17 mathematical equations that changed the world
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Quelle est la résolution de l’oeil humain ?
Partons du principe qu’à l’heure actuelle, la plupart des smartphones disposent d’un capteur photo de 8 mégapixels, et que les boîtiers reflex tendent à tripler la mise. A votre avis, quelle est la résolution de l’oeil humain ? 50 millions de pixels ? Plus ? Moins ?
Voilà un sujet aussi complexe qu’intéressant : celui traitant de la « résolution » de l’oeil humain, s’il est toutefois possible de l’exprimer ainsi. Comme tente de l’expliquer Vsauce, d’une manière assez générale au travers de la vidéo de 10 minutes et des poussières qui suit (on vous conseille de maîtriser un tant soit peu la langue de Shakespeare avant de vous y attaquer, bien que des sous-titres soient disponibles), l’oeil humain disposerait donc d’une résolution de… 576 millions de pixels.
Bien que dans les faits, il soit plutôt question d’une véritable résolution exploitable de 7 mégapixels : il faut en effet prendre en compte que l’anatomie de l’oeil est très différente de l’architecture d’un appareil photo numérique. Dans tous les cas, on vous laissera vous instruire :
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Voilà un sujet aussi complexe qu’intéressant : celui traitant de la « résolution » de l’oeil humain, s’il est toutefois possible de l’exprimer ainsi. Comme tente de l’expliquer Vsauce, d’une manière assez générale au travers de la vidéo de 10 minutes et des poussières qui suit (on vous conseille de maîtriser un tant soit peu la langue de Shakespeare avant de vous y attaquer, bien que des sous-titres soient disponibles), l’oeil humain disposerait donc d’une résolution de… 576 millions de pixels.
Bien que dans les faits, il soit plutôt question d’une véritable résolution exploitable de 7 mégapixels : il faut en effet prendre en compte que l’anatomie de l’oeil est très différente de l’architecture d’un appareil photo numérique. Dans tous les cas, on vous laissera vous instruire :
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Cette illusion d’optique va vous réhydrater !
Que diriez-vous de poursuivre tranquillement cette matinée avec une charmante - et non moins surprenante - illusion d’optique ? Nous sommes tous friands de ces leurres et celui-ci se sert des propriétés de réfraction de la lumière et d’eau.
L’eau ne sert pas qu’à nous réhydrater, elle possède également de très intéressantes facultés grâce à la réfraction de la lumière. Voici un truc qui rentre dans la catégorie ‘vieux comme le monde’, mais qui fera son petit effet à tous les coups.
Il suffit de tracer deux flèches sur un morceau de papier, de mettre un verre d’eau en face et de le remplir. Vous contacterez qu’elles vont changer de direction comme par magie, devant vos yeux ébahis. La lumière est déviée lorsqu’elle passe d’un milieu transparent à un autre, créant ainsi l’illusion suivante.
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L’eau ne sert pas qu’à nous réhydrater, elle possède également de très intéressantes facultés grâce à la réfraction de la lumière. Voici un truc qui rentre dans la catégorie ‘vieux comme le monde’, mais qui fera son petit effet à tous les coups.
Il suffit de tracer deux flèches sur un morceau de papier, de mettre un verre d’eau en face et de le remplir. Vous contacterez qu’elles vont changer de direction comme par magie, devant vos yeux ébahis. La lumière est déviée lorsqu’elle passe d’un milieu transparent à un autre, créant ainsi l’illusion suivante.
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Can we all "have it all"?
Public policy expert Anne-Marie Slaughter made waves with her 2012 article, "Why women still can't have it all." But really, is this only a question for women? Here Slaughter expands her ideas and explains why shifts in work culture, public policy and social mores can lead to more equality — for men, women, all of us.
pinThis talk was presented at an official TED Conference. TED's editors featured it among our daily selections on the home page.
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Ce type explose le record du monde de Rubik’s cube
Le Rubik’s cube est un sport (Et alors ?) absolument hypnotisant ! C’est assez simple une fois qu’on a compris le truc, mais lorsqu’on augmente la difficulté avec des cubes de plus en plus complexes… C’est une autre paire de manches ! Ce type est… il est… On vous laisse admirer l’artiste.
Il va en réalité résoudre plus d’un cube, effectivement, le but est de commencer avec un Rubik’s cube 2×2, puis 3×3, 4×4, 5×5, 6×6 et 7×7. Outre l’agilité et la dextérité… Il va réussir cet exploit en seulement 6 minutes et 23 secondes…
C’est absolument fou, on jurerait que la vidéo est passée en accéléré…
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Il va en réalité résoudre plus d’un cube, effectivement, le but est de commencer avec un Rubik’s cube 2×2, puis 3×3, 4×4, 5×5, 6×6 et 7×7. Outre l’agilité et la dextérité… Il va réussir cet exploit en seulement 6 minutes et 23 secondes…
C’est absolument fou, on jurerait que la vidéo est passée en accéléré…
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Trophées des think tanks 2014
De nouvelles thématiques, de nouveaux trophées, et des personnalités prestigieuses au programme de la troisième édition des trophées des think tanks.
- Partenaires et sponsors
Trophées
Trophée des relations internationalesremis par Mme Clara Gaymard, Présidente de l’Amcham
Trophée de l’économie
remis par Mme Blandine Mulliez, Présidente de la Fondation Entreprendre
Trophée des affaires européennes
remis par Mme Nina Mitz, PDG de FTI Consulting France
Trophée éducation et culture
remis par M. Bernard Bazillon, directeur associé, Fondation KPMG
Trophée énergie, environnement et développement durable
remis par M. Christophe Février, PDG de GEO PLC
Trophée Politique et société
remis par M. Gilles Leclerc, Président de Public Sénat
Trophée de la Santé
remis par M. Emmanuel Roux, Directeur général de la Mutualité Française
Trophée Innovation et numérique
remis par M. François Aird, PDG de Cedrom SNI
Trophée de la meilleure stratégie de communication média
remis par Mme Véronique Richard, Directrice du CELSA
Prix spécial du Jury
remis par M. André Marcon, Président de CCI France
Panel
Programme
17h30 Accueil des participants18h30 Cérémonie de remise des trophées des think tanks
20h30 Cocktail et rafraîchissements
L’ensemble de la cérémonie sera retransmis en direct sur la chaîne
youtube de l’Observatoire des think tanks
Inscription
Entrée libre sur inscription au 07 82 35 29 18 (mobile) ou par email : trophees2014@oftt.eu, dans la limite des places disponibles↧
Clayton Cameron: A-rhythm-etic. The math behind the beats
Ready to dance in your seat? Drummer Clayton Cameron breaks down different genres of music—from R&B to Latin to pop—by their beats. A talk that proves hip hop and jazz aren't cooler than math—they simply rely on it.
pinThis talk was presented at an official TED Conference. TED's editors featured it among our daily selections on the home page.
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Homme versus machine, le plus beau match de ping pong de votre vie !
Parmi les sports préférés de nos amis les robots, le ping-pong a plus que le vent en poupe ces derniers temps. Peuvent-ils battre les humains à chaque partie ? Si vous ne voulez pas passer à côté d’une superbe vidéo, venez faire un tour par ici.
La société chinoise de robotique industrielle Kuka est en train de mettre au point un bras robotisé absolument exceptionnel et ils présentent ‘leurs résultats’ dans une vidéo d’un niveau rarement égalé.
Le 11 mars, l’ancien numéro un mondial Timo Boll s’est prêté au jeu du match amical. Hélas, l’épique partie n’a pas été diffusée en direct, au lieu de cela, elle a été transformée en publicité. Ce n’est pas un mal, le slow motion est franchement exceptionnel et le tout est astucieusement scénarisé.
Boll versus Agilus est un avant goût de l’avenir et croyez bien que vous aurez l’eau à la bouche. Si l’on en croit les dirigeants, c’est bien l’homme qui a emporté le morceau à la suite d’un match des plus acharnés qui s’est déroulé à Sofia, en Bulgarie.
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La société chinoise de robotique industrielle Kuka est en train de mettre au point un bras robotisé absolument exceptionnel et ils présentent ‘leurs résultats’ dans une vidéo d’un niveau rarement égalé.
Le 11 mars, l’ancien numéro un mondial Timo Boll s’est prêté au jeu du match amical. Hélas, l’épique partie n’a pas été diffusée en direct, au lieu de cela, elle a été transformée en publicité. Ce n’est pas un mal, le slow motion est franchement exceptionnel et le tout est astucieusement scénarisé.
Boll versus Agilus est un avant goût de l’avenir et croyez bien que vous aurez l’eau à la bouche. Si l’on en croit les dirigeants, c’est bien l’homme qui a emporté le morceau à la suite d’un match des plus acharnés qui s’est déroulé à Sofia, en Bulgarie.
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Elle balaie 14 styles de chansons en moins de 3 minutes
La jeune Sara, aka Smoukahontas sur la toile, est en passe de devenir l’une des sensations d’Internet. Après avoir fait semblant de parler plusieurs langues étrangères, elle revient à la charge en balayant 14 styles de chansons en moins de 3 minutes.
La méthode appliquée par la jeune femme est d’ailleurs la même quelle celle mise en exergue dans sa vidéo « What Languages Sound Like to Foreigners » (qui a pour l’anecdote enregistré quelques millions de vues en quelques jours seulement) : elle imite, reproduit, et passe en revue pas moins de 14 styles de chansons différents.
On passe du RnB à la pop indé, en faisant un crochet vers la musique Indienne, la musique Française typique du début des années 1900, sans louper une jolie imitation de Regina Spektor. C’est une fois encore bluffant, et c’est à découvrir ci-dessous. On attend la suite !
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La méthode appliquée par la jeune femme est d’ailleurs la même quelle celle mise en exergue dans sa vidéo « What Languages Sound Like to Foreigners » (qui a pour l’anecdote enregistré quelques millions de vues en quelques jours seulement) : elle imite, reproduit, et passe en revue pas moins de 14 styles de chansons différents.
On passe du RnB à la pop indé, en faisant un crochet vers la musique Indienne, la musique Française typique du début des années 1900, sans louper une jolie imitation de Regina Spektor. C’est une fois encore bluffant, et c’est à découvrir ci-dessous. On attend la suite !
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Écoutez les différents accents à travers le monde dans cette incroyable vidéo
Le HuffPost | Publication: 09/03/2014 08h04 CET
INSOLITE - Si vous vous êtes toujours demandé ce qu'entendait un étranger non francophone lorsque vous parliez français, cette vidéo devrait satisfaire votre curiosité. Une Finlandaise de 19 ans, prénommée Sara, a réussi en effet à capter la mélodie propre à plus d'une douzaine d'idiomes.
Français, suédois, anglais, arabe, japonais, portugais... Rares sont les langues qui échappent à sa maîtrise. Et si vous ne comprenez rien à ce qu'elle dit, c'est tout à fait normal: la jeune femme déblatère ici un total charabia, ayant pour seul but de reproduire (avec humour) les sensations auditives des langues imitées.
Une performance déjà très appréciée à en croire les plus de 4,5 millions de vues sur YouTube en seulement quatre jours. Regardez le clip en tête d'article (pour le français, passez directement à 0'33'') et dîtes-nous ce que vous en pensez!
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Français, suédois, anglais, arabe, japonais, portugais... Rares sont les langues qui échappent à sa maîtrise. Et si vous ne comprenez rien à ce qu'elle dit, c'est tout à fait normal: la jeune femme déblatère ici un total charabia, ayant pour seul but de reproduire (avec humour) les sensations auditives des langues imitées.
Une performance déjà très appréciée à en croire les plus de 4,5 millions de vues sur YouTube en seulement quatre jours. Regardez le clip en tête d'article (pour le français, passez directement à 0'33'') et dîtes-nous ce que vous en pensez!
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What will sports look like in the future? How science + technology are changing the limits of the human body and the shape of competition
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If you’ve ever seen grainy old sports footage—for example, a boxing match from the late 1800s, a Princeton/Yale game from 1903, or Babe Ruth’s famous home run from 1932—you probably noticed something: how different the game looks, compared to its modern counterpart. The equipment looks too clunky, the uniforms impossibly baggy. Even the bodies of the players look weirdly out of shape. Why is that?
