This posting is not about hot hands, but rather about hot feet. It's also not so much about streaks, but simply the magnitude of a performance. What I'm talking about is the world record 9.58 seconds run in the men's 100 meters yesterday by Jamaica's Usain Bolt at the World Championships in Berlin, Germany. As shown below, Bolt has been lowering the world record quite dramatically, in an event where the record used to come down incrementally, often one-hundredth of a second at a time (you can click on the chart to enlarge it).


As you'll recall, Bolt set the previous record at last year's Olympic Games despite slowing down at the end. Yesterday's performance gives us a better idea of what Bolt is capable of when he runs hard the whole way.