A Tendency Toward The Mean and Richard Bach´s Risk

Yesterday we had a competition in Valle de Bravo.  The FMTRI gave a spot for juniors to compete in the North American Championship.  They gave other two spots without informing the selection.  As usual, they have this kind of behavior to choose their competitors that belong to the High Performance National Institute.  Our athletes competed against the elites in a sprint triathlon; the first junior was granted the spot.   Our junior (17-year-old) obtained the spot given; he was fourth against the elite field composed by the Mexican Team and the Brazilian Team. Two Brazilians obtained the first places followed by a Mexican who passed our athlete in the final sprint.  Our team worked as always, as a team, and perhaps nobody knew it.  You can check our athletes’ blogs to know about tactics, they were the performers.

Who in the hell is Richard Bach?  There is a well-known motivational film used with our athletes, “Jonathan Seagull.” Richard Bach is the author.  I am always careful to show the film because young people want to perform in a very special way.  Unfortunately, they do not have enough knowledge/experience to do it on their own without supervision; everything could become a catastrophe without knowledge.  The point I make clear watching the film is: “if you do not look for the right people to learn from, you become a fool because there is a tendency toward the mean.”

This is a statistical observation: “if you mixed two different groups regarding a characteristic, the groups tend to look the same after certain amount of time.” Wikipedia says the following. “In statistics, regression toward the mean (also known as regression to the mean) is the phenomenon that if a variable is extreme on its first measurement, it will tend to be closer to the average on a second measurement, and—a fact that may superficially seem paradoxical—if it is extreme on a second measurement, will tend to have been closer to the average on the first measurement.[1][2][3] To avoid making wrong inferences, the possibility of regression toward the mean must be considered when designing experiments and interpreting experimental, survey, and other empirical data in the physical, life, behavioral and social sciences.”  In other words, we can become as our rival if we share time competing.  This could be good or bad depending on the kind of rival we have.  The same happens in the creation of a team, we depend on teammates more than anything.  Please read the information on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean

I am not a fan of statistics but explaining the phenomenon of the tendency toward the mean is fantasying; but it is scary just to think about it.  It just exists and we take providence regarding this matter. Our athletes selectively compete and teammates are selected according to what we want as a team.  Our concept of talent is not physical; it has to do with perseverance and education to learn like “Jonathan Seagull.”  That is why we chose this film.