Like any human endeavor, sports evolve over time. Science and technology fuel these changes, providing ever-better gear made with superior materials, better information about nutrition and training, and improvements in data generation and analysis that help push the limits of athletic capability.
At TED2014— which kicks off in just nine days — two speakers will talk about the role of science and technology in sports. Sports science journalist David Epstein will discuss how athletics change rapidly over time, while NFL punter Chris Kluwe will ponder the impact augmented reality, particularly Google Glass, could have on major sports. The TED Blog invited these two to have a conversation with Cynthia Bir, lead scientist at ESPN’s Sport Science, who took a look at how basketball players use physics to make shots at TEDYouth late last year.
Below, an edited transcript of that conversation. Read on to hear how each of these thinkers parses the fine line of fairness when it comes to new science and technology in sports, and what each thinks competitions will look like 10 years from now.
To start off, how did each of you became interested in looking at the intersection of sports and science?
Cynthia Bir: I’m a biomedical engineer and my focus of research is in injury biomechanics. It’s an obvious area where we need to study the injuries that might be occurring, and the ways that we can prevent or predict them. A big topic right now is traumatic brain injuries in sports, and so being able to really understand what happens in various sports—not just football, but in all sports, in terms of what causes traumatic brain injuries—is key. I have some personal interest, because I have kids and they participate in a variety of sports. And so it’s one of those things that if you feel like you’re actually making a difference with your research, it adds some validity to it.
David Epstein: For me, I was a national-level middle-distance runner and went on to become a science grad student. I transitioned into sports science writing after one of my training partners dropped dead after a race. I got really curious about how that could happen to someone who otherwise seemed to be a picture of health. So ultimately, I had his parents sign a waiver to allow me to gather up his medical records, and learn that he suffered from this particular gene mutation that’s most commonly the cause of sudden death in athletes.
It was that experience, as well as another experience in sports in high school that led to me writing about genetics in sports. I grew up with a lot of Jamaican guys, and we had this great high school track team. At the age of 16, I looked up Jamaica in an atlas and realized there are two-and-a-half million from that island—I started to wonder what was going on there. As I moved up to running longer distances in college, I was running against Kenyan guys, getting to know them, and realizing they were all from the same town, basically — from this big minority tribe in Kenya. It was, again, “What’s going on?” Inside my own training group, where I was living and eating and training with five guys, we were becoming more different in many ways athletically rather than more the same, even while we were doing the same training. I started to want to look into some of those questions. That’s how I transitioned out of science grad school and into sports science writing.
Chris Kluwe: I’ve been in the NFL for eight-and-a-half years, and obviously played high school and college athletics before that. For me, I’ve always been interested in the idea of science and technology emerging—science and technology that we don’t really pay attention to at the time, but when we look back, we say, “Oh, hey, that was a pretty cool idea.” Things like cell phones or the Internet that transformed the way we lived our lives. As an athlete, what I’ve seen with Google Glass and with augmented reality is, I think, not quite a transcendent moment, but one of those moments where things will shift. Sports are a vehicle for many, many people—you have a very wide audience, and so when you get these emerging technologies in sports, then you see them adopted very rapidly. That’s what I was interested in. The idea that now we can actually record from a first-person perspective what it is like to be a world-class, professional athlete on the field, and then experience that through either seeing it on TV or other media.
With Google Glass, how do you see that technology changing the landscape of football—and other sports—in the future?
Chris Kluwe: I think it will initially shift the viewing perspective. People will now have another way to watch the game—from the athlete’s perspective. It’ll no longer be just the overhead cameras and the sweeping Skycam— you’ll actually be able to see what your favorite player did on the play from his or her perspective. That’s something that we’ve never really had up to this point.
From there, it leads to people becoming more comfortable with the idea of things like augmented reality and virtual reality, which leads into that being adopted more and more into everyday life. In the sporting world, that means augmented reality being adopted into the actual sports themselves. For football, you could have a projector that displays your next series of plays on your helmet as you’re running back to the huddle. Or something that highlights the receiver, or warns you if a guy is coming off your blind spot, for instance tackling against quarterback.
You see this a lot in the military—on displays in fighter jets, and I think they’re working on actual ground-based troop systems as well—there’s this filter of information between you and the world, an additional layer of information that you can use to enhance your own senses. I think we’re at that point right now where not a lot of people realize that, just like not a lot of people realized that the Internet was going to be something that spread and covered the entire world, or that cell phones would be as ubiquitous. No one even thinks of not having a cell phone, but there was a point when cell phones were big briefcase, clunky things that only executives on Wall Street had.
Cynthia and David, what’s an advance in science or technology that you think will change the landscape of sports in the coming years?
Cynthia Bir: I would have to say some of the motion-capture techniques that are out there. They no longer require markers or instrumentation to be placed on the athlete—you can just use the camera. Some people are using Kinect systems, and some people are using a little more high-tech systems. We’re able to tell exactly how the athlete is moving in real time. When you have an athlete performing at a certain level, you’re trying to explain, “Okay, this is what you need to do,” or “this is the motion.” Having a system where you can get real-time data, provide it back to that person and say, “You’re pushing off with your right leg more than your left leg,” or “you need to adapt this,” or “you need to adapt that”—it’s going to really enhance a lot of athletes’ ability to perform. We have a lot of biometric type feedback stuff available to us now as well in terms of just being able to monitor heart rate, respiratory rate, and things of that nature during the actual event. So I think that instant feedback that we’re now getting with our sensors will be critical.
David Epstein: I’m going to give two. One is individualized training. I’m interested what’s happened with sports science in the decade since the sequencing of the human genome. Although there’s a lot left to learn, just as we’ve learned the differences in my gene that’s involved in acetaminophen metabolism from yours—I might need three Tylenols while you need one to get the same effect, or maybe no amount works for me—we’re finding genes that make some people more trainable to particular training programs than others. Not only genes, but actually direct physiology, whether it’s properties of muscle fibers or things like that, that can help you figure out what the best training plan is for an individual. Just as there’s no perfect medication regimen for any individual, because we’re so biologically unique, there’s no one single perfect training plan that works for everybody.
Some countries that are starting to put this into effect. Denmark and the Netherlands are doing things like muscle biopsies, and moving athletes around sports based on that. Or if the athletes are plateauing in training, you can tailor training to their specific physiology to get better effects. That’s really neat, and can be done with fairly easy interventions. I think we’re going to continue moving in that direction, toward individualized training to get the optimal training environment for every individual.
The other thing I wanted to mention: occlusion testing, where you block certain parts of perceptual information digitally or virtually. Either in the field with special types of glasses and things like that, or in videos by deleting parts of players’ bodies or time segments of the action, to figure out what information athletes actually need to predict what’s coming in the future faster than they could do consciously. You can use that to understand what they should be exposed to the most, what kind of practice scenarios are not wasting time, essentially. It turns out that pitching machines are completely wasting time, because they don’t teach you the perceptual cues of a pitcher’s body that let you anticipate a pitch. This is why softball pitchers can always strike out major-league baseball hitters. I think this occlusion testing is helping us focus our training time only to athletes’ better perceptual skills. And it might even be connected to some of the virtual reality stuff that Chris is talking about. That would be a great way to use it on the field
Chris, hearing Cynthia and David talk about these examples, are these things that you’ve used in training. Have you used motion-capture video, or individualized training, or occlusion testing, or anything like that?
Chris Kluwe: Yes, I’ve actually seen occlusion testing used on the practice field. Nike had a pair of polarized lens glasses that would flash to block incoming light, essentially blinding you every half a second or every second, whatever you wanted to set it at. It is mainly for the receivers training to focus on the balls coming in and predict where the ball was going to be, even if they couldn’t watch it the entire way in. When you’re running on the field, when you’re trying to fight the defensive back, then you’re not going to be able to just stare the ball all the way into your hands. You have to predict where it’s going to end up, and then know when to close your hands to catch it. I’ve seen stuff like that.
When it comes to using technology or science to improve sport performance, what’s the line between fair and unfair? I was thinking of the example of doping earlier. That’s a medical technology that is totally taboo in sports. So what do you think is different between doping or something like Google Glass, or an improved swimsuit, or lighter running shoes, or any of these technologies that you just mentioned?
Chris Kluwe: One of the main concerns with doping right now is the fact that it isn’t regulated and people are worried that it is cheating, in a sense. It’s allowing you to move past what your body would normally be capable of. And that’s determined by the rules of the game itself. That’s more of a societal question: what do you determine as the limits for your game? Are doping or mechanical assistance allowed? That’s not really so much a sports question as it is a “what do you want from your sports” question.
But in terms of stuff like augmented reality, like sports science, I think that’s a natural progression of any sport. People want to know more about sports, they want to understand why things work. And you see that in baseball, with the rise of sabermetrics—the idea that there stats that we can track and collate that may actually make a difference, so we need to be tracking and collating. And if we don’t, we’re at a competitive disadvantage. With augmented reality in football, a team that has algorithms that allow them to predict what the other team is going to do a tenth of a second faster will have a competitive advantage. And so now, your scouting department is important but your IT department is just as important, because they’re in charge of making sense of that data. I think it is a natural progression of sports themselves.
David Epstein: I think Chris said something beautifully that we should all think about, which is that you have to ask: what do you want from your sport? With respect to doping, sports are—we would say—the ultimate human contrivances. It’s just like taking agreed-upon rules for something that’s otherwise not meaningful, and adding meaning. And so I think when it comes to doping, there’s a lot of debate about whether we should look the other way, but I think it’s totally fair to argue about changing the rules. If you feel like the value in sports emanates from agreed-upon rules, then I think if you’re into those rules, it’s important.
There are certain things that are on the banned substance [list] that won’t always be. Things that should be explored for helping players recover more quickly, and I think it’s a shame that they’re not. That said, I wouldn’t say it’s a non-issue if a player decides to do that anyway, because the rules in sports, are important. As far as the technology goes, I think if we only wanted to see strictly what the normal human body was capable of, we’d make people with 40-hour-a-week jobs play against one another. We’re already to the point beyond the athletes themselves. The support group and the technology companies are part of the expression of human creativity that is sports.
Cynthia Bir: The only thing that I would add: is it just some sort of mechanical advantage? Certain people have better access to equipment and resources and things of that nature, and that’s just what happens as you progress through the echelon of sports. But if something comes out that for some reason gives a mechanical advantage that has nothing to do with athleticism, then I think that needs to be looked at.
How do these scientific and technological improvements that we’re talking about trickle down from the pros to the average player? One of those people who, like David said, works 40 hours a week and maybe plays on the company softball team, or a kid in a soccer club at school. At what point do these technologies reach the rest of us?
Cynthia Bir: I think that it depends on the technology. There is an advantage when dollars are put into the technologies at the higher levels—ultimately it will trickle down to the Little Leagues of the world. There’s a lot of research and development that’s going on across the board that will trickle down and help out even the weekend warrior at some point in time. The developmental cost is already there, so it’s then mass-produced. Some things will trickle down faster than others, but ultimately, I think, all will have advantages that the general populace will see.
David Epstein: I think Cynthia’s totally right. It depends on the technology. With respect to some of the technology that pro athletes use for health, sometimes I’ve been a little disappointed at the lack of trickle-down. But I think maybe that’s just because I’m expecting it to happen too quickly.
What are some examples of that?
David Epstein: Some of the things with brain testing. Not even technology, but just the kind of healthcare that you have, that kind of sideline assessment. Some of the neuro-cognitive testing that’s done for concussion or brain trauma has pretty much been shown to be too easy to actually assess a lot of concussions. So you’re just not making your test difficult enough, and that seems to me not to have been realized at lower levels of football. This part of the competitive population is the largest, has the most vulnerable brains, and is at the most risk. And it sometimes has the least care.
But I think in terms of things that improve training and the kind of technology that Chris was talking about, absolutely. There is no better advertising than a high-performance, elite, world-class athlete using something where a zillion people can see it. There’s the capacity for trickle-down much more rapidly than in many other scenarios.
Chris, as far as Google Glass—it’s still expensive, but have you heard from any recreational players that have tried that out in their own sport?
