This is the third in a series of article about the Individual Awards.
The Cruisin' Award measures how consistantly a member runs from week to week over the last ten weeks.
Mathematically, I calculate this by dividing the average miles per week (MPW) by the standard deviation of those values. Higher values indicate more relative consistancy.
Generally, when one looks at a set of sequential data, one can see how consistant it is by determining the standard deviation (Wikipedia Wolfram MathWorld) of the set.
However, in the real world - well, running anyway - I presume that the more miles one runs the more difficult it is to have a low deviation relative to your average. That's why I factor the average miles into the score.
For example, let's look at two hypothetical runners and their miles for ten weeks:
John: 5,6,5,5,6,6,7,6,7,6
Mary: 12,13,14,15,13,13,14,12,12,13
John averages 5.9 miles per week; Mary averages 13.1 miles.
John's standard deviation is 0.7378 miles, while Mary's is 0.9944 miles. However, since Mary's average miles are more than twice that of John's, her Cruisin' Award score is also higher (7.99 for John, 13.17 for Mary).
This award recognizes consistancy regardless of whether one is above or below goal MPW. It also doesn't measure consistancy of a linear trend that is not zero (for example, if one were to increase by two miles per week).
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