Athletes Use Bayesian Ideas?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/20/health/subconsciously-athletes-may-play-like-statisticians.html
Have you ever wondered what goes on inside the brain of a professional athlete when they are on the field or playing a match? How do they perceive the field? How do they decide where to throw the ball, or where to place their first serve? Having played sports all my life, I was wondering these same questions and if our decisions (like in sports) are based purely on luck or if there is something more that goes into our decision making – some instinct or some analysis of previous situations we’ve encountered. This idea of how athletes, and people in general, make many decisions like statisticians is discussed in the above article from the New York Times. Although many people think that when under pressure by your opponent’s defense, or knowing you are one point away from winning the championship, one’s mind doesn’t have time to analyze the statistics of the situation, however, the article explains that “this kind of analysis is precisely what the human brain does when facing a physical challenge.”
The article goes on further to discuss how Bayesian ideas are used by the brain to “[show] the point when uncertainty becomes great enough to give past experience an edge over current observations.” This directly relates to class discussions about Bayes’ Rule for computing probabilities given some known parameter. Our brains, whether we realize it or not, work in the same way depicted through Bayes’ Rule as we estimate the chances of our actions being successful given current conditions. Athletes in particular are faced with these decisions all throughout games where they must contemplate the chances of making the field goal with the wind blowing hard and to the east, or if one can confidently hit an overhead given the sun’s position in the sky. Although we are not using strict mathematical formulas and calculating probabilities with computer programs, the article makes it clear that following Bayesian techniques, decisions should be made by optimally using prior knowledge.
Lastly, the question then arises as to why people make bad decisions. If our brains are really using these Bayesian techniques to influence our decision-making, why do some people still make “self-destructive mistakes?” I think this is where further research of the topic of could be done in analyzing the behaviors of people during poor decision-making times. The article does give an answer to this question though: “The most likely explanation may be that some people are quite food at subconsciously using statistical techniques and others are far less so.” Although this may be true, I think looking into past experiences and prior knowledge of an individual also greatly influence a person’s decisions making. For example, one may be using Bayesian ideas to the best of their knowledge, it is just that their initial knowledge is lacking or insufficient, not that they are incapable of correctly using statistical techniques.
-mDubs