Chris Kluwe: I’ve seen videos from people who’ve worn it, or worn GoPros or something similar, trying to get that perspective in. Obviously a lot of it has to do with the popularity of your sport, and what the ease of access is to get that technology. Because when you see actually it’s using a product, that product is obtainable in terms of the average working person’s income, it’s going to trickle down much, much faster than something like, say, a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. For the average person, that’s not something they can just go out and pick up at a sporting goods store.
Professional sports are more the prototyping stage where companies put this technology out there so that they can gauge the interest in it, and see what kind of impact it has on the game. If people are interested in it, economies of scale can be put into place to make it obtainable by enough people. That’s when you start seeing that trickle-down effect. That’s when you start seeing people getting better Nike and UnderArmour-type compression girdles and sports gear.
In terms of the concussion testing, that’s something that I don’t think you’re going to see trickling down until the sport itself makes even more of an emphasis on saying, “Hey, this is something that we have to deal with.” Because right now, it’s very much a public perception thing where the NFL wants people to say, “Yeah, they’re trying to do something.” But the fact remains, the NFL wants players out on the field playing the game because that’s how they make their money. That’s what people are there to see. Until that changes, then you’re not going to get that trickle-down to the lower levels of sports, because the players will always want to go back into the game, because they’re out there to play. It’s up to the people around them to be able to say, “No, you can’t go back into that game because you haven’t passed the appropriate test. You can harm yourself further by going back in. You need to be saved from yourself.”
Cynthia Bir: I think what we’re dealing with right now, it’s not a lack of education. There are a lot of resources out there. The CDC has resources available for Heads-Up: Concussion and there are SLICE programs out there, which is a concussion recognition program that goes into high schools and junior highs and talks about how to detect concussions in sports. There is some trickle-down that’s occurring in that area. There is a lot of information and technologies available out there for both high school and Pop Warner leagues. It’s just a matter of getting the word out to the coaches, to the trainers, to the parents that that’s available.
I agree that some of the sideline cognitive testing probably hasn’t been, I guess you could say as diligent as what we would like it to have been in the past, but I think there’s a lot of new technologies and a lot of new testing that’s coming out that will be implemented in the next months. Not years, but months. The problem’s been recognized, and we’re starting to move forward.
David Epstein: There definitely is way more stuff out there than there was and I didn’t mean to imply there wasn’t. One thing I’ve seen are high schools that have athletic trainers—certified athletic trainers. And a lot of high schools, unfortunately, don’t.
Cynthia Bir: That is true.
David Epstein: And to Chris’ point, he made me think of one technology I’ve seen—the so-called AlterG treadmill. You slip into a pressurized kind of bubble for your lower body, and you can adjust how much of your body weight this pressurized bubble carries. I first heard of that maybe a couple of years ago, only with really elite athletes, but I’m just started seeing it pop up in physical therapy clinics and also in a few gyms here and there. I think the price is starting to come down. If that price keeps coming down, that will be something that’s sort of more standard in gyms, because it’s really, really useful, especially for rehab.
My next question is for Cynthia. I saw a talk that you gave online about the limit of human sport performance, and I was wondering if you could talk about some of the major limits both for the human body and in the ways science and technology can maximize our capability for sport.
Cynthia Bir: Every sport is so different, right? And there’s going to be different limits on different sports. But I think some of the points that we talked about earlier in terms of the technology—like identifying different genes and different ways that we can enhance and recover—will ultimately lead to athletes who are breaking records. That was my point in the talk: that if you look at the Olympics, especially the Summer Olympics as I didn’t really track it for the winter ones, we were still breaking world records. And you have to wonder, “Okay, what’s our limit? Are we going to get to that point where we can’t beat a time, or we can’t improve something?” There obviously are going to be limits. Biomechanically, we’re just built in a certain way and you’re only going to be able to have somebody run a 40-yard dash so fast. Have we reached them? No, I don’t think so. I think we’ll still see some improvements. We’ll see world records broken in every sport as we learn about the body and we study it and research it more.
Chris Kluwe: I would just want to hit you back on that previous point. Basically the entire idea of sports is trying to discover what those limits are. Because every generation, we feel like we’ve reached that pinnacle where we’ve run the fastest 40 time we’re going to run, or we’ve gone the fastest through the downhill we’re ever going to go, or this technology is perfect, or technology can’t get any better. But then we always go past it.
I think the key thing for sports science is understanding that every generation thinks it’s going to find those limits, but so far we haven’t. So we have to continuously keep looking for those limits, because I don’t even know if we’ll know when we find them. It will take quite a while to accumulate enough data to realize that.
You look at the strides that have been made over the past even 50 years in terms of shoe technology. You look at what cleats are these days compared to what cleats people wore back in the sixties and seventies. It’s night and day, and it drastically changes how you play your game. And that’s just something you wear on your feet. So I think it’s very much that sports science is that constant pushing, that constant testing of those limits—of trying to find where that absolute maximum limit is—that’s something we’re probably not ever going to find. In order to find that limit, we don’t just need know how the human body works in terms of physio-mechanical structure, we need to know how the human mind works in terms of: How do you make yourself push that extra ounce of energy? How do you make yourself keep going when every cell in your body is telling you that you can’t—that you’re done. But your brain finds a way. You can’t just look at it as a pure physiological performance, it has to be everything that makes up your body and your mind.
Cynthia Bir: That’s a good point. I think, anecdotely, that sports psychology is becoming more popular. You hear about it more, you hear about people who actually go and talk to sports psychologists in terms of, “I have a mental block, how do I get past this?” Or, “how do I focus my mind and do this?”
I think you’re right that it’s the physiological part of the body, and then it’s the technology too. That’s a very good point—that we don’t know what shoes are going to look like 10 years from now, because we sure didn’t know what they were going to look like 10 years ago in terms of what they are now. Materials have improved—lighter materials, different types of rubbers for the insoles. I think you’re right—several components come together to improve performance.
David Epstein: I agree with all of that. I also want play devil’s advocate a little bit. In terms of the brain, I just visited a lab in South Africa where they are doing various things and then measuring the electrical impulse between the brain and the muscle fibers to see how many muscle fibers are recruited in different tasks. To see how that can be manipulated and fool somebody about their work out. They have all kinds of different interventions to see how they can trick the brain into allowing you to use more of the physical resources. Because your brain’s not going to stop you from dying, apparently. It doesn’t mind if you run a little faster. There was a really cool study I saw there where they would fool people about how hot it was in the room they were in, and it basically negated the effect of the slowdown that the heat had on them. They would reset the thermometers, and all kinds of stuff like that.
Cynthia Bir: That’s the most scary.
David Epstein: Pretty cool, yeah.
Chris Kluwe: Incredible.
DE: Yeah, very. So if anyone Googles “central governor theory,” that’s what they’re working on. This is why amphetamines, for example, are an incredible endurance aid, and yet they only act on the central nervous system—they don’t act in the muscles. It turns out this lab did a placebo-controlled trial and with amphetamines. Normally your brain stops recruiting as much muscle when your core temperature hits 104 and you have to slow down. The amphetamines allow you to keep going without knowing that. So it removes your central inhibition from overheating. It’s a great endurance aid, but it also means it makes you prone to heatstroke if you go too hard. But they don’t act in the muscle.
To play devil’s advocate a little bit more—women’s records in track and field have been completely stuck in the eighties. Women appear to be getting slower, and I think that’s largely because that was an era of mega-doping that’s a little harder to do now. So I’ll be curious to see if women’s track and field athletes ever again eventually climb back toward those records, because so far that hasn’t happened. Meanwhile, men’s records in track and field are not all stuck. I’m really curious to see which records stagnate, and which won’t. I think the endurance records—the marathon and ultra-marathon—are the ones that we’re really going to see a lot of progress in, in the near future.
Chris Kluwe: The interesting thing to see about records is that, generally, record-breaking progression is very logarithmic, in that you have kind of those big chunks at first, and then it really starts to slow down as you get closer and closer to what that limit is. Until you have that next breakthrough in sports technology—in science, in bio-physiology, whatever it happens to be. Until you hit that breakthrough, then yeah, you’re going to plateau. Then it becomes—that’s that next breakthrough?
One last question for all of you. What are each of your predictions on the craziest, coolest or most shocking thing we’ll see happening in sports 10 years from now?
Chris Kluwe: For me, personally, probably the most outlandish thing I can think of—I’d say there’s maybe 25% chance of it actually happening—is the idea of actually replacing human bodies with artificial bodies in terms of sports. Where people will either remotely access or log in, in a fashion, to an artificial body. If it’s a robot body, or something constructed with synthetic polymers, something like that, in order to reduce the risk of injury to actual human beings. Because I think you’re starting to see that more and more—especially in football players, but in other sports as well—that people are starting to understand that there is a toll that sports takes on a human body. As a society, we have to ask ourselves a question—is this worth it to us in order to be entertained? Is it worth it to us to have people drop dead after a race? Or to be crippled for life in order that we can watch and be entertained? As technology progresses to a point where it is possible to duplicate the human experience, but also take it out of the equation so people aren’t actively being harmed, I can see that definitely taking off and supplanting actual flesh-and-blood sports at some point.
More realistically, I think what will happen is that we’ll start to see much more augmented reality and virtual reality interfaces in sports. I think that that’s a natural progression—as people become more used to that type of technology in their everyday lives, then it becomes natural for them to see it in their entertainment as well.
David Epstein: I think some of it depends on who enters the competitive population. I think there’s a good chance that we’ll see a double amputee, because of advances in prostheses, be capable of winning a gold medal in the able-bodied Olympics. Actually, I heard the US right now has the largest Paralympic athlete pool ever, because it’s had soldiers coming home with injuries for a while now.
One thing I think we’ll see for sure, within the next 10 years, is more widespread use of hyperoxic training, which is people who are training with masks on to give them more than atmospheric oxygen, because it turns out that the body will work out much harder than you can normally. The oxygen mask that football players use between plays, when those have been tested versus placebo masks, they actually don’t work, because when you’re resting, there’s plenty of oxygen in the air around you. The problem is you can’t get it where it needs to go quickly enough in your body. But when you’re actually working out as hard as you can, and you’re an elite athlete, you can move your blood so fast that it doesn’t catch as much oxygen as it could. So if you’re working out with a mask on, that increases that oxygen pressure around you, and you can actually work out way harder than you would be able to normally. I think you’ll also see places like some of the countries that have sort of centralized sports science institutes build facilities that are hyperoxic conditions to allow athletes to train in them often.
Cynthia Bir: I would say that we’ll see the move to some of the real-time technology and feedback used during an actual sporting event. Because we do a lot during training and we do a lot during practices, and we get numbers and feedback. But to actually do it during a game is quite different. We’ve done a lot of research. Let’s say in boxing, when you have people sparring versus during an actual bout, you see quite a bit of differences in terms of punch forces and what is sustained during the fight. So I think having some more of the real-time monitoring of all sports—football, baseball, everything—will provide that instant feedback. That’s kind of what we’re all about now in the world, and in the US specifically, is getting that instant feedback and having those numbers and those metrics right away so you can make decisions. I think we’ll start to see more and more teams, coaches and athletic trainers using that instant feedback, whether it be to detect an injury or to say, “Okay, this is what’s happening on the field, and this is how you need to adapt to it.”
Check out David Epstein’s book, The Sports Gene»
Find out more about Chris Kluwe’s book, Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies»
Watch Cynthia Bir’s ESPN Series, Sport Science»
If you’ve ever seen grainy old sports footage—for example, a boxing match from the late 1800s, a Princeton/Yale game from 1903, or Babe Ruth’s famous home run from 1932—you probably noticed something: how different the game looks, compared to its modern counterpart. The equipment looks too clunky, the uniforms impossibly baggy. Even the bodies of the players look weirdly out of shape. Why is that?
Like any human endeavor, sports evolve over time. Science and technology fuel these changes, providing ever-better gear made with superior materials, better information about nutrition and training, and improvements in data generation and analysis that help push the limits of athletic capability.
