I collected stats on how long it takes for dancers to move between WSDC divisions in their primary role.
The shortest time between someone's first novice point and first all-star point is 8 months (Jesse Vos). The next fastest is 12 months (Melissa Rutz, Samir Zutshi, JT Anderson). (There's actually someone with 5 months, but it looks like a clerical error—before and after their supposed all-star points, they compete in several novice competitions.)
Below is a plot of the distribution of times between first novice point and first all-star point. The dashed line is the median time, and the dotted lines are the 5th, 25th, 75th, and 95th percentile times.
Below is a table of summary statistics for the plot, where "25%" means "25th percentile".
Stat
Mean
Std. dev.
1%
5%
10%
25%
50%
75%
90%
95%
99%
Time (years)
5.16
2.64
1.33
1.93
2.42
3.25
4.67
6.44
8.50
10.25
14.03
Though the median time between first novice point and first all-star point is 4.67 years, this does not mean that the typical person can expect to reach all-star 4.67 years after their first novice point:
People who reach all-star are a self-selected group of people who probably devote a lot of energy into dance and who progressed through earlier ranks faster, e.g., their median time between first novice point and first intermediate point is 50% faster than among all people who have reached at least intermediate.
Most people never reach all-star, which isn't captured in the above plot.
People who will reach all-star in the future aren't captured in the plot, which skews the stats downwards (e.g., suppose person A and person B both received their first novice point in 2019 and person A got their first all-star point in 2023 whereas person B will get their first all-star point in 2030—then person A shows up in the above plot but person B does not).
There have been and will continue to be WSDC rule changes (e.g., modifications of the qualifications for each division) and changes in the competition scene—historical data is not necessarily reflective of the present or future.
Below are plots for the median time between first points in other divisions. All the same caveats listed above apply here as well.
Stat
Mean
Std. dev.
1%
5%
10%
25%
50%
75%
90%
95%
99%
Time (years)
1.57
1.72
0.00
0.17
0.25
0.5
1.00
2.00
3.67
4.83
8.33
All this data comes from the WSDC points registry, which only captures dates in the granularity of months, hence why the percentiles are mostly multiples of 1/12. The first percentile time between first newcomer point and first novice point is not literally 0 days.
Stat
Mean
Std. dev.
1%
5%
10%
25%
50%
75%
90%
95%
99%
Time (years)
1.98
1.85
0.17
0.33
0.42
0.83
1.42
2.58
4.17
5.50
9.14
Repeat attendance of annual events explains the upticks in the above plot at 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, and 4 years.
Stat
Mean
Std. dev.
1%
5%
10%
25%
50%
75%
90%
95%
99%
Time (years)
2.22
1.90
0.17
0.42
0.58
1.00
1.67
3.00
4.58
5.83
9.04
Stat
Mean
Std. dev.
1%
5%
10%
25%
50%
75%
90%
95%
99%
Time (years)
3.37
3.05
0.42
0.75
1.00
1.50
2.33
4.25
6.67
9.11
15.57
Stat
Mean
Std. dev.
1%
5%
10%
25%
50%
75%
90%
95%
99%
Time (years)
2.55
2.30
0.07
0.10
0.25
0.98
2.08
3.33
5.17
6.89
9.86
Similar but better and cooler analysis has been done by others: 12. The code for generating these plots is on GitHub.
I collected stats on how long it takes for dancers to move between WSDC divisions in their primary role.
The shortest time between someone's first novice point and first all-star point is 8 months (Jesse Vos). The next fastest is 12 months (Melissa Rutz, Samir Zutshi, JT Anderson). (There's actually someone with 5 months, but it looks like a clerical error—before and after their supposed all-star points, they compete in several novice competitions.)
Below is a plot of the distribution of times between first novice point and first all-star point. The dashed line is the median time, and the dotted lines are the 5th, 25th, 75th, and 95th percentile times.
Below is a table of summary statistics for the plot, where "25%" means "25th percentile".
Though the median time between first novice point and first all-star point is 4.67 years, this does not mean that the typical person can expect to reach all-star 4.67 years after their first novice point:
Below are plots for the median time between first points in other divisions. All the same caveats listed above apply here as well.
All this data comes from the WSDC points registry, which only captures dates in the granularity of months, hence why the percentiles are mostly multiples of 1/12. The first percentile time between first newcomer point and first novice point is not literally 0 days.
Repeat attendance of annual events explains the upticks in the above plot at 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, and 4 years.
Similar but better and cooler analysis has been done by others: 1 2.
The code for generating these plots is on GitHub.