The 3" Club

Back in December of ‘04, I ran some numbers from Size’s database. In my data analysis, I threw out data from anybody who had been PE’ing for fewer than 3 months. I just found my database and generated the attached histogram. Here, we’re showing gains along the x-axis and number of people reporting those gains along the Y-axis. Analysis to follow.

How about ledzep, the moderator alumni who claims that he went from 5.75 x 5 to 9 x 6.25? Again, an old school guy. :)

Here’s the thread,
Zep’s Update !

The gainers posting 3” and above follows. The format is name:gain.

Goodness81: 3.75”

Jelkoid: 3.5”

RB: 3.5”

YGuy: 3.5”

Giovanni: 3.037”

Of these, I know that YGuy and RB reported getting most of their gains before joining TP. I don’t know about the others. I’ve never heard of Goodness81. Maybe he can speak up.

At any rate, the statistics summary is as follows:

Mean gain: 0.82”

Std Dev: 0.69”

This means that anyone reporting a 3” gain is 3.2 standard deviations from normal.

*****THE FOLLOWING PART IS WRONG. I’M LEAVING IT HERE TO AVOID CONFUSION TO THOSE WHO HAVE ALREADY SEEN IT. SEE POST THAT FOLLOWS FOR CORRECTION. ****

Assuming a normal distribution, this should occur less than 1% of the time.

So if we assume all the data is valid, real 3” gainers should occur at a rate of about 1 in 100. This data would thus tend to confirm the existence of genuine 3 inchers, although they are very rare.

The high side of the histogram looks funny. If I remove the 3” + gainers, the standard deviation drops to 0.62—not a huge difference. So, even if the particular guys who claimed 3”+ exaggerated, the frequency of 3” gainers as predicted by the data doesn’t change that enormously (maybe around 1/2% instead of 1%).

What is still odd, however, is that 3 inchers don’t appear to be occurring at this rate currently. I propose that somebody (else, please) take a new pass through the data and run a new histogram that focuses only on people who joined within the past 5 years or so. That should eliminate most of the (potentially skewed) data from old timers and focus primarily on the results of people who got their gains here.

Excuse me. I did the stats wrong. According to ~ Wikipedia, 3.2 standard deviations corresponds to about 0.1% (not one percent) of the total.

Therefore, roughly 1 in 1000 members should have 3" gains or greater. Of the 75,000 current members, the statistics suggest there should be about 75 guys who have gained 3" or more.

FYI, Bib claimed to gain 4.5". That is 5.3 standard deviations from normal. A 5 sigma deviation from normal occurs at a frequency of less than 0.000025%. This corresponds to it occurring approximately once for every 5 million guys. Please feel free to check my math. I’m doing this fast and it is not my area.

Not actually, since it would require an extreme amount of time/dedication to achieve such gains. Of the 75,000 current members, how many have been active in PE for, say, 3-5 years (or more)?

Furthermore, I doubt that standard deviation forumlae can take “other factors” into account; such theorems are probably far more accurate in predicting natural occurrences. In other words, when considering the possibility of such a huge achievement as a 3” EL gain, you’re actually dealing with 2 different questions: (1) the physiological possibility of such gains, and (2) the human/psychological likelihood of a person achieving such gains. I don’t believe the 2 are identical.

Too many other factors would also play a role. Such as the actual % of guys who ever do PE. Of those relatively few, what % would actually have such genetic potential for a 3” EL gain? And of that even smaller percentage that possessed such potential, how many would actually stick to it long enough (and with an effective enough routine) to have a chance of realizing such gains?

Again, look at weight training. We cannot doubt that serious strength and massive muscles can result from lifting - even in drug free trainees - but how many guys ever actually become “hugely” built?

I don’t think the answer to that question is soley genetic.

But your point is taken. I know how damn hard a 2” EL gain is; in fact, for a long time I never thought I’d achieve it. And I finally did - just barely. There’s no way I’d suggest that a gain 50% longer could possibly be common. Nor would I assume, however, that it would be “impossible” for any man to have achieved gains only 1” more than mine (especially when considering how erratic my “dedication” had been for most of the time).

Could those “early pioneers” have been so wildly driven? Possessing little theoretical knowledge and a rather small battery of exercises, perhaps they attacked it very hard - like “Johnny One-Note” beating the hell out of his drum. And, just glimpsing at the notion of “self-limited beliefs,” perhaps they never really “knew” that a 3” gain was so extremely rare.

Or, perhaps they fobbed off such claims on a small, new, naive internet community - which didn’t have nearly the wealth of knowledge that we have here (and the accompanying skepticism). This place has a huge database and a lot of members that can tear a shopped pic to shreads. Perhaps those “early pioneers” wouldn’t have managed to pull off their wild claims today.

I have no idea - although a few of those *claimed* top gainers I flatly disbelieve.

There are some charlatans in the PE world. Don’t ever be led to doubt that.