At TED2014— which kicks off in just nine days — two speakers will talk about the role of science and technology in sports. Sports science journalist David Epstein will discuss how athletics change rapidly over time, while NFL punter Chris Kluwe will ponder the impact augmented reality, particularly Google Glass, could have on major sports. The TED Blog invited these two to have a conversation with Cynthia Bir, lead scientist at ESPN’s Sport Science, who took a look at how basketball players use physics to make shots at TEDYouth late last year.
Below, an edited transcript of that conversation. Read on to hear how each of these thinkers parses the fine line of fairness when it comes to new science and technology in sports, and what each thinks competitions will look like 10 years from now.
To start off, how did each of you became interested in looking at the intersection of sports and science?
Cynthia Bir: I’m a biomedical engineer and my focus of research is in injury biomechanics. It’s an obvious area where we need to study the injuries that might be occurring, and the ways that we can prevent or predict them. A big topic right now is traumatic brain injuries in sports, and so being able to really understand what happens in various sports—not just football, but in all sports, in terms of what causes traumatic brain injuries—is key. I have some personal interest, because I have kids and they participate in a variety of sports. And so it’s one of those things that if you feel like you’re actually making a difference with your research, it adds some validity to it.
David Epstein: For me, I was a national-level middle-distance runner and went on to become a science grad student. I transitioned into sports science writing after one of my training partners dropped dead after a race. I got really curious about how that could happen to someone who otherwise seemed to be a picture of health. So ultimately, I had his parents sign a waiver to allow me to gather up his medical records, and learn that he suffered from this particular gene mutation that’s most commonly the cause of sudden death in athletes.
It was that experience, as well as another experience in sports in high school that led to me writing about genetics in sports. I grew up with a lot of Jamaican guys, and we had this great high school track team. At the age of 16, I looked up Jamaica in an atlas and realized there are two-and-a-half million from that island—I started to wonder what was going on there. As I moved up to running longer distances in college, I was running against Kenyan guys, getting to know them, and realizing they were all from the same town, basically — from this big minority tribe in Kenya. It was, again, “What’s going on?” Inside my own training group, where I was living and eating and training with five guys, we were becoming more different in many ways athletically rather than more the same, even while we were doing the same training. I started to want to look into some of those questions. That’s how I transitioned out of science grad school and into sports science writing.
Chris Kluwe: I’ve been in the NFL for eight-and-a-half years, and obviously played high school and college athletics before that. For me, I’ve always been interested in the idea of science and technology emerging—science and technology that we don’t really pay attention to at the time, but when we look back, we say, “Oh, hey, that was a pretty cool idea.” Things like cell phones or the Internet that transformed the way we lived our lives. As an athlete, what I’ve seen with Google Glass and with augmented reality is, I think, not quite a transcendent moment, but one of those moments where things will shift. Sports are a vehicle for many, many people—you have a very wide audience, and so when you get these emerging technologies in sports, then you see them adopted very rapidly. That’s what I was interested in. The idea that now we can actually record from a first-person perspective what it is like to be a world-class, professional athlete on the field, and then experience that through either seeing it on TV or other media.
With Google Glass, how do you see that technology changing the landscape of football—and other sports—in the future?
Chris Kluwe: I think it will initially shift the viewing perspective. People will now have another way to watch the game—from the athlete’s perspective. It’ll no longer be just the overhead cameras and the sweeping Skycam— you’ll actually be able to see what your favorite player did on the play from his or her perspective. That’s something that we’ve never really had up to this point.
From there, it leads to people becoming more comfortable with the idea of things like augmented reality and virtual reality, which leads into that being adopted more and more into everyday life. In the sporting world, that means augmented reality being adopted into the actual sports themselves. For football, you could have a projector that displays your next series of plays on your helmet as you’re running back to the huddle. Or something that highlights the receiver, or warns you if a guy is coming off your blind spot, for instance tackling against quarterback.
You see this a lot in the military—on displays in fighter jets, and I think they’re working on actual ground-based troop systems as well—there’s this filter of information between you and the world, an additional layer of information that you can use to enhance your own senses. I think we’re at that point right now where not a lot of people realize that, just like not a lot of people realized that the Internet was going to be something that spread and covered the entire world, or that cell phones would be as ubiquitous. No one even thinks of not having a cell phone, but there was a point when cell phones were big briefcase, clunky things that only executives on Wall Street had.
Cynthia and David, what’s an advance in science or technology that you think will change the landscape of sports in the coming years?
Cynthia Bir: I would have to say some of the motion-capture techniques that are out there. They no longer require markers or instrumentation to be placed on the athlete—you can just use the camera. Some people are using Kinect systems, and some people are using a little more high-tech systems. We’re able to tell exactly how the athlete is moving in real time. When you have an athlete performing at a certain level, you’re trying to explain, “Okay, this is what you need to do,” or “this is the motion.” Having a system where you can get real-time data, provide it back to that person and say, “You’re pushing off with your right leg more than your left leg,” or “you need to adapt this,” or “you need to adapt that”—it’s going to really enhance a lot of athletes’ ability to perform. We have a lot of biometric type feedback stuff available to us now as well in terms of just being able to monitor heart rate, respiratory rate, and things of that nature during the actual event. So I think that instant feedback that we’re now getting with our sensors will be critical.
David Epstein: I’m going to give two. One is individualized training. I’m interested what’s happened with sports science in the decade since the sequencing of the human genome. Although there’s a lot left to learn, just as we’ve learned the differences in my gene that’s involved in acetaminophen metabolism from yours—I might need three Tylenols while you need one to get the same effect, or maybe no amount works for me—we’re finding genes that make some people more trainable to particular training programs than others. Not only genes, but actually direct physiology, whether it’s properties of muscle fibers or things like that, that can help you figure out what the best training plan is for an individual. Just as there’s no perfect medication regimen for any individual, because we’re so biologically unique, there’s no one single perfect training plan that works for everybody.
Some countries that are starting to put this into effect. Denmark and the Netherlands are doing things like muscle biopsies, and moving athletes around sports based on that. Or if the athletes are plateauing in training, you can tailor training to their specific physiology to get better effects. That’s really neat, and can be done with fairly easy interventions. I think we’re going to continue moving in that direction, toward individualized training to get the optimal training environment for every individual.
The other thing I wanted to mention: occlusion testing, where you block certain parts of perceptual information digitally or virtually. Either in the field with special types of glasses and things like that, or in videos by deleting parts of players’ bodies or time segments of the action, to figure out what information athletes actually need to predict what’s coming in the future faster than they could do consciously. You can use that to understand what they should be exposed to the most, what kind of practice scenarios are not wasting time, essentially. It turns out that pitching machines are completely wasting time, because they don’t teach you the perceptual cues of a pitcher’s body that let you anticipate a pitch. This is why softball pitchers can always strike out major-league baseball hitters. I think this occlusion testing is helping us focus our training time only to athletes’ better perceptual skills. And it might even be connected to some of the virtual reality stuff that Chris is talking about. That would be a great way to use it on the field
Chris, hearing Cynthia and David talk about these examples, are these things that you’ve used in training. Have you used motion-capture video, or individualized training, or occlusion testing, or anything like that?
Chris Kluwe: Yes, I’ve actually seen occlusion testing used on the practice field. Nike had a pair of polarized lens glasses that would flash to block incoming light, essentially blinding you every half a second or every second, whatever you wanted to set it at. It is mainly for the receivers training to focus on the balls coming in and predict where the ball was going to be, even if they couldn’t watch it the entire way in. When you’re running on the field, when you’re trying to fight the defensive back, then you’re not going to be able to just stare the ball all the way into your hands. You have to predict where it’s going to end up, and then know when to close your hands to catch it. I’ve seen stuff like that.
When it comes to using technology or science to improve sport performance, what’s the line between fair and unfair? I was thinking of the example of doping earlier. That’s a medical technology that is totally taboo in sports. So what do you think is different between doping or something like Google Glass, or an improved swimsuit, or lighter running shoes, or any of these technologies that you just mentioned?
Chris Kluwe: One of the main concerns with doping right now is the fact that it isn’t regulated and people are worried that it is cheating, in a sense. It’s allowing you to move past what your body would normally be capable of. And that’s determined by the rules of the game itself. That’s more of a societal question: what do you determine as the limits for your game? Are doping or mechanical assistance allowed? That’s not really so much a sports question as it is a “what do you want from your sports” question.
But in terms of stuff like augmented reality, like sports science, I think that’s a natural progression of any sport. People want to know more about sports, they want to understand why things work. And you see that in baseball, with the rise of sabermetrics—the idea that there stats that we can track and collate that may actually make a difference, so we need to be tracking and collating. And if we don’t, we’re at a competitive disadvantage. With augmented reality in football, a team that has algorithms that allow them to predict what the other team is going to do a tenth of a second faster will have a competitive advantage. And so now, your scouting department is important but your IT department is just as important, because they’re in charge of making sense of that data. I think it is a natural progression of sports themselves.
David Epstein: I think Chris said something beautifully that we should all think about, which is that you have to ask: what do you want from your sport? With respect to doping, sports are—we would say—the ultimate human contrivances. It’s just like taking agreed-upon rules for something that’s otherwise not meaningful, and adding meaning. And so I think when it comes to doping, there’s a lot of debate about whether we should look the other way, but I think it’s totally fair to argue about changing the rules. If you feel like the value in sports emanates from agreed-upon rules, then I think if you’re into those rules, it’s important.
There are certain things that are on the banned substance [list] that won’t always be. Things that should be explored for helping players recover more quickly, and I think it’s a shame that they’re not. That said, I wouldn’t say it’s a non-issue if a player decides to do that anyway, because the rules in sports, are important. As far as the technology goes, I think if we only wanted to see strictly what the normal human body was capable of, we’d make people with 40-hour-a-week jobs play against one another. We’re already to the point beyond the athletes themselves. The support group and the technology companies are part of the expression of human creativity that is sports.
Cynthia Bir: The only thing that I would add: is it just some sort of mechanical advantage? Certain people have better access to equipment and resources and things of that nature, and that’s just what happens as you progress through the echelon of sports. But if something comes out that for some reason gives a mechanical advantage that has nothing to do with athleticism, then I think that needs to be looked at.
How do these scientific and technological improvements that we’re talking about trickle down from the pros to the average player? One of those people who, like David said, works 40 hours a week and maybe plays on the company softball team, or a kid in a soccer club at school. At what point do these technologies reach the rest of us?
Cynthia Bir: I think that it depends on the technology. There is an advantage when dollars are put into the technologies at the higher levels—ultimately it will trickle down to the Little Leagues of the world. There’s a lot of research and development that’s going on across the board that will trickle down and help out even the weekend warrior at some point in time. The developmental cost is already there, so it’s then mass-produced. Some things will trickle down faster than others, but ultimately, I think, all will have advantages that the general populace will see.
David Epstein: I think Cynthia’s totally right. It depends on the technology. With respect to some of the technology that pro athletes use for health, sometimes I’ve been a little disappointed at the lack of trickle-down. But I think maybe that’s just because I’m expecting it to happen too quickly.
What are some examples of that?
David Epstein: Some of the things with brain testing. Not even technology, but just the kind of healthcare that you have, that kind of sideline assessment. Some of the neuro-cognitive testing that’s done for concussion or brain trauma has pretty much been shown to be too easy to actually assess a lot of concussions. So you’re just not making your test difficult enough, and that seems to me not to have been realized at lower levels of football. This part of the competitive population is the largest, has the most vulnerable brains, and is at the most risk. And it sometimes has the least care.
But I think in terms of things that improve training and the kind of technology that Chris was talking about, absolutely. There is no better advertising than a high-performance, elite, world-class athlete using something where a zillion people can see it. There’s the capacity for trickle-down much more rapidly than in many other scenarios.
Chris, as far as Google Glass—it’s still expensive, but have you heard from any recreational players that have tried that out in their own sport?
Chris Kluwe: I’ve seen videos from people who’ve worn it, or worn GoPros or something similar, trying to get that perspective in. Obviously a lot of it has to do with the popularity of your sport, and what the ease of access is to get that technology. Because when you see actually it’s using a product, that product is obtainable in terms of the average working person’s income, it’s going to trickle down much, much faster than something like, say, a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. For the average person, that’s not something they can just go out and pick up at a sporting goods store.
