Guiltless shredders

janis · Post by **janis** » 24 Oct 2007 03:54

I was having a conversation with a friend about how many people play serious footbag, how many people do you think play seriously? It also got me wondering how many tiltless shredders and guiltless shredders there are?

what do you think?

BenRea · Post by **BenRea** » 24 Oct 2007 05:31

let's get a headcount

Rieferman · Post by **Rieferman** » 24 Oct 2007 05:39

Maybe use Worlds as a measuring stick. Figure that Worlds generally has (say) 50% of the semi-serious to serious players in attendance. Of that group, a large portion is guiltless (if not genuine).

I don't know how many freestyle players were at Worlds this year, but using this approach, I would guess maybe 200 guiltless players, and a bunch of others that are getting there.

Ha ha.. But what do I know. I haven't been to an event in like 5 years.

LEGOMAN · Post by **LEGOMAN** » 24 Oct 2007 06:44

Guiltless

Frank_Sinatra · Post by **Frank_Sinatra** » 24 Oct 2007 08:35

A thread about methodology? Yay! Please read the following in your dorkiest voice... aloud... to your friends...

Using worlds as a sample would skew the results towards more guiltless players*.

I'm not entirely sure how you would generate a truly random sample of footbaggers. Using Modified would have some biases, for instance non-English speakers barely use Modified & so we know we'd be excluding a huge chunk of Europe right off the bat. And South America - yet there's enough of a South American scene to host an international event, and as far as I know only a handful of those kickers have found there way to Modified.

Assuming that you did generate a valid random sample, your result would only be valid as a proportion of guiltless players to tiltless players. You'd still need to solve for N (total number of footbaggers) and I'm wondering how that would even be possible?

*Based on the assumption that more experienced players (therefore guiltless players) are more likely than less experienced players to attend worlds. For a sub-set of the more experienced & higher performing players, Worlds is a must-attend event. Of course less-experienced players do attend. However, how many new kickers are going to put the time & money into flying to Florida & staying at a hotel for a week? Certainly some, but its likely that most will need to commit to the sport for a longer period of time before also committing to attending an expensive event.

Sorry if I took this into waaaaaaay too serious territory, Janis.

I am tiltless.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 24 Oct 2007 09:44

Three people live in my house, one of which is guiltless. Therefore 33% of people are guiltless. The worlds population is currently 6 billion people. Therefore there are 2 billion guiltless footbaggers in the world.

Easy

Grade Zero · Post by **Grade Zero** » 24 Oct 2007 10:23

Jeremy wrote:Three people live in my house, one of which is guiltless. Therefore 33% of people are guiltless. The worlds population is currently 6 billion people. Therefore there are 2 billion guiltless footbaggers in the world.

Easy

There are seven people in my house. Only one plays footbag.

So 1 out of 7 people play footbag

Hey, this is easy

Colin · Post by **Colin** » 24 Oct 2007 10:49

This question might not be *that* hard if we divide up the load regionally. I'm actually pretty curious how big that number might be.

A thousand guitless shredders worldwide? My wild guess says that there are around 450 active (still involved - wouldn't miss a nearby tournament from lack of interest, say) guiltless shredders worldwide. Actually, this might be way low, as I've started naming all the guiltless shredders I can think of in Canada alone.

IFPA should start handing out 'guiltless' certifications. I say it as a joke, but it's kind of a neat idea in that it gives people something both concrete and attainable to shoot for, like a black-belt in martial arts. If I were facing a guiltless jury at the NYJ in Chicago two months from now, I might be playing a lot more.

Frank_Sinatra · Post by **Frank_Sinatra** » 24 Oct 2007 12:15

Colin wrote:If I were facing a guiltless jury at the NYJ in Chicago two months from now, I might be playing a lot more.

And what makes you think you're not?

Hadn't thought about a stratified random sample. Seems like it would still be hard to turn the corner from a proportion of guiltless vs. tiltless within a known group or groups (e.g. Modified, event attendees, or IFPA members) to a sound estimate of the number of guiltless or tiltless players. There is self-selection into any of those groups (possibly skewing the results?), and I would think there are a sizable number of kickers out there who haven't gotten tapped in to any particular footbag group.

To me it would be interesting to figure out how to estimate the total number of kickers compared to the number who have found groups like Modified. My wild guess would be, just limited to North America, that there are between 2 and 3 times as many active kickers as there are kickers who are on Modified - and level of play would probably skew towards tiltless or sub-tiltless (word?). Though I do know anecdotally of some really good NA kickers who don't have Modified accounts. Anybody else have a guess on this?

Muffinman · Post by **Muffinman** » 24 Oct 2007 13:05

There was a thread like this a while ago.
A bunch of people suggested that, like, 1000-2000 isn't a ridiculous number.
I think there are a lot of players "off the map" that don't really go to events. Players like Jason Crook, who are phenomenal, and a BAP-level, but just prefer to play on their own, or maybe don't have the money, or enough motivation or desire to go to tournaments.

I don't think that "guiltlessness" is really that hard to attain. I also think that it isn't necessarily something to measure oneself by. It kind of really limits the possibilities of freestyle.

Stoneman · Post by **Stoneman** » 24 Oct 2007 15:27

Jeremy wrote:Three people live in my house, one of which is guiltless. Therefore 33% of people are guiltless. The worlds population is currently 6 billion people. Therefore there are 2 billion guiltless footbaggers in the world.

Easy

+ Chuck Norris, so thats 66% of the population of the world who are guiltless

ericksonj · Post by **ericksonj** » 24 Oct 2007 15:36

Trying to count everyone in oregon that I know is strong guiltless,
Red, Noah, Nick, Jake, Kenny, Andrew, Brian, Nate, Aaron, me, Jason Hall(doubt he plays) I would say I am probably forgetting or not knowing a few new guys in portland that are guiltless now. Hmm that's 11, but I would guess there could be at most around 30. There are a lot of new guys that seem serious so the number is going up. Seems like several thousand worldwide makes sense.

Zac Jackson · Post by **Zac Jackson** » 24 Oct 2007 16:43

throw a poll up

janis · Post by **janis** » 24 Oct 2007 21:07

Level of play aside, I was trying to get an idea of how many people seriously play footbag.

Zeb Jackson · Post by **Zeb Jackson** » 24 Oct 2007 22:01

i seriously play footbag, its actually more of a religion to me, Or even a lifestyle, pretty much everything in my day consists of some kind of footbag thing, and if it doesnt, then im usually thinking about it or something close to it.

Bringerofpie · Post by **Bringerofpie** » 25 Oct 2007 12:19

3 people live in my house. None of them are guiltless. There are no guiltless players.

Post by **Zac Miley** » 25 Oct 2007 15:20

There are 2 footbag players in my school (1 guiltless)

.4% of the population plays footbag (freestyle)
.2% of the population is guiltless.

That actually seems kinda inaccurate. lol.

Colin · Post by **Colin** » 25 Oct 2007 15:37

That's one hell of a school you go to, Zac.

Post by **Zac Miley** » 25 Oct 2007 17:11

lol. wrong calculations. I'm such an idiot.

.4% and .2%

Not accurate. Never mind.

Darkshredder · Post by **Darkshredder** » 26 Oct 2007 05:22

<-- guiltless . Tiltless and guiltless players, in my opinion, are almost always the ones who play the hardest at getting better and are serious about footbag. After a while players seem to get overly comfortable with their shred and some start to even cut back a little on sessions. Granted, it's harder to play as hard hitting beastly combos and it's harder on the body, but still. They seem to be a little less DETERMINED.