The Boston marathon is a very competitive race. To qualify

Last updated: 7/15/2022

The Boston marathon is a very competitive race. To qualify for the Boston marathon, male runners must have completed a marathon in less than 3 hours and 5 minutes within the last year. Other marathons, such as the Chicago marathon, have no qualifying times. Anyone is able to run this race, even without completing a different marathon earlier in the year. Consider the groups of runners of each race: Boston marathon runners and Chicago marathon runners. Which group's finishing times for the marathon would most likely have the larger standard deviation? The Chicago marathon finishing times would more likely have a higher standard deviation than the Boston marathon finishing times. The Boston marathon finishing times would more likely have a higher standard deviation than the Chicago marathon finishing times. There is not enough information to predict the relative sizes of their standard deviations. They would likely have the same standard deviation because many of the same people run both races.