Professional sports are more the prototyping stage where companies put this technology out there so that they can gauge the interest in it, and see what kind of impact it has on the game. If people are interested in it, economies of scale can be put into place to make it obtainable by enough people. That’s when you start seeing that trickle-down effect. That’s when you start seeing people getting better Nike and UnderArmour-type compression girdles and sports gear.
In terms of the concussion testing, that’s something that I don’t think you’re going to see trickling down until the sport itself makes even more of an emphasis on saying, “Hey, this is something that we have to deal with.” Because right now, it’s very much a public perception thing where the NFL wants people to say, “Yeah, they’re trying to do something.” But the fact remains, the NFL wants players out on the field playing the game because that’s how they make their money. That’s what people are there to see. Until that changes, then you’re not going to get that trickle-down to the lower levels of sports, because the players will always want to go back into the game, because they’re out there to play. It’s up to the people around them to be able to say, “No, you can’t go back into that game because you haven’t passed the appropriate test. You can harm yourself further by going back in. You need to be saved from yourself.”
Cynthia Bir: I think what we’re dealing with right now, it’s not a lack of education. There are a lot of resources out there. The CDC has resources available for Heads-Up: Concussion and there are SLICE programs out there, which is a concussion recognition program that goes into high schools and junior highs and talks about how to detect concussions in sports. There is some trickle-down that’s occurring in that area. There is a lot of information and technologies available out there for both high school and Pop Warner leagues. It’s just a matter of getting the word out to the coaches, to the trainers, to the parents that that’s available.
I agree that some of the sideline cognitive testing probably hasn’t been, I guess you could say as diligent as what we would like it to have been in the past, but I think there’s a lot of new technologies and a lot of new testing that’s coming out that will be implemented in the next months. Not years, but months. The problem’s been recognized, and we’re starting to move forward.
David Epstein: There definitely is way more stuff out there than there was and I didn’t mean to imply there wasn’t. One thing I’ve seen are high schools that have athletic trainers—certified athletic trainers. And a lot of high schools, unfortunately, don’t.
Cynthia Bir: That is true.
David Epstein: And to Chris’ point, he made me think of one technology I’ve seen—the so-called AlterG treadmill. You slip into a pressurized kind of bubble for your lower body, and you can adjust how much of your body weight this pressurized bubble carries. I first heard of that maybe a couple of years ago, only with really elite athletes, but I’m just started seeing it pop up in physical therapy clinics and also in a few gyms here and there. I think the price is starting to come down. If that price keeps coming down, that will be something that’s sort of more standard in gyms, because it’s really, really useful, especially for rehab.
My next question is for Cynthia. I saw a talk that you gave online about the limit of human sport performance, and I was wondering if you could talk about some of the major limits both for the human body and in the ways science and technology can maximize our capability for sport.
Cynthia Bir: Every sport is so different, right? And there’s going to be different limits on different sports. But I think some of the points that we talked about earlier in terms of the technology—like identifying different genes and different ways that we can enhance and recover—will ultimately lead to athletes who are breaking records. That was my point in the talk: that if you look at the Olympics, especially the Summer Olympics as I didn’t really track it for the winter ones, we were still breaking world records. And you have to wonder, “Okay, what’s our limit? Are we going to get to that point where we can’t beat a time, or we can’t improve something?” There obviously are going to be limits. Biomechanically, we’re just built in a certain way and you’re only going to be able to have somebody run a 40-yard dash so fast. Have we reached them? No, I don’t think so. I think we’ll still see some improvements. We’ll see world records broken in every sport as we learn about the body and we study it and research it more.
Chris Kluwe: I would just want to hit you back on that previous point. Basically the entire idea of sports is trying to discover what those limits are. Because every generation, we feel like we’ve reached that pinnacle where we’ve run the fastest 40 time we’re going to run, or we’ve gone the fastest through the downhill we’re ever going to go, or this technology is perfect, or technology can’t get any better. But then we always go past it.
I think the key thing for sports science is understanding that every generation thinks it’s going to find those limits, but so far we haven’t. So we have to continuously keep looking for those limits, because I don’t even know if we’ll know when we find them. It will take quite a while to accumulate enough data to realize that.
You look at the strides that have been made over the past even 50 years in terms of shoe technology. You look at what cleats are these days compared to what cleats people wore back in the sixties and seventies. It’s night and day, and it drastically changes how you play your game. And that’s just something you wear on your feet. So I think it’s very much that sports science is that constant pushing, that constant testing of those limits—of trying to find where that absolute maximum limit is—that’s something we’re probably not ever going to find. In order to find that limit, we don’t just need know how the human body works in terms of physio-mechanical structure, we need to know how the human mind works in terms of: How do you make yourself push that extra ounce of energy? How do you make yourself keep going when every cell in your body is telling you that you can’t—that you’re done. But your brain finds a way. You can’t just look at it as a pure physiological performance, it has to be everything that makes up your body and your mind.
Cynthia Bir: That’s a good point. I think, anecdotely, that sports psychology is becoming more popular. You hear about it more, you hear about people who actually go and talk to sports psychologists in terms of, “I have a mental block, how do I get past this?” Or, “how do I focus my mind and do this?”
I think you’re right that it’s the physiological part of the body, and then it’s the technology too. That’s a very good point—that we don’t know what shoes are going to look like 10 years from now, because we sure didn’t know what they were going to look like 10 years ago in terms of what they are now. Materials have improved—lighter materials, different types of rubbers for the insoles. I think you’re right—several components come together to improve performance.
David Epstein: I agree with all of that. I also want play devil’s advocate a little bit. In terms of the brain, I just visited a lab in South Africa where they are doing various things and then measuring the electrical impulse between the brain and the muscle fibers to see how many muscle fibers are recruited in different tasks. To see how that can be manipulated and fool somebody about their work out. They have all kinds of different interventions to see how they can trick the brain into allowing you to use more of the physical resources. Because your brain’s not going to stop you from dying, apparently. It doesn’t mind if you run a little faster. There was a really cool study I saw there where they would fool people about how hot it was in the room they were in, and it basically negated the effect of the slowdown that the heat had on them. They would reset the thermometers, and all kinds of stuff like that.
Cynthia Bir: That’s the most scary.
David Epstein: Pretty cool, yeah.
Chris Kluwe: Incredible.
DE: Yeah, very. So if anyone Googles “central governor theory,” that’s what they’re working on. This is why amphetamines, for example, are an incredible endurance aid, and yet they only act on the central nervous system—they don’t act in the muscles. It turns out this lab did a placebo-controlled trial and with amphetamines. Normally your brain stops recruiting as much muscle when your core temperature hits 104 and you have to slow down. The amphetamines allow you to keep going without knowing that. So it removes your central inhibition from overheating. It’s a great endurance aid, but it also means it makes you prone to heatstroke if you go too hard. But they don’t act in the muscle.
To play devil’s advocate a little bit more—women’s records in track and field have been completely stuck in the eighties. Women appear to be getting slower, and I think that’s largely because that was an era of mega-doping that’s a little harder to do now. So I’ll be curious to see if women’s track and field athletes ever again eventually climb back toward those records, because so far that hasn’t happened. Meanwhile, men’s records in track and field are not all stuck. I’m really curious to see which records stagnate, and which won’t. I think the endurance records—the marathon and ultra-marathon—are the ones that we’re really going to see a lot of progress in, in the near future.
Chris Kluwe: The interesting thing to see about records is that, generally, record-breaking progression is very logarithmic, in that you have kind of those big chunks at first, and then it really starts to slow down as you get closer and closer to what that limit is. Until you have that next breakthrough in sports technology—in science, in bio-physiology, whatever it happens to be. Until you hit that breakthrough, then yeah, you’re going to plateau. Then it becomes—that’s that next breakthrough?
One last question for all of you. What are each of your predictions on the craziest, coolest or most shocking thing we’ll see happening in sports 10 years from now?
Chris Kluwe: For me, personally, probably the most outlandish thing I can think of—I’d say there’s maybe 25% chance of it actually happening—is the idea of actually replacing human bodies with artificial bodies in terms of sports. Where people will either remotely access or log in, in a fashion, to an artificial body. If it’s a robot body, or something constructed with synthetic polymers, something like that, in order to reduce the risk of injury to actual human beings. Because I think you’re starting to see that more and more—especially in football players, but in other sports as well—that people are starting to understand that there is a toll that sports takes on a human body. As a society, we have to ask ourselves a question—is this worth it to us in order to be entertained? Is it worth it to us to have people drop dead after a race? Or to be crippled for life in order that we can watch and be entertained? As technology progresses to a point where it is possible to duplicate the human experience, but also take it out of the equation so people aren’t actively being harmed, I can see that definitely taking off and supplanting actual flesh-and-blood sports at some point.
More realistically, I think what will happen is that we’ll start to see much more augmented reality and virtual reality interfaces in sports. I think that that’s a natural progression—as people become more used to that type of technology in their everyday lives, then it becomes natural for them to see it in their entertainment as well.
David Epstein: I think some of it depends on who enters the competitive population. I think there’s a good chance that we’ll see a double amputee, because of advances in prostheses, be capable of winning a gold medal in the able-bodied Olympics. Actually, I heard the US right now has the largest Paralympic athlete pool ever, because it’s had soldiers coming home with injuries for a while now.
One thing I think we’ll see for sure, within the next 10 years, is more widespread use of hyperoxic training, which is people who are training with masks on to give them more than atmospheric oxygen, because it turns out that the body will work out much harder than you can normally. The oxygen mask that football players use between plays, when those have been tested versus placebo masks, they actually don’t work, because when you’re resting, there’s plenty of oxygen in the air around you. The problem is you can’t get it where it needs to go quickly enough in your body. But when you’re actually working out as hard as you can, and you’re an elite athlete, you can move your blood so fast that it doesn’t catch as much oxygen as it could. So if you’re working out with a mask on, that increases that oxygen pressure around you, and you can actually work out way harder than you would be able to normally. I think you’ll also see places like some of the countries that have sort of centralized sports science institutes build facilities that are hyperoxic conditions to allow athletes to train in them often.
Cynthia Bir: I would say that we’ll see the move to some of the real-time technology and feedback used during an actual sporting event. Because we do a lot during training and we do a lot during practices, and we get numbers and feedback. But to actually do it during a game is quite different. We’ve done a lot of research. Let’s say in boxing, when you have people sparring versus during an actual bout, you see quite a bit of differences in terms of punch forces and what is sustained during the fight. So I think having some more of the real-time monitoring of all sports—football, baseball, everything—will provide that instant feedback. That’s kind of what we’re all about now in the world, and in the US specifically, is getting that instant feedback and having those numbers and those metrics right away so you can make decisions. I think we’ll start to see more and more teams, coaches and athletic trainers using that instant feedback, whether it be to detect an injury or to say, “Okay, this is what’s happening on the field, and this is how you need to adapt to it.”
Check out David Epstein’s book, The Sports Gene»
Find out more about Chris Kluwe’s book, Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies»
Watch Cynthia Bir’s ESPN Series, Sport Science»
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Stress : il faut savoir décompresser
Par Martine Betti-Cusso - le 28/02/2014
FOCUS - Le stress au travail ne fait qu'augmenter. Jusqu'à devenir un problème de société et de santé publique. En comprendre les raisons permet de mieux le maîtriser.
Malgré les alertes, les prises de conscience, les enquêtes, les rapports et les mesures lancées par les pouvoirs publics, le niveau de stress des actifs ne cesse d'augmenter. Comme dans un mouvement inexorable. Et la France est considérée, selon des indicateurs internationaux, comme battant des records en la matière. Les délais, les restructurations, les emplois du temps surchargés, la compétition, la pression relationnelle, les conflits de pouvoir, la précarité, etc., sont autant de sources de stress, qu'il n'est pas toujours possible d'éviter ou d'éliminer.