Legit “one in a millions” may have been disproportionately represented years ago in the community because the few who had extraordinary results were more likely to post in fledgling PE forums, put their numbers into things like Size’s Database, etc. The best gainers were the most vocal. PE was more taboo back then. I doubt as many average or poor gainers spoke up compared to today.

The Size Database sample is skewed at best. In this case I’d be inclined to throw out the top and bottom 10% to help exclude sabotage from naysayers and exaggerators.

I think most men will gain something from a sensible PE program. At the least you’ll have harder erections and become more in tune with your equipment. You’ll probably gain some size. How much size is highly individual. Some are easy gainers; others have a tougher time. Some tend to gain girth easier than length, and vice versa. Take accurate measurements in the beginning or else you won’t know what has happened during your PE career.

Hobby, I think you hit on an important point regarding initial measurements, and I suspect initial under-measurement is a significant source of exaggerated claims.

I think we’re all familiar with the tendency to push the ruler in farther and farther as one’s PE career unfolds, to convince oneself that progress is being made. Also, as ligs lengthen, one can push the ruler in farther still, since the pubic bone is angled back.

So, I suspect one source of exaggerated claims is that, expecially in the old days, guys wouldn’t use a standard bone-pressed measurement in exactly the same spot under exactly the same conditions every time they measured.

I think better data can be obtained by throwing out data from anybody who first started PE before joining the forum. I’m not saying the gains of those guys aren’t real; I’m just saying we don’t know how well educated they were in how to measure and therefore don’t have any confidence in their initial measurements.

Wad, I agree that statistics don’t tell the whole story here. Dedication and time spent doing PE are factors that may tend to skew the data to something other than a normal distribution.

The extreme effort required to get gains beyond the 1-2” mark might tend to truncate the distribution on the high end.

On the other hand, someone with PE-friendly physiology, tremendous drive, and actual desire for a truly huge cock (most guys want to stop around 8”) might manage to add some high values to the distribution that wouldn’t be predicted using straight Gaussian statistics.

Still, I think that anybody claiming gains in the 3-5 sigma range had better be prepared to take some serious questioning.

One statistic summary I didn’t add before was MEDIAN gain. That number, from the same data set as used before, is 0.75”

This means that half of all PE’ers reporting in the database have gained less than 0.75” and have half have gained more.

It also means that the distribution is skewed toward the high side. I’m not sure, but I think this is what one would suspect in a distribution where gains tend to increase gradually over time.

This is a good point. A lot of guys might seriously never even try for gains approaching 3 inches.

I’d need more than just “answers” if some guy wanted me to believe 5” gains (I’d need some excellent photographic evidence, beyond any suspicion of tampering).

For what it’s worth, I believe that gains in the 1-2” range are possible for *most* PE’ers. Above 2” is quite out of the ordinary. When you start talking about 3.00” gains or more, that would be really rarified air. I’d accept that some very lucky handful of guys might break the big 3 in gains. But when you start talking about 4.00” of EL gains, I’m really suspicious if that is even possible.

I knew one guy I went to h.s. with (posted about him before, long ago). He told me started “at 5” and Pe’d to 7” EL. He stopped because his then-wife wanted him to. Later, after his divorce, he states that he got to “about 9” inches, before his gains completely stalled.

This guy had a li’l spud in locker rooms. I can believe he was “about” 5 EL, back then. Many years later - in a restroom at a sports complex our sons were wrestling in - he proudly waved his huge (7+”) flaccid in front me. He obviously made some huge gains. But “about 5” is not exactly 5.00” and “about 9” is not exactly 9.00.

I’d bet he probably gained about 3.5” EL - over 2 extended bouts of PE, separated by an extended break. He told me his routine, which eventually worked up to 2x/day. He also knew very little about PE (didn’t even call jelqs “jelqs”, called it “milking”).

I believe that he did probably make 3 1/2” gains, or so.

I also believe that he probably represents the uppermost range of the spectrum. I doubt in 1 guy in a million could gain more than him. And I doubt that anybody could ever gain 5” of length.

Well, what was the guy’s routine?!?

He ate a lot of jelly beans. Do the same and you’ll gain well too if you’re also a late bloomer. :)

Examining what works for statistical outliers (with some plain liars included in that batch) doesn’t provide any useful info about the best approach for the average guy.

I think hard gainers are far more interesting. Breakthroughs will be made from studying them.

Maybe this will help,

- I can no longer doubt!

Thanks for doing the leg work. When I clicked that link, I was surprised to see that the thread was from almost 3 1/2 years ago. Damn, time flies. :(

This is something I have always wondered about. I don’t think there is ANY (unaltered/believable) photographic evidence on this board of ANYONE
showing huge gains. I mean someone going from 5” to 9” or even 5” to 8.” Almost all photo trails show gains in the 1” -2” range. Even the early pioneers such as YGUY only showed a portion of his claimed gains. And he’s probably the most believable out of them all. Is there one photo of someone showing a 3”+ gain? Just one??