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by timando 1418 days ago
> When we race for 100m stride, everyone has the same initial conditions. Same starting line.

Altitude can affect world records for running (less air resistance, but also less air to breathe)

1 comments

My fault, fair enough, I should not have used any analogy here. You could also go to the limit and say that each runner did not have same initial starting conditions from birth. At some point, we have to distinguish between event conditions (which you rightly pointed out) and the inherit inequality between each runner (otherwise sports would cease to exist). It becomes pedantic and tiring to discuss these kinds of extremes.

Regardless, it is interesting to inquire what is the distribution of probabilities and how far wide is the spread between the worst scramble and the best scramble (perfect cube which would be not very likely). It can be easily accounted for by providing each player the same random scramble of cubes. Far easier than controlling altitude of each sporting venue for running.