La mécanique du stress est bien connue. C'est une réaction naturelle de notre organisme, destinée à nous adapter aux menaces et aux contraintes de notre environnement. Nous sommes stressés chaque fois que nous devons affronter une situation nouvelle qui exige un effort d'adaptation. Notre organisme produit alors une cascade de réactions nerveuses et hormonales afin de préparer le corps à l'action. Il libère dans le sang des hormones, les catécholamines (l'adrénaline, la noradrénaline et la dopamine), qui affluent vers les cellules pour leur apporter rapidement et massivement combustible et oxygène, afin de soutenir une dépense énergétique accrue. Les fonctions cardiaque et respiratoire sont stimulées et l'oxygénation du cerveau est amplifiée. Un véritable shoot biologique pour nous doper au maximum lorsqu'il nous faut rendre un rapport urgent, gérer une entrevue difficile ou prendre une décision rapide.
Mais pour être bénéfique, ce processus doit être transitoire et intermittent. Lorsque la pression se fait trop forte, la mécanique se dérègle et se déclenche inopinément, sur un simple appel inopportun, une remarque désagréable, une machine qui renâcle, une peccadille de trop.
Crédits photo :
Et les effets sont délétères sur la santé. En moindre mal, le stress nous fait perdre nos moyens. Récurrent et incontrôlé, il est destructeur à court et à long terme. Il fait monter la pression artérielle, contracte les muscles, altère la fonction cardiaque et affaiblit nos défenses immunitaires. De fait, il augmente le risque d'infarctus, provoque des maladies musculo-squelettiques, favorise les invasions microbiennes et le développement des tumeurs. Il cause des ulcères, aggrave les allergies et altère le fonctionnement de la mémoire, faisant vieillir prématurément le cerveau.Des numéros verts garantissant l'anonymat
Il engendre fatigues chroniques, anxiété, dépressions, et même gestes désespérés - la série de suicides intervenus chez France Télécom est resté dans la mémoire collective. De quoi perturber sérieusement l'efficacité des individus et donc, à travers eux, le fonctionnement des entreprises. Le stress serait à l'origine de 50 à 60 % de l'ensemble des journées perdues. Et son coût social, selon l'Institut national de recherche et de sécurité (INRS), est évalué entre 830 millions et 1,656 milliard d'euros par an.Crédits photo :
Les pouvoirs publics s'en inquiètent. Un plan d'urgence sur la prévention du stress a été mis en place en 2009 pour les grandes entreprises et, l'année dernière, un rapport du Conseil économique, social et environnemental (CESE) plaidait pour que la prévention des risques psychosociaux devienne un enjeu majeur de santé publique. Les entreprises aussi réagissent. Nombre d'entre elles cherchent à améliorer les conditions de vie de leurs salariés, en mettant à leur disposition des salles de sport, cafétérias et autres séances de massage. Sans oublier les entretiens avec le directeur des ressources humaines et même des numéros verts garantissant l'anonymat pour dévoiler malaises et drames.
Un dispositif qui est loin d'être suffisant, selon les experts. Pour le Dr Patrick Légeron, psychiatre et directeur du cabinet de conseil Stimulus, il s'agit d'«une approche “cosmétique”, révélatrice du retard de la France dans la gestion du stress. Le bon remède n'est pas de traiter les symptômes en accompagnant des personnes qui vont déjà mal mais de prévenir le mal-être.» Et ce mal-être proviendrait, selon un sondage OpinionWay réalisé en 2012, de la surcharge de travail et de la pression hiérarchique, mais aussi, selon une enquête Anact/CSA, de l'organisation du travail et des restructurations, les entreprises devant sans cesse évoluer et s'adapter. Les salariés sont contraints de remplir des objectifs de performance, mais n'ont que peu d'autonomie pour y parvenir. Et, avec les nouveaux modes d'organisation du travail, les relations sociales se sont tendues. «Le management ne tient pas compte de la dimension humaine existant dans les relations professionnelles, il néglige le dialogue et l'écoute, affirme Patrick Légeron. En France, les émotions n'ont pas le droit de citer, alors que le travail génère en permanence des sentiments négatifs et positifs. Le rôle des managers est de savoir les gérer, mais ils ne sont pas formés pour cela, et encore moins évalués.» Il faut dire aussi que ces managers doivent faire face non seulement au stress de leurs subordonnés, mais également à leur propre stress, bien alimenté par le poids grandissant de leurs responsabilités.
Donner du sens à son travail
Même constat pour le Dr Eric Albert, président de l'Institut français d'action sur le stress, qui note un décalage croissant entre les évolutions de la société et celles des entreprises. «Les jeunes actifs, et notamment cette fameuse génération Y, ont pour caractéristique de concevoir les relations de manière horizontale, explique-t-il. Ils refusent l'autorité si celle-ci n'est pas une autorité de compétence. Ils sont souples dans leur organisation, apprécient les projets menés à plusieurs et fonctionnent avec des motivations intrinsèques, c'est-à-dire l'envie de faire. Or, l'entreprise est souvent verticale, rigide et structurée par des process. Elle encourage la performance individuelle et les motivations extrinsèques, comme celle de faire des efforts pour obtenir une meilleure rémunération.»Pourtant, d'autres méthodes managériales, mises en œuvre par certaines entreprises, semblent faire la preuve de leur efficacité dans le bien-être et la performance au travail. «Elles consistent à donner aux salariés les moyens de se réaliser dans leur mission professionnelle, ajoute Patrick Légeron. En diversifiant les tâches, en les faisant participer aux décisions, en donnant du sens à leur travail.» Des initiatives qui ont pour effet d'augmenter l'estime de soi, de motiver et d'encourager l'envie de progresser dans son savoir-faire.
Et de citer le cas de firmes comme Google, qui misent sur des pratiques innovantes à l'instar de cette règle étonnante: 80 % du temps de travail des salariés sont consacrés à la mission qui leur est confiée et pour laquelle ils sont payés, et 20 % (soit une journée par semaine) sont dédiés à des recherches personnelles. Le principe a fait sourire les sceptiques et surpris les actionnaires. «Pourtant, il a favorisé l'émergence d'idées nouvelles au profit de l'entreprise, précise Eric Albert. C'est ainsi que des salariés ont créé Google Earth. En fait, 50 % des innovations de Google proviennent de cette journée.»
Pour autant, les stratégies individuelles ne sont pas à négliger. Le stress est intrinsèque à l'être humain, à son caractère, à son état d'esprit, à son investissement dans sa vie professionnelle. A chacun de prendre aussi sa vie en main et de savoir gérer ses émotions. Autant pour sa santé que pour son bien-être au travail. D'abord, on consolide sa résistance au stress en entretenant son organisme par de l'exercice physique, une alimentation équilibrée et en respectant ses heures de sommeil. Si besoin est, des outils peuvent venir en soutien. Les méthodes de relaxation, comme le training autogène, la technique de Jacobson, mais aussi la sophrologie, le yoga, la méditation de pleine conscience… sont de bonnes parades. Elles ont en commun d'associer détente physique, état de concentration et exercices de respiration. L'essentiel est de trouver le bon procédé qui aide à relativiser et à prendre le recul indispensable à la bonne gestion de son stress.
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[E20]Working Out Loud : une méthode pour un objectif !
"Working out loud", [travailler à voix haute] une expression que vous avez peut-être entendue ou repérée dans le discours des "gourous" du social business, made in America!
Derrière ce buzzword, qui pourrait passer aux yeux de certains comme un énième tentative pour mieux vendre de la mise en oeuvre de collaboratif sous forme de solutions et/ou de services, se cache une méthode, des pratiques, au service d’un objectif !
Si on regarde un peu plus près la "littérature" consacrée à cette méthode et notamment les propositions faites par John Stepper qui enrichit la définition initiale proposée par Bryce William, à savoir :
L’approche ou la méthode a été ainsi présentée par John Stepper :
Si certains cherchent encore des objectifs quant aux outils collaboratifs et autres communautés qu’ils souhaitent mettre en place, la pratique de "working out loud" constitue un des meilleurs cas d’usage car elle est exigeante et privilégie le résultat et non le chemin (surtout pas les outils) !
Mais, cette pratique est encore au stade confidentiel des billets sur les blogs et autres déclarations d’intention.
Récemment Bryce Williams a lancé une initiative pour constituer une bibliothèque de cas d’usage, vous y serez les bienvenus !
A suivre ….
Pour aller plus loin et en plus des blogs et articles liés ci-dessus, vous pouvez jeter un oeil au blog de Harold Jarche et son dernier billet "A roadmap for transition".
Derrière ce buzzword, qui pourrait passer aux yeux de certains comme un énième tentative pour mieux vendre de la mise en oeuvre de collaboratif sous forme de solutions et/ou de services, se cache une méthode, des pratiques, au service d’un objectif !
Si on regarde un peu plus près la "littérature" consacrée à cette méthode et notamment les propositions faites par John Stepper qui enrichit la définition initiale proposée par Bryce William, à savoir :
Working Out Loud = Observable Work + Narrating Your Workqui décrit une approche pragmatique, concrète, au service d’objectifs précis.
L’approche ou la méthode a été ainsi présentée par John Stepper :
“Working Out Loud starts with making your work visible in such a way that it might help others. When you do that – when you work in a more open, connected way – you can build a purposeful network that makes you more effective and provides access to more opportunities.”
- Donner de la visibilité à ce que vous faîtes (projets, tâches, rôles), c’est le point de départ, l’essence de la méthode !
- Chercher à améliorer votre travail en partageant avec vos collègues, votre écosystème-
- Gagner en légitimité par le partage.
La générosité est "la monnaie" des réseaux qui fonctionnent bien (pour paraphraser Keith Farrazzi). - Développer en taille, en richesse et en valeur votre réseau, votre écosystème.
- Servir un objectif précis : il y a beaucoup de cercles et de communautés pour la sérenpidité, le plaisir, le hasard, mais ce n’est pas le cas ici ! la méthode est rigoureuse et demande des objectifs.
La résolution des problèmes complexes est évidemment une excellente illustration des bénéfices de "working out loud", il en est de même pour l’innovation (incrémentale mais également de rupture) qui se nourrit ou trouve un terreau plus favorable dans un cadre moins "formel" !
Si certains cherchent encore des objectifs quant aux outils collaboratifs et autres communautés qu’ils souhaitent mettre en place, la pratique de "working out loud" constitue un des meilleurs cas d’usage car elle est exigeante et privilégie le résultat et non le chemin (surtout pas les outils) !
Mais, cette pratique est encore au stade confidentiel des billets sur les blogs et autres déclarations d’intention.
Récemment Bryce Williams a lancé une initiative pour constituer une bibliothèque de cas d’usage, vous y serez les bienvenus !
A suivre ….
Pour aller plus loin et en plus des blogs et articles liés ci-dessus, vous pouvez jeter un oeil au blog de Harold Jarche et son dernier billet "A roadmap for transition".
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Vaccinez-vous contre les travers du micromanagement !
© REA
Obsession du reporting, perfectionnisme outrancier, difficultés à déléguer… Ces comportements peuvent indiquer que vous êtes atteint du syndrome du «petit chef». Soignez-vous sans tarder.
C’est le post d’un ancien ingénieur d’Amazon, Steve Yegge, mis en ligne sur son blog en octobre 2011, qui a révélé à la face du monde ce qui circulait depuis longtemps dans les couloirs de l’entreprise : le patron d’Amazon, Jeff Bezos, est un micromanager patenté, qui contrôle le moindre pixel de son site d’e-commerce et le dirige d’une main de fer, en imposant sa vision et ses processus. Son chef scientifique a d’ailleurs fini par quitter le navire, las que ses études – dont les conclusions contredisaient parfois les certitudes du patron – ne soient jamais prises en compte. Dans son livre En Amazonie (Fayard, 2013), le journaliste Jean-Baptiste Malet, infiltré dans un entrepôt français d’Amazon, en a rajouté une louche en dénonçant les conditions de travail déplorables des salariés des centres de logistique (vi-déosurveillance, cadences infernales, pauses réduites à la portion congrue), le tout pour un salaire ridicule. Bref, le parfait exemple du micromanagement poussé à l’extrême.Le micromanagement se caractérise en effet par un souci obsessionnel du détail et par un contrôle pointilleux des faits et gestes de chaque collaborateur. Théorisée aux Etats-Unis, mais hélas appliquée partout, cette pratique se révèle aussi mesquine qu’improductive : une étude du Journal of Experimental Psychology d’août 2011 a en effet montré que les gens soumis à une surveillance constante sont moins efficaces que ceux auxquels on laisse une marge d’autonomie. A l’exception notable de pointures comme Bezos, Bill Gates ou Steve Jobs (lire l’encadré page 73), le micromanager se fait aussi du tort à lui-même : il est souvent bloqué dans son évolution de carrière par son incapacité à motiver, à faire progresser ses équipes et à obtenir des résultats.
