[0] https://xcancel.com/AlexGDimakis/status/2002848594953732521
edit: went back a few more years, lots of NHLers in the top 5 in scoring in the tournament, but some years are more miss than hit.
Early exceptional performers and later exceptional performers within a domain are rarely the same individuals but are largely discrete populations over time... and Most top achievers (Nobel laureates and world-class musicians, athletes, and chess players) demonstrated lower performance than many peers during their early years. Together.
A simple explanation: high performance requires quite a bit of specific preparation. But "exceptional" performance is mostly random relative to the larger population of high performers in terms of the underlying training-to-skills-to-achievement "equation". Especially, being at the top tends to get someone more resources than those nearly at the top who don't have visible/certified achievements.
I'd that billing your work "the study of the very best" really gives you strong marketing spin and that makes people tempted to find simplistic markers rather than looking at the often random processes involved in visible success. IE, I haven't touched on reversion to mean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean).
> In 1933, while overseeing the writing of Truppenführung, the manual for leading combined arms formations, Hammerstein-Equord made one of the most historically prescient observations on leadership. During the writing effort, he offered his personal view of officers, classifying them in a way only he could:
> “I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent — their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy — they make up 90% of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent — he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.”
https://news.clearancejobs.com/2019/10/08/the-four-classes-o...
100% correct. For traits x and y, selecting for datapoints in the region x + y > z will always yield a spurious negative correlation for sufficiently uncorrelated data, since the boundary of the inequality x + y > z is a negatively sloping line.
>But in TFA, surely the "high performance" selection filter applies only to the adult performance level?
Doesn't seem that way. Reading the full paper [0], they say:
In sports, several predictor effects on early junior performance and on later senior world-class performance are not only different but are opposite. [...] The different pattern of predictor effects observed among adult world-class athletes is also evident in other domains. For example, Nobel laureates in the sciences had slower progress in terms of publication impact during their early years than Nobel nominees. Similarly, senior world top-3 chess players had slower performance progress during their early years than 4th-to 10th-ranked senior players, and fewer world top-3 than 4th- to 10th-ranked senior chess players earned the grandmaster title of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) by age 14.
[0] https://www.kechuang.org/reader/pdf/web/viewer?file=%2Fr%2F3...
> Using simple simulations,we show that this pattern arises naturally from collider bias when selection into elitesamples depends on both early and adult performance. Consequently, associationsestimated within elite samples are descriptively accurate for the selected population,but causally misleading, and should not be used to infer developmental mechanisms
Also, the ungated part doesn't say how they're measure "top" high-school vs university students. It doesn't match what I've heard about the persistence and consistency of basically all standardized tests; are they using within-school rankings for this? If so, that would fit perfectly with students being sorted during university selection.
.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_application_development
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691133805/ol...
That book used artwork valuation as a performance measure and analyzed it over top artist's lifetimes finding two patterns. The "Young Genius" where an artist has a vision and realizes some innovation and their most valuable works center around that with value tapering off over their life. Picasso. (Who had two peaks but still fit the pattern.) Contrast to the "Old Master." This is someone who keeps refining their craft and their most valuable works and innovations are their late life works. Cézanne.