Learning curves of elite car racers

This work is focused on racing cars driver’s training. Nine different tracks are considered and six drivers. Each driver drives on every track and performs consecutive trial sessions on each track; each session is made of various laps, and lap times are fitted using an exponential model, yielding an estimate of the initial performance, the learning constant, and the asymptotic performance. According to results, the learning curve varies significantly among pilots and among tracks; all pilots reach their session asymptotic performance in less than nine laps. The asymptotic performance in consecutive trial sessions improves significantly, and it is strongly correlated to the initial session performance (r2 > 0.99). As a conclusion, it is more profitable to perform separated sessions made of few laps (less than 10) rather than performing a smaller number of longer sessions. Whenever the initial lap time stops decreasing systematically, trial sessions should end because the asymptotic performance is not likely to improve further.

Football Betting and the Efficient Market Hypothesis

Three betting rules which had been nonrandomly profitable in both their initial application to the 1969–74 National Football League seasons and their replication during the years of 1975–81 were applied to all NFL games played between September 1984 and January 1994. One rule proved to be nonrandom and profitable for a third consecutive trial—a feat suggesting that bettors may be able to “beat the bookie” and, more broadly, that prices in competitive markets may not discount all available information in swift fashion.