Selon le consultant américain Harry Chambers, auteur du livre My Way or the Highway : The Micromanagement Survival Guide, 79% des cadres auraient déjà eu affaire à un micromanager. Dans son blog, son compatriote Ron Ashkenas observe pour sa part qu’ils sont eux-mêmes nombreux, dans le cadre de leur propre pratique, à tomber, à un moment ou à un autre, dans un des travers du micromanagement. Voici quelques comportements caractéristiques et nos conseils pour y remédier.
Vous pensez que votre équipe n’est pas à la hauteur ?
Lundi, 9 heures du matin. L’adjointe du responsable de la communication d’un groupe pharmaceutique remet à son supérieur un article commandé en urgence le vendredi précédent pour la revue destinée aux visiteurs médicaux. Sans égard pour le week-end sacrifié, ce dernier se met à critiquer la mise en page, puis passe une demi-heure à remettre en cause quelques tournures de phrases, laissant entendre à demi-mots qu’il est mal entouré ! Si, comme lui, vous êtes persuadé du manque de compétence de vos collaborateurs, attention ! Votre attitude risque de décourager les bonnes volontés.
> Le remède : créer de la confiance et faire des feed-back constructifs
Sans renoncer à votre niveau d’exigence, faites la part des choses, et sachez distinguer entre ce que vous êtes en droit d’attendre d’un collaborateur et les détails sur lesquels passer. En cas d’erreur manifeste, soignez votre façon de le dire. «Il est important de souligner ce qui a été bien mené et, à l’inverse, en cas de problème, de discuter avec son collaborateur sur la façon dont il pourra faire mieux la fois suivante», conseille Marie Rebeyrolle, directrice générale du cabinet Carré Pluriel. Et n’hésitez pas à solliciter les avis et les idées de vos collaborateurs : vous serez sans doute surpris de la justesse de leur perception du marché ou de leur créativité.
Vous êtes un fanatique du reporting et redoutez les nouveautés ?
Ce brillant patron de banque ne pouvait envisager de se déplacer dans son établissement sans son cahier et son stylo quatre couleurs, chacune d’entre elles étant employée dans un but précis : rouge pour ce qui n’allait pas, noir pour ce qu’il fallait rapporter au codir, etc. Il considérait sa façon de faire comme la seule valable et voyait dans les outils de reporting autant de moyens de s’assurer que personne n’en déviait. Si, comme lui, vous regardez avec suspicion toute nouvelle façon de procéder, vous êtes en train de micromanager. Dépourvus de réel espace de liberté, peu enclins à faire preuve d’initiative, vos collaborateurs risquent inconsciemment de lever le pied, voire de se démotiver complètement. «Cet attachement aux process est exacerbé dans les grands groupes, notamment dans le secteur bancaire, à tous les niveaux hiérarchiques», constate Micheline Dib, directrice du développement chez BPI Leroy Consultants.
> Le remède : accepter de ne pas tout contrôler et tolérer une marge d’échec
Le risque zéro n’existe pas, surtout dans la gestion des hommes. Manager suppose de prendre de la hauteur, et donc de se détacher du quotidien, de l’action de terrain. La prise de risque fait partie du jeu, et cela vous paraîtra de plus en plus naturel au fur et à mesure que vous pratiquerez. Procédez en douceur en commençant par lâcher prise sur les dossiers les moins stratégiques. Inévitablement, quelques ratés se produiront. Dans ce cas, il faudra les accepter en essayant d’en identifier l’origine : une consigne mal formulée, des délais trop serrés, un collaborateur mal préparé… Objectif : corriger le tir. «Faites preuve de bonne volonté et vos collaborateurs vous le rendront bien, constate Michael Jaine, directeur du développement des partenariats chez Sofinco. Davantage responsabilisés, ils seront aussi plus compétents, plus motivés, plus impliqués, et donc plus performants.»
Vous managez “à la présence”, obsédé par le respect strict des horaires ?
Pour vous, un cadre impliqué ne quitte pas son bureau avant 19 heures et se doit d’effectuer de longues journées de travail. Ainsi, vous tenez à ce que le responsable logistique de votre entreprise rattrape l’heure qu’il a prise dans l’après-midi pour se rendre en urgence chez le dentiste ou à un rendez-vous perso important : si vous laissez passer ce genre de liberté, c’est la porte ouverte à toutes les dérives ! Trois salariés français sur quatre travaillent encore à horaires fixes, selon une étude d’Eurostat. Résultat : coincés dans les bouchons ou les métros bondés, ils arrivent plus stressés au bureau et moins disposés à donner un coup de rein supplémentaire en cas de surcroît de travail. Si vous êtes incapable de vous montrer flexible, pourquoi le seraient-ils ?
> Le remède : injecter de la souplesse dans l’organisation et fixer des objectifs
Certaines entreprises expérimentent déjà des horaires à la carte, comme Norsys, une société de conseil informatique installée dans le Nord. D’autres ont mis en place des solutions de télétravail sur une journée par semaine, par exemple. Et si vous faisiez comme eux ? En plus du confort qu’elle procure et du gain en matière de temps et de fatigue, cette flexibilité revêt une dimension psychologique importante. «Elle procure un sentiment d’autonomie qui valorise et motive les salariés», indique David Guillocheau, directeur associé de Talentys. Encore faut-il accepter de perdre le contrôle visuel de ses collaborateurs. Pour vous assurer que le travail sera fait, fixez-leur des objectifs Smart – Spécifiques, Mesurables, Accessibles, Réalistes et Temporellement définis. «Parallèlement aux objectifs quantitatifs basés sur un chiffre d’affaires ou un nombre de produits vendus, les objectifs qualitatifs commencent à se développer : utilisation efficace des outils informatiques du service, satisfaction client…» souligne Nicolas Dugay, dirigeant du cabinet de formation CAA.
Vous n’arrivez pas à déléguer les tâches à responsabilités ?
Déléguer ? Le terme ne fait pas partie de votre vocabulaire. Quand vous vous délestez de certaines missions au profit de votre équipe, on peut être sûr qu’il s’agit de tâches ingrates ou de dossiers qui ne vous intéressent pas. Plus grave, votre stress et votre peur de l’échec sont tellement perceptibles que vos collaborateurs, totalement paralysés, préfèrent se cantonner à des tâches d’exécution. D’ailleurs, au moindre couac, vous reprenez la main, comme cette responsable d’un service de formation qui, après avoir confié à sa nouvelle assistante la rédaction d’une plaquette de présentation, a retravaillé elle-même le document, qu’elle trouvait confus, sans donner d’indications à sa collaboratrice pour qu’elle se corrige.
> Le remède : lâcher la bride à ses équipes en les préparant à cette prise d’autonomie
Déléguer est un acte de management qui suppose de laisser une large autonomie à ses subalternes mais aussi de les accompagner dans ce processus. Vous devrez donc accepter de perdre du temps au début, pour en gagner ensuite. Expliquez vos attentes à votre collaborateur, le sens de la tâche que vous lui confiez et les points d’étapes intermédiaires qui vous permettront de contrôler que tout se passe bien. Lors de ces bilans, reconnaissez la valeur du travail réalisé, partagez vos idées, votre savoir-faire et veillez à ce qu’il développe les compétences adéquates en programmant les formations que vous jugez nécessaires.
Vous n’arrivez pas à déléguer les tâches à responsabilités ?
Déléguer ? Le terme ne fait pas partie de votre vocabulaire. Quand vous vous délestez de certaines missions au profit de votre équipe, on peut être sûr qu’il s’agit de tâches ingrates ou de dossiers qui ne vous intéressent pas. Plus grave, votre stress et votre peur de l’échec sont tellement perceptibles que vos collaborateurs, totalement paralysés, préfèrent se cantonner à des tâches d’exécution. D’ailleurs, au moindre couac, vous reprenez la main, comme cette responsable d’un service de formation qui, après avoir confié à sa nouvelle assistante la rédaction d’une plaquette de présentation, a retravaillé elle-même le document, qu’elle trouvait confus, sans donner d’indications à sa collaboratrice pour qu’elle se corrige.
> Le remède : lâcher la bride à ses équipes en les préparant à cette prise d’autonomie
Déléguer est un acte de management qui suppose de laisser une large autonomie à ses subalternes mais aussi de les accompagner dans ce processus. Vous devrez donc accepter de perdre du temps au début, pour en gagner ensuite. Expliquez vos attentes à votre collaborateur, le sens de la tâche que vous lui confiez et les points d’étapes intermédiaires qui vous permettront de contrôler que tout se passe bien. Lors de ces bilans, reconnaissez la valeur du travail réalisé, partagez vos idées, votre savoir-faire et veillez à ce qu’il développe les compétences adéquates en programmant les formations que vous jugez nécessaires.
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How Great Leaders Inspire Action ?
Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers ... (Filmed at TEDxPugetSound.)
pinThis talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxPuget Sound , an independent event. TED editors featured it among our selections on the home page.
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David Kelley: How to build your creative confidence
Is your school or workplace divided into "creatives" versus practical people? Yet surely, David Kelley suggests, creativity is not the domain of only a chosen few. Telling stories from his legendary design career and his own life, he offers ways to build the confidence to create... (From The Design Studio session at TED2012, guest-curated by Chee Pearlman and David Rockwell.)
pinThis talk was presented at an official TED Conference. TED's editors featured it among our daily selections on the home page.
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14 predictions for 2014
Read our 2014 predictions about the future of virtual reality, internet control, extreme volunteering and more.
Every year, our team of in-house experts predicts what will be big over the next 12 months.
This year we set out our case for why 2014 will be the year we're finally delivered the virtual reality experience we were promised two decades ago, the US will lose technological control of the Internet, communities will start crowdsourcing their own political representatives and we’ll be introduced to the concept of extreme volunteering – plus 10 more predictions spanning energy, tech, health, data, impact investment and social policy.
This year we set out our case for why 2014 will be the year we're finally delivered the virtual reality experience we were promised two decades ago, the US will lose technological control of the Internet, communities will start crowdsourcing their own political representatives and we’ll be introduced to the concept of extreme volunteering – plus 10 more predictions spanning energy, tech, health, data, impact investment and social policy.
Read our previous predictions
You'll find all 14 predictions for 2014 below. This year's list is the third annual series. Recap on our forecasts for 2012 and 2013 and find out how accurate we were with last year's predictions.↧
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The most connected man in world
And you thought managing a smartphone and an inbox was exhausting.
45-year-old Chris Dancy is known as the most connected man in the world. He has between 300 and 700 systems running at any given time, systems that capture real-time data about his life.
His wrists are covered with a variety of wearable technology, including the fitness wristband tracker Fitbit and the Pebble smartwatch. He weighs himself on the Aria Wi-Fi scale, uses smartphone controlled Hue lighting at home and sleeps on a Beddit mattress cover to track his sleep.
Even Dancy's dog is tracked via Tagg, which logs its daily activities.
Although this type of lifestyle would be tiring to many — with numbers running his day — Dancy calls it motivating.
"I started five years ago when I noticed my doctor was having a hard time keeping up with my health records," Dancy told Mashable. "Around the same time, I worried that the work I did on the Internet could be lost if [there's] a service shutdown. In an effort to collect this information, I started looking for ways I could gather data when I didn't have time to write things down."
Dancy, who says he's always been tech-savvy and has a background in IT, explains that staying connected has allowed him to get more out of the way he lives.
45-year-old Chris Dancy is known as the most connected man in the world. He has between 300 and 700 systems running at any given time, systems that capture real-time data about his life.
His wrists are covered with a variety of wearable technology, including the fitness wristband tracker Fitbit and the Pebble smartwatch. He weighs himself on the Aria Wi-Fi scale, uses smartphone controlled Hue lighting at home and sleeps on a Beddit mattress cover to track his sleep.
