okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Monday, June 15, 2009
A little thought experiment
It is quite easy to measure running ability. Just put someone on a track and time them. It isn't perfect. Running on a track isn't quite the same as running in the forest. But it gives you a pretty good measure of running. It isn't so easy to measure navigation ability.
What if it was the other way around? What if you could hook someone up to a machine and find out how well they could navigate? Imagine that you couldn't easily measure someone's running ability.
I think that the current situation - with it easy to measure and compare running, but harder to measure and compare map reading - we're missing something.
It is a bit like Moneyball, where teams that didn't pay attention to on-base percentage didn't value on-base percentage.
