🏊 A definitive ranking of Pittsburgh's public pools

I’m delighted to turn things over to a special guest and someone with whom I spend a large portion of my waking (and sleeping) hours. She spent countless hours this summer in Pittsburgh’s public pools to determine which one was the best overall. Along the way, we visited new neighborhoods, spent time with friends and got to know Pittsburgh’s park system. Without further ado, here’s my partner Jill!

Hi! Introduce yourself and what got you thinking about ranking our pools.

Hello! I’m Jill, a mid-30s native Pittsburgher who works in biomedicine (and The Incline director Colin’s partner ❤️). I set a goal of visiting all of the open Pittsburgh public pools when some friends and I got pool passes at the beginning of the summer. Then, I started looking at where each open pool is located, and realized that it was a really heterogeneous list of locations. I thought it would be fun to have a structured way to compare each pool to the rest.

How did you determine how to rank the pools? Did you have the same process for every pool, and is there a grading scale?

First, I put out a survey on my Instagram account asking people what they thought was important in a public pool experience. There were factors that I knew I wanted to include from the get go, like cleanliness and size, but crowdsourcing provided me with criteria I wouldn’t have thought of, like pool-to-grass ratio and “Lack of creepy looks from old men in the hot tub,” which I broadened to “Absence of cat-calling.” Finally, I lumped similar sets of criteria into distinct categories and made a rubric.

What were some unexpected surprises as you went to every Pittsburgh pool?

The thing that I was most pleasantly surprised by was that I did not have a single completely negative experience at any pool. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true! There were certainly bad surprises, like Highland Park Pool’s maintenance issues and witnessing someone find a pair of shorts (!) in the Jack Stack pool, but I had an overall heartening experience.

Which pools couldn’t you rank and why?

Due to staffing shortages, my options were limited from the start; only 12 of Pittsburgh’s 18 total public pools opened this summer. Of those 12, I only ranked 11 because Sue Murray pool closed due to maintenance issues before I could go there.

Tell our readers about the data itself. What was the average score?

The average score was 48.5, but as many statistics pros (my own mom included) will tell you, “The average is not the best representation of central tendencies, as it is affected by extreme scores.” In this case, we do have a so-called “extreme” score impacting the average: Moore Pool’s low score of 39. Not only was poor Moore the only pool to score under 40, it is the only pool whose score is not within two standard deviations of the mean (SD = 3.62). Better representations of central tendency are the median and the mode, and in this case, both were 49! (Editor’s note: …Yeah, what she said!)

Why do you think so many pools are tied?

From a statistical standpoint, data points tend to cluster around the middle of the road, creating a bell curve. Based on my experience this summer, it looked like Pittsburgh CitiParks kept up each pool at about the same rate, creating a scenario in which only one pool could be considered an outlier (Moore) – a beautiful “normal” population. While not having all pools open this summer was a bummer, it allowed for a more consistent experience since staff and resources weren’t spread thin – if all 19 had been open, I’m thinking the curve would’ve been less bell shaped and more flat with a greater number of extreme scores.

What would you change if you did this again?

I’d make it a point to get to more pools earlier in the summer; I’m still sad I didn’t make it to Sue Murray in time. I’d also include a category about accessibility. In many of the comments in my ratings I note things like bathroom and general pool access, but I didn’t have an actual accessibility row in my rubric. Next summer, I’ll plan on including that, since it is really important!

The pools

No. 11: Moore (39 points)

A large, crowded pool in front of a brick recreation center. — Moore Pool is located in Brookline.

What makes Moore special?

Moore pool is an ENORMOUS pool, with a stadium aesthetic. It’s located on Pioneer Ave in Brookline, which is an area of the city that I wasn’t familiar with before going there. Rating this pool was also special, because we went with our friends, and their 5-year old and 18-month-old were my guest co-raters.