Even Dancy's dog is tracked via Tagg, which logs its daily activities.
Although this type of lifestyle would be tiring to many — with numbers running his day — Dancy calls it motivating.
"I started five years ago when I noticed my doctor was having a hard time keeping up with my health records," Dancy told Mashable. "Around the same time, I worried that the work I did on the Internet could be lost if [there's] a service shutdown. In an effort to collect this information, I started looking for ways I could gather data when I didn't have time to write things down."
Dancy, who says he's always been tech-savvy and has a background in IT, explains that staying connected has allowed him to get more out of the way he lives.
"I've lost 100 pounds and learned to meditate," he says."I've lost 100 pounds and learned to meditate," he says."I'm much more aware of how I respond to life and take steps to adjust to my environment. I've also formed better habits thanks to the feedback I'm getting."
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Économie numérique : la France doit vite se réveiller
Des études pointent le retard de la France sur le numérique. L'une d'elle révèle que 8 entreprises sur 10 qui ont fait faillite en 2013 n’avaient pas de stratégie Internet.
Après l’opération de séduction de François Hollande vis à vis des entreprises high-tech de la Silicon Valley, beaucoup d'entre elles attendent maintenant des actes. D’autant que dans les technologies, la France dispose d’atouts considérables qui, apparemment, ne lui permettent pas encore de se distinguer à l’échelle mondiale.
Dans une étude du Boston Consulting Group pour l’Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) sur les pays qui offrent un bon environnement numérique, la France en prend pour son grade. Elle est avant-dernière du Top 20 de ce classement, entre l’Irlande et l’Estonie. Pas fameux pour l'Hexagone qui perd deux places.
Et, contrairement à ce que l’on peut imaginer, les États-Unis ne sont pas en tête, mais en 6e place. La première place est tenue par la Suède, suivie du Danemark, de la Suisse et de Hong-Kong.
Les entreprises ont tout simplement omis de parier sur le net
Rapportée par l'AFP, une étude de la société Email-Brokers révèle que 81% des entreprises françaises qui ont fait faillite en 2013 n'étaient ni sur Internet, ni sur les réseaux sociaux. Pour obtenir ce résultat, le cabinet a décortiqué les 2,59 millions de sites internet actifs dans l'Hexagone en croisant ces informations avec celles de l'Insee.
Pour William Vande Wiele, un des fondateurs d'Email-Brokers, cette abscence sur internet est gravement dommageable. « Ces entreprises ont purement et simplement omis de parier sur le net [qui] constitue un facteur clé dans la dynamisation et la pérennité d'un business. »
Pour preuve, la baisse, certes légère (0,31%), des sites actifs en .fr, .com ou .org. En 2013, ils sont passés à 2,593 millions de sites, contre 2,601 en 2012. L’étude note également « une régression des sites et mais aussi des blogs, alors que ces derniers constituent des vecteurs de différenciation importants face à une concurrence de plus en plus accrue ».
Encore trop peu d'entreprises françaises sur les réseaux sociaux
Véritable vecteur de développement pour les entreprises, les réseaux sociaux ne semblent pas séduire les entreprises françaises. Alors que le pourcentage de sociétés hexagonales disposant d'une page Facebook est passé de 4,2 % à 16,09 % en un an, l'Espagne ou la Suède, ont connu, quant eux, une croissance d'environ 500%. La Belgique a progressé de... 900 %, selon le baromètre.
En France, le réveil numérique risque d’être brutal. En allant rencontrer les patrons français ou américains des startups de la Silicon Valley, le Président français a voulu leur lancer un message positif. Même les "pigeons", pourtant très remontés contre la potitique française, lui ont fait un bel accueil. D'ailleurs, le fondateur du mouvement, Carlos Diaz, a tenu à lui faire une une accolade en signe de trève.
Les paroles du président seront-elles suivies par des actes ? Très certainement. C’est d’ailleurs le projet de Fleur Pellerin, ministre déléguée à l’économie numérique, avec le label French Tech. Ce dernier permettra-t-il de faire émerger un géant français de l’Internet ? C’est une autre question…
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Will big data bring a return of sampling statistics? And a review of Arron Strauss's talk at DSDC.
* Edit: 3/10/2014 - 2:45 PM: Added a sentence to the third paragraph of the section "In Practice: Political Polling in 2012 and Beyond" and changed the second section heading under "Some Background" from "Hand-wringing about surveys" to "Much ado about response rates".
Some Background
What is sampling statistics?
Sampling statistics concerns the planning, collection, and analysis of survey data. When most people take a statistics course, they are learning "model-based" statistics. (Model-based statistics is not the same as statistical modeling, stick with me here.) Model-based statistics uses a mathematical function to model the distribution of an infinitely-sized population to quantify uncertainty. Sampling statistics, however, uses a priori knowledge of the size of the target population to inform quantifying uncertainty. The big lesson I learned after taking survey sampling is that if you assume the correct model, then the two statistical philosophies agree. But if your assumed model is wrong, the two approaches give different results. (And one approach has fewer assumptions, bee tee dubs.)
Sampling statistics also has a big bag of other tricks, too many to do justice here. But it provides frameworks for handling missing or biased data, combining data on subpopulations whose sample proportions differ from their proportions of the population, how to sample when subpopulations have very different statistical characteristics, etc.
As I write this, it is entirely possible to earn a PhD in statistics and not take a single course in sampling or survey statistics. Many federal agencies hire statisticians and then send them immediately back to school to places like UMD's Joint Program in Survey Methodology. (The federal government conducts a LOT of surveys.)
I can't claim to be certain, but I think that sampling statistics became esoteric for two reasons. First, surveys (and data collection in general) have traditionally been expensive. Until recently, there weren't many organizations except for the government that had the budget to conduct surveys properly and regularly. (Obviously, there are exceptions.) Second, model-based statistics tend to work well and have broad applicability. You can do a lot with a laptop, a .csv file, and the right education. My guess is that these two factors have meant that the vast majority of statisticians and statistician-like researchers have become consumers of data sets, rather than producers. In an age of "big data" this seems to be changing, however.
Much ado about response rates
Response rates for surveys have been dropping for years, causing frustration among statisticians and skepticism from the public. Having a lower response rate doesn't just mean your confidence intervals get wider. Given the nature of many surveys, it's possible (if not likely) that the probability a person responds to the survey may be related to one or a combination of relevant variables. If unaddressed, such non-response can damage an analysis. Addressing the problem drives up the cost of a survey, however.
Consider measuring unemployment. A person is considered unemployed if they don't have a job and they are looking for one. Somebody who loses their job may be less likely to respond to the unemployment survey for a variety of reasons. They may be embarrassed, they may move back home, they may have lost their house! But if the government sends a survey or interviewer and doesn't hear back, how will it know if the respondent is employed, unemployed (and looking), or off the job market completely? So, they have to find out. Time spent tracking a respondent down is expensive!
So, if you are collecting data that requires a response, you must consider who isn't responding and why. Many people anecdotally chalk this effect up to survey fatigue. Aren't we all tired of being bombarded by websites and emails asking us for "just a couple minutes" of our time? (Businesses that send a satisfaction survey every time a customer contacts customer service take note; you may be your own worst data-collection enemy.)
In Practice: Political Polling in 2012 and Beyond
In context of the above, Aaron Strauss's February 25th talk at DSDC was enlightening. Aaron's presentation was billed as covering "two things that people in [Washington D.C.] absolutely love. One of those things is political campaigns. The other thing is using data to estimate causal effects in subgroups of controlled experiments!" Woooooo! Controlled experiments! Causal effects! Subgroup analysis! Be still, my beating heart.
Aaron earned a PhD in political science from Princeton and has been involved in three of the last four presidential campaigns designing surveys, analyzing collected data, and providing actionable insights for the Democratic party. His blog is here. (For the record, I am strictly non-partisan and do not endorse anyone's politics though I will get in knife fights over statistical practices.)
In an hour-long presentation, Aaron laid a foundation for sampling and polling in the 21st century, revealing how political campaigns and businesses track our data, analyze it, and what the future of surveying may be. The most profound insight I got was to see how the traditional practices of sampling statistics were being blended with 21st century data collection methods, through apps and social media. Whether these changes will address the decline is response rates or only temporarily offset them remains to be seen.
Some highlights:
Some highlights:
- The number of households that have only wireless telephone service is reaching parity with the number having land line phone service. When considering only households with children (excluding older people with grown children and young adults without children) the number sits at 45 percent.
- Offering small savings on wireless bills may incentivize the taking of flash polls through smart phones.
- Political campaigns have been using social media to gather information and contact non respondents, supplementing or replacing traditional voter records for that purpose.
- By contacting 10 times as many people every day the Obama 2012 campaign schooled Gallup.
- Reducing the marginal cost of surveys allows political pollsters to design randomized controlled trials, to evaluate the efficacy of different campaign messages on voting outcomes. (As with all things statistics, there are tradeoffs and confounding variables with such approaches.)
- Pollsters would love to get access to all of your Facebook data.
Sampling Statistics and "Big Data"
Today, businesses and other organizations are tracking people at unprecedented levels. One reason rationale for big data being a "revolution" is that for the first time organizations have access to the full population of interest. For example, Amazon can track the purchasing history of 100% of its customers.
I would challenge the above argument, but won't outright disagree with it. Your current customer base may or may not be your full population of interest. You may, for example, be interested in people who don't purchase your product. You may wish to analyze a sample of your market, to figure out how who isn't purchasing from you and why. You may have access to some data on the whole population, but you may not have all the variables you want.
More importantly, sampling statistics has tools that may allow organizations to design tracking schemes to gather the most relevant data to their questions of interest. To quote R.A. Fisher "To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: He may be able to say what the experiment died of." The world (especially the social-science world) is not static; priorities and people's behavior are sure to change.
Data fusion, the process of pulling together data from heterogeneous sources into one analysis, is not a survey. But these sources may represent observations and variables in proportions or frequencies differing from the target population. Combining data from these sources with a simple merge may result in biased analyses. Sampling statistics has methods of using sample weights to combine strata of a stratified sample where some strata may be over or under sampled (and there are reasons to do this intentionally).
I am not proposing that sampling statistics will become the new hottest thing. But I would not be surprised if sampling courses move from the esoteric fringes, to being a core course in many or most statistics graduate programs in the coming decades. (And we know it may take over a hundred years for something to become the new hotness anyway.)
The professor that taught the sampling statistics course that I took a few years ago is the chief of the Statistical Research Division at the U.S. Census Bureau. When I last saw him at an alumni/prospective student mixer for Georgetown's math/stat program in 2013, he was wearing a button that said "ask me about big data." In a time when some think that statistics is the old school discipline only relevant for small data, seeing this button on a man whose field even within statistics is considered so "old school" that even most statisticians have moved on made me chuckle. But it also made me think; things may be coming full circle for sample statistics.I would challenge the above argument, but won't outright disagree with it. Your current customer base may or may not be your full population of interest. You may, for example, be interested in people who don't purchase your product. You may wish to analyze a sample of your market, to figure out how who isn't purchasing from you and why. You may have access to some data on the whole population, but you may not have all the variables you want.
More importantly, sampling statistics has tools that may allow organizations to design tracking schemes to gather the most relevant data to their questions of interest. To quote R.A. Fisher "To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: He may be able to say what the experiment died of." The world (especially the social-science world) is not static; priorities and people's behavior are sure to change.
Data fusion, the process of pulling together data from heterogeneous sources into one analysis, is not a survey. But these sources may represent observations and variables in proportions or frequencies differing from the target population. Combining data from these sources with a simple merge may result in biased analyses. Sampling statistics has methods of using sample weights to combine strata of a stratified sample where some strata may be over or under sampled (and there are reasons to do this intentionally).
I am not proposing that sampling statistics will become the new hottest thing. But I would not be surprised if sampling courses move from the esoteric fringes, to being a core course in many or most statistics graduate programs in the coming decades. (And we know it may take over a hundred years for something to become the new hotness anyway.)
Links for further reading
A statistician's role in big data (my source for the R.A. Fisher quote, above)
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More Pages to Explore .....