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Anachronism-- t1_iynku3k wrote

Reply to comment by unblockablemid in [OC] Birth months of FIFA World Cup players. The top three are January, February and March, possibly due to the "Relative age effect" by desfirsit

He’s done an update on his podcast recently. Now some parents are using his data to intentionally hold their Children back a year to give them an academic advantage. Enough to start skewing the data.

Edit - I don’t think gladwell came up with this idea but he did make it more mainstream.

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SolemnLoon t1_iynm9ng wrote

It would be easy to enough to adjust for birth year. Instead of just birth month, it would be number of months older than the minimum.

For instance, someone who turns 17 on Sep 1 of their senior year (12th grade) would be considered "0 months" old. The typical range would be 0-12 months if everyone was born in that year, but someone who was held back and turned 18 two months before their senior year started would be "14 months". Your range might be as much as 0-24 instead of 0-12.

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Anachronism-- t1_iynpcjf wrote

I listened to it a while ago but that sounds similar to what he ended up doing.

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classybroad19 t1_iyoz3ms wrote

He didn't, in the podcast he talks about the Canadian researcher's wife who noticed it.

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