The best part about weather in this part of the world is that when the
weather is bad, it won’t stay that way very long! The Law of Averages
simply won’t allow longer-term deviations. Today the weather here will be
almost back to normal. Airplane travel across the northeast US should get
back to normal today. The Law of Averages is taking hold again.

A number of years ago when I was learning to fly, making consistently good
landings was very difficult. One landing would be pretty good — close to
the centerline of the runway, no significant bounce, and without serious
float down the runway — and the next would be a near wreck. After a flying
lesson one day, Jim Young, my instructor and all around great guy, sat me
down to explain the Law of Averages. “The goal,” he said, “is to improve
the average and to narrow the variability.” My landings were going to vary
from one to the next. He was first working on reducing the variability in
my landings. Once that was under control, he would sart working on
consistent improvement in the overall average of my landings.

It worked. After a couple of lessons that included several dozen landings,
none of them were near wrecks. I was much more consistent with where I was
relative to the centerline upon landing. Finally, the airspeed I was
carrying as I flared for landing became much more consistent. Then the
tasked changed so that I would learn to land on the center rather than
always on the far right side of the runway.

I learned from Jim Young a very valuable lesson about the Law of Averages.
I’ve been teaching this law to my staff for several years. It’s another one
of those invaluable concepts and rather immutable. And I’m quite satisfied
that the weather in Florida conforms to the law. Tomorrow should be an
Average Day!

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld