Flashes of Panic

As of this writing, Common Running has 98 reviews distributed among some 400+ shoe models. If you’re like me, the very way I phrased that sentence led you to ask, “But how are they distributed?” They can’t possibly be random, right?

Noah borrows a phrase from Wired to describe the impulse to ask that question: Info Porn. We’re not immune, so I spent a few hours last night writing some code to rip the interesting data out of the CR database and slap it in to some Google Charts. The juicy stuff is here, but if you want the summary, Asics is the most-reviewed brand, and it has three of the top four most-reviewed shoe models, including #1, the GT-2120.

I also added some data to the pages which show details on the shoe models themselves. If you check that GT-2120 page, for example, you’ll see the average ratings for each of four areas, and the comments the reviewers made about the shoe.

You’ll also see a quirky little paragraph on some shoe pages which purports to give an average lifetime (in miles or kilometers) for a shoe model. It’s based on numbers reported by some of our reviewers, and I actually went a step beyond that to calculate a “price per mile/km” for such shoes. These numbers are not, at this stage, statistically significant, because there’s just not enough data, but if they were—a few dozen more reviews for each model might do it—they could be a real tool indicating “value” in a pair of running shoes. Imagine if you could compare the price-per-mile of several similar models!

Now Playing: One Kiss Goodnight by Lori McKenna

Technorati Tags: asics, commonrunning, runningshoes, statistics