for the record

[Morfod]

I HAVE PLAYED DESCENT FOR H8 YEARS OF MY LIFE, OR 2.5x10^H8 SECONDS.

[roncli]

[Mark392]

......I did actual ALGEBRA trying to figure this out. Well played, Jedi... Well played.

And if you'd be kind enough not to regale these folks with my stupid attempt at explaining the numbers, Jeds, that would be great. Yup. Thanks.

[organic io (formerly goldie)]

[LotharBot]

I don't think there's anything special about the number 10,000 as often cited by Gladwell. Rather, there's something special about orders of magnitude. Doing something for 1 hour puts you way ahead of someone who's only tried for 6 minutes. 10 hours puts you way ahead of 1 hour. 100 hours puts you ahead of 10. 100,000 hours would put you ahead of 10,000 -- but realistically, that's 50 years of 40-hour weeks, and there are very few people who keep doing the same thing full-time for 50 years and maintain anything remotely resembling peak physical or mental state for that long. So we don't see 100,000-hour experts very often, especially in competitive endeavors. We see experts in the tens-of-thousands of hours.

When the numbers are closer -- like 20,000 hours vs 10,000 hours -- the advantage won't necessarily outweigh other factors like the quality of training or genetics. So we think of a 10,000 hour expert as similar enough to a 20,000 hour expert that we don't really care about the hours so much as about other factors.

[roncli]

[Mark392]

Ronald. Just for that you will NOT be hearing the extremely touching and heartfelt reason behind my nickname.

[PFunk]

39,219.6 hours is equal to two games of NYSA with the Sloth!