There is a huge difference between good and great.
Apparently, there is often a huge difference between the great and the greatest.
In sports, there are many fantastic athletes whose names we will remember. Then there are the athletes who stand apart from the rest ... like Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt.
I recently stumbled upon a few charts highlighting the stratification between the top 1% and the #1.
Tom Brady
via NY Times
To put that statistic in perspective, no other quarterback has even played in 35 postseason games ... but that is another measure of Tom Brady's greatness.
Jerry Rice
sdbernard via Reddit
Some prominent names are missing from this list - like Julio Jones or Megatron - but, clearly, Jerry's performance stands apart from other legends of the game. For context, Julio Jones only had 61 TDs, which is relatively low on this chart, but averages 92 yards per game ... which is so high that he'd be off the chart.
Wayne Gretzky
via NumberHound
Wayne Gretzky is a sports legend, but this chart really puts it in perspective. Leader by a large margin in both assists and goals. He also has one of my favorite quotes -
“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”
Here's another interesting Wayne Gretzky stat:
Together, Wayne and Brent hold the NHL record for most combined points by two brothers - 2,857 for Wayne and 4 for Brent,[2] and are second overall in points scored by any number of brothers (behind the six brothers of the Sutter family who combined for 2,934 NHL points - 73 more than Wayne and Brent, although the Gretzkys' combined totals are greater than any five of the six Sutters.) - Wikipedia on Brent Gretzky
Serena Williams
via Yahoo!Sports
What about Nature versus Nurture?
Genetics and upbringing might play a part in greatness. There are several great sibling combos like the Gretzkys, the Mannings, and the Williams sisters.
Both Venus and Serena are dominant athletes, but Serena is in the running for one of the most dominant athletes in any sport.
Have you seen any other crazy stats like these? I'd love to see them.
Top 10 Most Overhyped Technologies (From 2008)
Just because something is overhyped, doesn’t mean it’s bad. Gartner's hype cycle is a great example of this. Every technology goes through inflated expectations and a trough of disillusionment, regardless of whether they're a success or failure. Sometimes a fad is more than a fad.
Humans are pretty bad at exponential thinking. We're not bad at recognizing periods of inflection, but we're very bad at recognizing the winners and losers of these regime changes.
There are countless examples. Here's a funny one from Maximum PC Magazine in 2008. It shows that hype isn't always a sign of mistaken excess. This list purported to show things that were getting too much attention in 2008. Instead of being a list of has-beens and failures, many of these things rightfully deserved the attention.
It's been 14 years since this came out. How did the predictions hold up?
Facebook has become Meta, and is one of the big five. The iPhone has sold more than 2.2 billion phones, and accounts for more than half of Apple's total revenue. And the list keeps going. Multiple GPU video cards, HD, 64-bit computing, and downloading movies from the internet ...
It's hard to believe how poorly this image aged.
The trend is your friend while it continues. Just because something is overhyped - doesn't mean you shouldn't be excited about it.
Onwards!
Posted at 08:49 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Gadgets, Games, Ideas, Just for Fun, Market Commentary, Science, Trading, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)
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