Does age matter? Sure, of course

Here's a blog entry which contains an interesting graph: http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/pingpongjuggler/16895006.html.
(The text is written in Japanese, but it should cause no problem).

This graph shows the progresses of 5 ball cascade by hobby jugglers, who are a father and the son, 38 and 11 years old respectively. The number on the X axis is the number of days past, and Y axis shows the best record(the number of catches).

The father is the pink, and the green is the kid. As you can see, the kid has been making a bit faster progress, however, I don't think the difference is significant considering the fact that the father practices less while the kid practices long hours after school.

Having said that, I lately saw a graph of visual acuity in general population, which shows an undeniable fact that the ability to catch fast moving object peaks out at the age of around 21-23 and then slowly goes down with age. Memory, whatever it means, should play a significant role in learning a pattern, and we all know that it decays slowly as you age.

Having a positive attitude may be an essential key that keeps someone going, but if every factor is the same, age must be a defining factor. ``Hell, age doesn't matter!'' sounds nice, but it would be just a non-sensical bullshit if you mean what it literally means.