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no his greatest gift is that he's 6'8 https://investing.calsci.com/statistics.html https://investing.calsci.com/statistics.html he has a collection of many t

by pitt1980 8y ago

no his greatest gift is that he's 6'8 https://investing.calsci.com/statistics.html https://investing.calsci.com/statistics.html he has a collection of many traits that make him a unique talent of all those traits, the one with the largest standard deviation from the norm is almost certainly his height

wallflower 8y ago
Did you read the article? Please do so before rebutting the assertion. http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/11067098/lebron-james-greatest-weapon-brain http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/11067098/lebron-james-gre...
- pitt1980 8y ago
  yes, its not totally clear what percentile memory LeBron has its not totally clear if there actually is such a thing as photographic memory " There are so many unlikely circumstances surrounding the Elizabeth case—the marriage between subject and scientist, the lack of further testing, the inability to find anyone else with her abilities—that some psychologists have concluded that there's something fishy about Stromeyer's findings. He denies it. "We don't have any doubt about our data," he told me recently. Still, his one-woman study, he says, "is not strong evidence for other people having photographic memory." That's not to say there aren't people with extraordinarily good memories—there are. They just can't take mental snapshots and recall them with perfect fidelity. Kim Peek *, the 53-year-old savant who was the basis for Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man, is said to have memorized every page of the 9,000-plus books he has read at 8 to 12 seconds per page (each eye reads its own page independently), though that claim has never been rigorously tested. Another savant, Stephen Wiltshire, has been called the "human camera" for his ability to create sketches of a scene after looking at it for just a few seconds. But even he doesn't have a truly photographic memory. His mind doesn't work like a Xerox. He takes liberties. Photographic memory is often confused with another bizarre—but real—perceptual phenomenon called eidetic memory, which occurs in between 2 and 15 percent of children and very rarely in adults. An eidetic image is essentially a vivid afterimage that lingers in the mind's eye for up to a few minutes before fading away. Children with eidetic memory never have anything close to perfect recall, and they typically aren't able to visualize anything as detailed as a body of text. " http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2006/04/kaavya_syndrome.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/200... ------ lets ballpark it and say his memory is in the top 1% being 6'8 puts him in roughly the top 0.135% of adult males I stand by my rebuttal
  - wallflower 8y ago
    6'8" makes him slightly above average in the NBA. Comparing his height to the world population at large does not make sense if we are comparing him against other professional basketball players, past and present. https://sports.stackexchange.com/questions/15353/what-is-the-average-height-in-the-nba/15358 https://sports.stackexchange.com/questions/15353/what-is-the...
    - pitt1980 8y ago
      That's the point though, everyone in the NBA is extremely selected for height, and since we see him in the context of other NBA players we lose sight of how extreme this selection is and focused on traits that aren't particularly selected for, even if those traits are unique once you get past the previous selection
  - wallflower 8y ago
    After further thought, it is clearer from the comments of others who know more that it is his height and size and speed that give him an advantage. Therefore, he is not average in the NBA but an outlier.
markc 8y ago
No, largest standard deviation doesn't make it his greatest gift unless its weighted contribution to his overall skill (some combination of importance and rarity) was the greatest. There are certainly positive traits even rarer than height that have little or no bearing on skill, not to mention that optimum is not the same as maximum for some traits, probably including height.
- pitt1980 8y ago
  fair, are you arguing that of all the traits under consideration, height isn't one of ones of primary importance for his success on the basketball court? ie, if we keep all his various traits constant, and one by one, move each of them back a standard deviation is there a trait that would change his effectiveness more than moving his height back a standard deviation?
  - markc 8y ago
    No, undoubtedly optimum height is a major factor in his and other basketball players' success, and I don't know of any other factor that obviously dominates it. His mental talents may be even rarer however. I don't know how we could know.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

wallflower 8y ago

Did you read the article? Please do so before rebutting the assertion. http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/11067098/lebron-james-greatest-weapon-brain http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/11067098/lebron-james-gre...

pitt1980 8y ago
yes, its not totally clear what percentile memory LeBron has its not totally clear if there actually is such a thing as photographic memory " There are so many unlikely circumstances surrounding the Elizabeth case—the marriage between subject and scientist, the lack of further testing, the inability to find anyone else with her abilities—that some psychologists have concluded that there's something fishy about Stromeyer's findings. He denies it. "We don't have any doubt about our data," he told me recently. Still, his one-woman study, he says, "is not strong evidence for other people having photographic memory." That's not to say there aren't people with extraordinarily good memories—there are. They just can't take mental snapshots and recall them with perfect fidelity. Kim Peek *, the 53-year-old savant who was the basis for Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man, is said to have memorized every page of the 9,000-plus books he has read at 8 to 12 seconds per page (each eye reads its own page independently), though that claim has never been rigorously tested. Another savant, Stephen Wiltshire, has been called the "human camera" for his ability to create sketches of a scene after looking at it for just a few seconds. But even he doesn't have a truly photographic memory. His mind doesn't work like a Xerox. He takes liberties. Photographic memory is often confused with another bizarre—but real—perceptual phenomenon called eidetic memory, which occurs in between 2 and 15 percent of children and very rarely in adults. An eidetic image is essentially a vivid afterimage that lingers in the mind's eye for up to a few minutes before fading away. Children with eidetic memory never have anything close to perfect recall, and they typically aren't able to visualize anything as detailed as a body of text. " http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2006/04/kaavya_syndrome.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/200... ------ lets ballpark it and say his memory is in the top 1% being 6'8 puts him in roughly the top 0.135% of adult males I stand by my rebuttal
- wallflower 8y ago
  6'8" makes him slightly above average in the NBA. Comparing his height to the world population at large does not make sense if we are comparing him against other professional basketball players, past and present. https://sports.stackexchange.com/questions/15353/what-is-the-average-height-in-the-nba/15358 https://sports.stackexchange.com/questions/15353/what-is-the...
  - pitt1980 8y ago
    That's the point though, everyone in the NBA is extremely selected for height, and since we see him in the context of other NBA players we lose sight of how extreme this selection is and focused on traits that aren't particularly selected for, even if those traits are unique once you get past the previous selection
- wallflower 8y ago
  After further thought, it is clearer from the comments of others who know more that it is his height and size and speed that give him an advantage. Therefore, he is not average in the NBA but an outlier.

markc 8y ago

No, largest standard deviation doesn't make it his greatest gift unless its weighted contribution to his overall skill (some combination of importance and rarity) was the greatest. There are certainly positive traits even rarer than height that have little or no bearing on skill, not to mention that optimum is not the same as maximum for some traits, probably including height.

pitt1980 8y ago
fair, are you arguing that of all the traits under consideration, height isn't one of ones of primary importance for his success on the basketball court? ie, if we keep all his various traits constant, and one by one, move each of them back a standard deviation is there a trait that would change his effectiveness more than moving his height back a standard deviation?
- markc 8y ago
  No, undoubtedly optimum height is a major factor in his and other basketball players' success, and I don't know of any other factor that obviously dominates it. His mental talents may be even rarer however. I don't know how we could know.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]