Which is more difficult, getting to the World Series the first time, or repeating the following year? Both require great talent, but the motivation has got to be a little harder to muster after you’ve had that magical first experience. What about the third and fourth times?
Many competitive activities have the concept of a sophomore slump. The sophomore slump occurs when a rookie athlete has an outstanding first year and then reverts to more normal standards the following year. It appears to all that he has regressed, except for the statisticians who know this to be a normal phenomenon called “regression to the mean.” The first year was the anomaly, not the second.
