RipStik Learning Curve

My youngest daughter wanted to learn to ride a RipStik. She had made a couple of attempts on two prior days without any success, she would fall off almost as soon as she started moving. This evening I took her out to the movie theater parking lot and worked with her on learning to ride the RipStik.

Those are socks for knee guards - she skinned a knee on a prior day's fall - and gloves for her hands. The lack of shoes might seem an obvious oversight, but she runs and plays barefoot every day and the bottom of her foot is quite tough. Kids who play barefoot find that learning to ride barefoot is far easier than learning to ride with shoes on.

I also used the opportunity to gather some data to play with in statistics class. The data in the table indicates her attempt number and the number of seconds she remained up, rolling, and successfully riding the RipStik [rolling time (s)]. Her first attempt ended as soon as it began, her second lasted a scant half a second, but by her third try she was up and riding for almost a second.

Attempt	Rolling time (s)
1	0
2	0.5
3	0.92
4	2.58
5	8.54
6	3.64
7	5.75
8	4.81
9	12.25
10	7.88
11	8.31
12	10.4
13	9.28
14	10.59
15	10.13
16	16.58
17	11.95
18	6.31

With each attempt she was generally, but not always, able to ride longer. Except for the 18th and last attempt, I steadied her on the board and she pushed off from my arms. On that last attempt, she mounted and launched the board without my assistance. Although she was unsteady and the ride only lasted six seconds, she had successfully launched the board.

I realize the data is not a true "learning curve" nor is that my use for the data. My use is in a linear regression example for statistics class. Note that the scatter graph is based on data rounded to the nearest tenth of a second.

No child was hurt in the production of this data.