Patterns of success: sports, language, and life

Patterns in Sports

There is no time for thinking in sports. Thinking is just too slow. Reactions must be engrained and subconscious. Consider baseball, America’s pastime.

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The average fastball of a MLB pitcher is 95 mph. A 95 mph fastball takes 400 milliseconds to reach homeplate. The average human reaction time is 250 milliseconds which leaves ~200 milliseconds to recognize which pitch was thrown, where it will cross home plate, and when to swing. This isn’t enough time to get the job done. Hitters need more time to swing. There are two ways to overcome this problem.

1. Quicken Reactions
2. Pattern Matching

Since reaction times decrease with age and fatigue, pattern matching is the only sustainable solution for long term success.

Pattern Matching

Pattern matching is the act of comparing a sequence of cues with a set of expected outcomes. For example, take a guess at the next term in the sequences below.

1,2,3,___ [4]
Happy Birthday to you. Happy birthday to ____. [you]
It's not rocket ___. [science]

Hitters use pattern matching to save time and inform their hitting. It starts with the delivery…