Some interesting data....

[scaharp]

Relating to some the discussion on a certain list, here's a rough count of the number of the different Orders of Peers (Pelican, Laurel, Chivalry) in the East Kingdom.

YearsPelicanLaurelChivalry1970-791120311980-894161761990-9995119602000-057872272006-11524421
I think these numbers are pretty instructive.

The number of Pelicans and Laurels made has

Comments

[dulcinbradbury]

I'm not on this list, so, I don't know what prompted this.

However, I do find this information interesting. It lines up with the anecdotal comments I've heard from fighters. It's nice to see the actual statistics.

As to the reasoning...

Have the standards gotten higher?

Does armored combat have a retention problem? (Are people leaving for some reason before reaching the Peerage bar? If so... why?)

Does armored combat have a recruitment problem? (One of the arguments against fencing in Calontir is that it can be used to steer people *away* from heavy weapons. "Oh, you're a girl / have previous injuries / whatever... why don't you try fencing instead?" I'm not saying this is true necessarily, but, it's possible to some degree.)

[scaharp]

The discussion is on the sca-east list, so I'm not breaking any confidentiality, just so you aren't worried on that score.

A certain member of Chivalry seems to be saying that the OoL isn't inducting enough people, that we are too exclusive. Being criticized like that by someone who has no idea (or even a wrong idea, since he's insisting we should be following the very first definition of the Order from four decades ago - uh, even the Chiv's definition has changed since then) of our discussions and standards - well, it bugs.

[dulcinbradbury]

Woo... not touching that with a 20 foot pole. I'm still glad I'm not on SCA-East.

[scaharp]

Yah, I hear you. S'okay if you don't want to jump into that conversation. :)

I need to stay on sca-east as I am probably the only shire member who is on it. Often issues come up (events canceled, directions changed, etc.) that need to be disseminated to the group, and then, too, there's the chance that we would need to post something in an emergency. So I stay on it. But I should probably switch to digest and only read the headers, picking what I read veeeery carefully. Cause I don't need the stress, rilly.

demographics

[hudebnik]

Interesting. Off the top of my head, the most obvious explanation for the shift from Chivs to Pels and Laurels, and perhaps even the shift from Laurels to Pelicans, is the oft-discussed "graying of the Society".

Starting on the heavy-weapons track is a lot more appealing to a 20-year-old than to a 30- or 40-year-old. Which means that as we recruit fewer high school and college students, we're emptying the pipeline of potential Chivs.

Meanwhile, if you join the SCA at, 30, 40, or even later, there's no reason you can't take up a new art or science (or investigate the medieval version of some art/science you were already doing outside the SCA) and eventually be good enough at it to earn a Laurel. And there's no reason you can't get involved in running things, applying the wisdom and judgment of your years, and earn a Pelican.

Re: demographics

[scaharp]

I think it'd be really interesting to find out if the number of authorized fighters has gone down in recent years, or if it's stayed the same or risen with the population.

[hotspurre]

Out of curiosity, are these peers inducted, or peers active?

[scaharp]

I just went to the list on the OoP page, so it's inducted, I guess. No idications of activity.

[hotspurre]

Yeah, that's fair enough. Definitely interesting.

[fosveny]

I went and did some statistics, by year. Including weighted and running averages. scaharp, did you include peerages made elsewhere? (It's not that statistically significant as you get closer to now, but it skews things a bit in the early days

[scaharp]

By the time I realized that some names had (Kingdom) after them, I had already done a lot of counting. So I figured it probably evened out between the Orders in the end. I'd be interested in seeing your numbers - I am not so talented with numbers and statistics

[fosveny]

Let's look at the raw-numbers: This graph is number-of-new-elevations-per-year for the three peerages:

[bunnyjadwiga]

Many years ago, a fighter told me that the East took pride in being a 3% kingdom. Fosveny asked me what that meant, when I mentioned it. We did the math. He may remember what we found out.

[fosveny]

I think it was that most kingdoms elevate 7% of anyone who ever tries fighting to the chivalry, the East elevates 3%.

The numbers turned out to be that about 7-8% of the fighters with active authorizations in the East at that time were members of the chivalry. Active, as opposed to "has ever tried".

...but that's from my memory, a notoriously fickle beast.