The table provide information about the proportion of changes in number of Australian people participated in various sporty activities from 2001 to 2009.
The first impression from the table is that Running had the most significant incrase in paticipator number throughout the period shown, whereas Cycling experienced an absolutely opposite trend with a notable decrease of cyclists within 8 years.
In terms of Running, Aerobics and Tennis. Running went up stably in every four-year from 1.4 million runners to 2.2 million. And this figure also indicated that running had a largest change in number of people involving over the 8-year period. Following this type is Aerobics and Tennis, which had small percetage of changes, compared with Running. The rate of changes of Aerobics and Tennis were approximately one-tenth to the total change of Running, around 11 percent and 15 percent respectively.
In stark contrast, although Cycling and Swimming were the two most popular categories in the year 2001, there were considerable drop in number of cyclists and swimmers. More specifically, the cyclists plunged from 4.5 million people in 2001 to 3.1 millions in 2005, abeit there was a moderate increase in 2009, Cycling witnessed the most negative change throuhout the period of 8 years (-20 percent). Beside the cycling, the swimming had a similar trend and the number of swimmers decreased rapidly in the last year of period and its negative changing rate followed the cycling was -10 percent.