what is chasing you?
levels of inspiration to run can be a big factor
Make friends with the scorekeeper. Even if he’s French.
The hurdling event. Chicks dig hurdlers; giving you a much better shot at THE BIG TA-DA.
Point one: Choose the 500. You have 2/16 (12.5%) chance of achieving the BIG-TA-DAH competing with a field 12 of whom are already known to have done worse than you in at least one contest. In the hurdles, you have a 3/28 (10.7%) chance in a field where the 27 others may all be as good as you are.
Point two: For most people the question is irrelevant, assuming the starting fields for the prelim contests in both sports are the same size, as only the top 25% of the 500 qualifiers even have the choice to make. If a given individual does, however, it reinforces the earlier advice, because it means he’s in the top 25% of 500 advancers, but says nothing about his chances in the hurdles.
Go for the 500 meter.
Better odds and .... no hurdles!
Seriously, each hurdle is a variable beyond speed and time.
Timing, pace, and form each contribute to the probability of failure.
For instance:
CASE I: It assumed that the outcome is causal, that any individual has fixed and completely repeatable, but unknown a priori ranking against all individual.Even with this smoothed d out you may only have a parmetric solution. BTW, where did the other six competitors come from for the second round of third round of the hurdles competition?CASE II: Alternately the outcome of any round (heat) completely random, any individual has the same chance of achieving any particular outcome on a given trial as any other.
CASE III: Each individual has a different and distinct skill level, put the operation of chance will produce somewhat different outcomes in any one trial.
How about you do your own homework assignments?