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Joseph Picone: 100 meter dash and speech research

www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/london/track/story/2012-08-05/olympic-mens-100-meters-usain-bolt/56810500/1?csp=hf

So Usain Bolt did it - he is once again the fastest man on earth ;)

I often say that it is important you firmly believe a recognition
experiment is going to be successful before you run it - the power of
positive thinking. You have to be convinced what you are doing is the
right thing.

The 100 meter dash is one of those events that epitomizes this. These
guys train all year for a race that will last 9+ seconds. Every muscle
movement matters - the slightest mistake can cost you the race. At this
Olympics, 7 of 8 runners ran sub-10 second races, which is amazing when
you look back over the years. Bolt was within 0.05 seconds of his world
record - about the time it takes to blink your eye...

How do these runners manage to perform under pressure? He was not having
a great couple of years, but when the time came, he ran perfectly and
blew away the field.

One answer is practice. These runners practice so much that these races
are almost run on autopilot. Speech research is similar - you have to
run many experiments to get one to work. You settle into a routine with
a well-understood set of scripts so that there are no concerns about the
accuracy of the experimental set up.

Today's race was one of those memorable sports moments. The world's
fastest runners converged for a race that was amazing in terms of the
overall speed. Usian Bolt deserves a lot of credit for rising to the
occasion.

-Joe  1 (06-08-2012)