Milestones and marathons

Almost without noticing, today we will reach the emblematic number of 100 posts in this blog. Coincidentally, this happens on the 24th of December, a date that Christianity celebrates as Christmas Eve, the night of the birth of Jesus, and many TV and radio stations are filling their grid with summaries of the year and pulling recorded programs from their archives to allow their workers some time with their families, and many blogs and podcasts are interrupting their deliveries temporarily. Instead of all that, I will comment on the concept of milestone and it significance in modern life.

Milestones were originally what the word roughly describes: stones placed at one-mile distances in roads and canals to allow travelers to determine how much they had advanced. In western civilization, the first examples were built by the Romans in the extensive network of viae, starting with the Appian Way in southern Italy around 300 BCE, but this has been a common practice across all civilizations with a significant ground transport development. But how was the distance of one mile selected for the placement of the milestones?

Photo: wal_172619 on Pixabay

The original Roman mile corresponded to one thousand paces (mille passus), considering that one pace was actually two steps, one with the left foot and one with the right foot, resulting in an approximate distance of 1600 meters of 0.92 English miles. Considering a typical walking speed of 3 miles per hour, a walker would cover between 20 and 25 miles in a single day, so the distance was long enough that the count would not go too high on the same day, but not so long that one would spend a long time (e.g. one full hour) without getting the reference of a milestone.

Because that is also an important psychological function of milestones (both real and virtual): they provide a sense of progress in the turmoil of everyday life. That is possibly the reason why we celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, because they are far enough apart from one another to be significant but not so far that we completely forget the previous occasion. Of course, there are hierarchies among the milestones, and while the yearly ones are important, the markers for decades or hundreds are even more relevant. Indeed, our numeral system is built on units, tens and hundreds, and that is why it is much easier to day that someone "is in their 30s" than "is between 35 and 44 years old". Round numbers are not only shorter to say, but also easier to remember: thirty can only be thirty, where as thirty six can easily be mistaken with sixty three (misplacing the digits) or with thirty seven (replacing one of the digits). That is why a number such as 100 posts becomes relevant.

Another important effect of the milestones is that of a psychological barrier. In trading technical analysis the terms support and resistance are used to refer to a certain value that a given stock is unlikely to cross: in the case of the support the stock falls to the support value it is probably going to be considered cheap enough that it would trigger a small run for it and it will become appreciated again. The case of the resistance is the opposite, where the value rises to the resistance level unleashing a wave of sales that would make the stock go down again. However, in both cases, if the reference value is crossed ("broken"), the trend inversion might not happen. This is precisely what happened on December 16th, when the bitcoin broke the 20000 USD mark and is now around 26000. In the European markets the equivalent news would be breaking the 16400 EUR, which is much less impressive.

However, this kind of effects does not only happen in the trading floor, but it is also clearly visible in sports. In a remarkable 2016 paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research authors Allen, Dechow, Pope and Wu, showed that, in over 9 million marathon times they surveyed, there were 50% more finishers in the 2 hour and 59 minute mark than in the the 3 hour 0 minute mark. Similar effects happen at the 3:30 (21%) and at the 4:00 marks (30%). Are humans particularly suited for finishing the 42195 meters in 3:29 as opposed to 3:31? Of course not. The paper elaborates on several different possible strategies but the fact is that the "bunching", the increment of runners at the round time mark is intentional: runners pace themselves to be able to achieve a certain time. And as with the stock exchange, it is much easier to set a time of exactly 4 hours than 4 hours, 1 minute and 25 seconds, even if the latter is slightly easier to achieve than the former.

When I started this blog, I had no goals in mind other than provide an opportunity for myself to focus my thoughts for a short time every day and dump the result into words. Now that I have manage 100 articles, it would be tempting to aim for another 100, but I will try to resist the temptation, because it would make it more of a burden and less of a reward. Maybe my goal should be to get 100 readers instead, because I have not had much success in that field yet. Let us see what the new year (hint: milestone!) brings.