UNC prof calculates how Marathon runners might have finished

by Zach Mayo

When the bombs went off at last year’s Boston Marathon, thousands of hard-working runners were unable to complete the race. They didn’t get the satisfaction of crossing the finish line and they never knew their final times.

Thanks to one UNC statistics professor, some of these runners now know what could have happened if the day had gone as planned. Richard Smith was part of a team that created an algorithm for predicting finish times of runners who didn’t complete the race.

His work was recently published in a scientific journal called Plus One, and he joins us now to talk about the project.