okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Friday, March 30, 2007
"explain your wins"
One of the themes that I write about over and over again is the idea that orienteers spend too much time and energy thinking about why they boom and not nearly enough time thinking about why they don't boom.
When we finish a race, we start talking about the time we lost. When we look at the map after a race, we spend more time looking at the controls we missed and trying to diagnose the problem.
We tend to take finding controls well for granted.
I think we ought to spend at least as much time trying to understand what was going on when we found a control. Afterall, the goal is to find controls well, so you really need to understand what is going on when that happens.
I was thinking about this topic (again) because I came across a blog entry by Robin Hanson called "Explain your wins."
