when that was the point of my response.