The same pattern that we saw among the student violinists has been seen among performers in other areas. Observing this pattern accurately depends on being able to get a good estimate of the total number of hours of practice people have put into developing a skill—which is not always easy to do—and also on being able to tell with some objectivity who the good, better, and best are in a given field, which is also not always easy to do. But when you can do those two things, you generally find that the best performers are those who have spent the most time in various types of purposeful practice.
