What are the Odds?

Have you ever wondered, what the odds are that a new white belt will ever make it to black belt? The most common answer that I’ve heard was, “Hmm, maybe 1 percent?” Of course, it varies, depending upon the karate style and dojo, but this agrees with my own personal opinion of one’s chances of making shodan. Curious, I tried googling the internet in search of any scientific study regarding this phenomenon, haha (I couldn’t find one). However, I did come across various quora where veteran karateka would share their estimates of the odds, and their most common guess was also in the 1-2 percent range.

Think about it, back when you were a white belt, how many of your fellow new beginners lasted long enough to take the blue belt exam? Maybe half? That means of every 100 new beginners, perhaps 50 might make it to blue belt. Then, a similar winnowing phenomenon occurs at each higher rank level. Of the 50 blue belts, perhaps 25 make it to the green levels, then maybe 10-12 to the purple levels, at by sankyu (lowest brown) it’s down to a half-dozen. And at the more difficult brown belt levels, more attrition results in 1-2 ever reaching shodan.

A related question might be, how many brand new shodans are still practicing (or teaching) karate 3 years later? I can tell you, lots of shodans stop shortly after achieving their initial goal. How about 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years later? As you might imagine, at each milestone, the percentage of remaining black belts keeps on dropping until what is left, must be an astonishingly small group of, ahem, old karateka. If the odds were that 5% of the once-young, brand new shodan group were still involved 40-50 years later, that would mean that 5 elderly black belts out of an original group of 10,000 white belts might still be making their way into the dojo, haha. So, according to this crude and totally un-empirical mental exercise, your aging sensei’s would be in the .05%. Put it another way, out of all the white belts who might have decided to give karate a try, 99.95% would have stopped before becoming old guys like us. I guess that makes us fall into a rather special group just by still being involved in the art…kind of like the few germs left on your hands after you wash with anti-bacterial soap, haha 😊.

Just think, by making it to blue belt, you’ve already outlasted half of the incoming white belts (think – how many of your fellow white belts are still training?). And every year, every belt rank you attain, you continue to beat the odds, haha. So, hang in there, and one day by sheer longevity, you may join us in this exclusive “club” eh? To place these numbers in perspective, in order to be considered a genius (IQ 150 or more on the Wechsler scale) you’d need to achieve an IQ test score in the 99.96% percentile range.

…Okay, I’ve had my fun in the use…er, misuse of numbers and stats in the art of persuasion, haha.  I was wondering if someone in class was gonna question me about your old sensei’s being the “survivors” of a long journey in the art and being in the 99.95 percentile range.

Although the odds are indeed small, I apologize, but I was exaggerating, using numbers to mislead you.  The reality is that each of your sensei’s is not the remnant of many thousands of white belts.  The whole white belt (50% dropout rate), then blue belt (50% dropout rate), then green belt and so on “calculation” is really bogus.  It’s akin to my having two parents, then 4 grandparents, then 8 great-grandparents, and so on.  Why according to that model, going back some 20 generations (say 500 years), your theoretical number of g-g-g-g-g+grandparents would explode to over a million!  And it would keep on doubling every generation…which would mean you’d theoretically have billions of direct ancestors shortly thereafter, more than the total population of the earth! The reason this isn’t real is that, as one goes back, instead of a pyramid, the numbers begin to collapse, into more of a diamond shape (call it the “cousins effect”.  If you glance (too long to read the whole thing) over the article below, you’ll understand why this is.

https://thewildpeak.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/how-many-ancestors-do-you-have/

Now, while each old-time sensei is, indeed, only a small part of the hundreds or thousands of white belts from which he/she arose, we’re not quite as rare as the germ left on your hand after using the anti-bacterial soap.  Just imagine, the hundred karateka I remember in my classes who never made it to shodan…consist of many of the same karateka that Sensei Peter and Sensei Wayne might remember, who have fallen away.  The good news is…this means that your odds of making black belt just got better!  And don’t get misled so easily with numbers.😉

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