Blind spots of economists. What are some blind spots for football coaches (and fans)?
– What traits predict success? Punchline:
The second takeaway involves the growing recognition of “non-cognitive” skills like grit and self-control. While such traits have little or nothing to do with intelligence (as measured by IQ scores), they often explain a larger share of individual variation when it comes to life success. It doesn’t matter if one is looking at retention rates at West Point or teacher performance within the Teach for America program or success in the spelling bee: Factors like grit are often the most predictive variables of real world performance. Thomas Edison was right: even genius is mostly just perspiration.
Taken together, these studies suggest that our most important talent is having a talent for working hard, for practicing even when practice isn’t fun. It’s about putting in the hours when we’d rather be watching TV, or drilling ourselves with notecards filled with obscure words instead of getting quizzed by a friend. Success is never easy. That’s why talent requires grit.
– The 2011 Sloan MIT Conference Papers are up. There are no football papers because football is too complicated. Seriously.
– Hockey is beginning to come around on head injuries as well.
– “It turns out” you read this.
– Dr Saturday’s college football playoff proposal. Brian Cook offers some thoughts; my old playoff vs. BCS vs. who knows rumblings can be found here and here.
– The day the movies died. Do people buy this? (1) I don’t know if I agree that movies will continue to get worse (the internet provides more avenues for niche audiences, etc) and (2) I’m wearing a bit thin on the after-this-movie-the-movie-industry-changed (Jaws, Star Wars, Top Gun, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Transformers 2, etc.). The movie industry changed a lot when the old contract system died, but other than that I’d guess it’s societal forces and changes in tastes. We’ve had little pockets of artistic flurry before.
And, after the jump, something depressing:
