Flight instructors told Daniel Kahneman, in Israel, that praise after a great landing is followed by a worse one and yelling after a rough one by a better one. Kahneman had just told them that rewards work better than punishment. He thought the instructor was right about what he saw and completely wrong about why.

The why had been found in the 1880s by Francis Galton. He compared 928 grown children with their parents' average height: children of tall parents were tall, but on average only two-thirds as far above average.

Kahneman showed it without a single landing. He drew a target on the floor and every officer threw two coins at it without looking. Most of those who did best on the first throw did worse on the second; most who did worst improved. With no praise and no yelling.

A great landing is partly luck, and luck doesn't repeat on demand: regression to the mean. So after a best-ever result, the better guess starts at the average and moves only part of the way back. The landings, the height cloud and the coin throws in the video are sketches.

Your best day ever: what should you expect tomorrow?

Sources: Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases", Science 185, 1974; Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011, chapters 17 and 18; Francis Galton, "Regression towards Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature", Journal of the Anthropological Institute 15, 1886.
Sounds: our own, made in code (earshot, CC0).