The data-driven gentleman racer.

I don’t think much of data.

It’s not my fault, of course. Data is widely abused. Everywhere we look in the modern world we see statistics, graphs, charts, survey results, and percentages of doctors who supposedly recommend a particular brand of chewing gum. It’s enough to make us feel positively bombarded if not outright sick of all the strategic collectivism. It’s obviously in the interest of the racistly rationalistic socialists to inculcate a sense of numeric superimportance in us so that we don’t act according to our respective moral compasses but rather “strategically,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.ⁱ It obviously doesn’t mean capitalism, that much we know, but maybe some data has a place in an enlightened existence at least some of the time ? Let’s see if one of those places is the racetrack.

Yesterday, I took Dreidel out with co-owner Adam for one last rip before the thermometre bottoms out next week. This was the result of each of our fastest laps on the day :

What we can see quite plainly from the data hereabove is that Adam travels faster on average but I more directly, that he brakes longer and I coast longer, that he decelerates with more Gs and I accelerate with more, that he mixes his inputs more and I have a cleaner delineation between turning/braking/accelerating, that he takes the corners harder and I take them more quickly,ⁱⁱ and ultimately that I’m faster and Adam is slower!ⁱⁱⁱ All this just from the $12 Track Addicts app, and all of which serves to highlight our respective weaknesses and strengths that we might learn from each other and push each other to improve.^iv And who doesn’t love a little friendly competition ?

Given the singular anecdote of this one little app in this one little environment, the extreme view that no data is useful ever under any circumstances is shown its proper place. While it might have some protective benefit against modernity, like any other article of faith, it has its limits, and those limits are those bordering on both pleasure and personal improvement. As such, sometimes that border has to be willfully crossed – that the numbered greys of life may be coloured in, as in a work by Max S. Klein.

Our new APEX Pro “track coach” will be the next level. Looks like data has a place after all.

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1. Did you vote in the last election ? Did you vote for the most qualified candidate, the one who held the same political opinions as you, or just the one you thought would win ? Think about it. Then think about why “strategic voting” is a scam.  ↩
2. Although we each had our dorifto moments yesterday, only Adam fully spun out Dreidel. And he did it twice! Aggressive eh ?  ↩
3. He’s a reasonably athletic guy, Adam, but he also broke his femur and collarbone is two separate hockey accidents in each of the last two seasons. What kind of athlete does that ??! And don’t say McDavid… ↩
4. It’s worth mentioning that the Track Addicts app worked on my old iPhone SE with un-updated iOS but didn’t work on his brand-spanking new iPhone 8 Plus, further reaffirming that, no, Foxconn doesn’t care about you. And this was just two weeks after his said same iPhone 8 Plus bricked itself for no reason. Gotta love that progress!↩