Why we don’t like to think chance is the reason behind great stories

The Triumph of the Random

From banking to baseball, winning streaks owe much to the laws of chance

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204556804574261942466979118.html

This is a great article from the Wall St Journal about how chance and randomness plays a huge part in our lives but we all want to see patterns and blieve success is due to hard work and talent rather than radnomness because it makes us feel better. Example is the “sporting streak” which is much more likely to be from chance than anything else but that story does not resonate with us:

This holiday weekend—the Fourth of July—kicks off the home stretch of a two-month period that made Joe DiMaggio Sr. an icon of American culture. In 1941, a few months before Joe Jr. was born, and sandwiched between the day Hitler’s insane deputy Rudolf Hess parachuted into Scotland on an unauthorized peace mission and the day a secret British report concluded that the Allies could complete an atomic bomb ahead of Germany, there was a period of 56 successive Yankee games in which Joltin’ Joe had at least one hit.

DiMaggio’s hitting streak was an inspiration in troubled times. The pursuit of any record comes with pressure—Roger Maris lost some of his hair during his attempt to break Babe Ruth’s home-run record in 1961—but most records forgive you an off day as long as you compensate at other times. Not so with a streak, which demands unwavering performance. And so DiMaggio’s streak has been interpreted as a feat of mythic proportion, seen as a heroic, even miraculous, spurt of unrivaled effort and concentration.

But was it? Or was this epic moment simply a fluke?………………….

“The analyses can get long and the number of data needed unwieldy, so the jury is still out, but one of the studies, by Samuel Arbesman and Stephen H. Strogatz of Cornell University, attacked the problem by having a computer generate a mock version of each year in baseball from 1871 to 2005, based on the players’ actual statistics from that year. The scientists had the computer repeat the process 10,000 times, generating in essence 10,000 parallel histories of the sport.

The researchers found that 42% of the simulated histories had a streak of Di Maggio’s length or longer. The longest record streak was 109 games, the shortest, 39. In those 10,000 universes, many other players held the record more often than DiMaggio. Ty Cobb, for example, held it nearly 300 times.

So much of our thinking about the future is coloured by our view of the past and we need to better understand how our minds works when thinking about things to think better about the future

Something to Remember from Eric Schmidt of Google in answer to a question from Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine

This is a great short video of Eric Schmidt of Google at the Aspen ideas Festival.

It covers some interesting areas but I was particularly struck in his answer to a follow up question on whether the economy has fundamentally changed. His answer was ” I would like it to be true but my question to you is where is the data?”.

Now we are involved in looking to the future so to some extent data is historical but we cannot just make up things.  This is a question that everybody should keep in their mind – where is the data, where is the evidence. At the very least a view about the future needs to tell a cogent and compelling story that both points out where the narrator thinks things are going but also explains the underlying assumptions and drivers so that the person listening to the story can look to see whether the data is following the narrative as the future unfolds but also adjust their own thinking as things change from the predicted path as they most certainly will. I think there is a lot of hype around the “new economy” at the moment just as there was in stock markets five years ago and in the oil markets 2-3 years ago.. Reality has a way of settling things down and sitting you back on your heels. Things are changing but old models and systems die hard and change is commonly slower than we think, with important but rare exemptions to the rule

As Fred Wilson the New York Venture Capitalist and Blogger (http://www.avc.com/)  says says :

“Every investment I’ve ever made that has worked out fabulously is always a case that the investment played out in a way that we didn’t imagine.”

You can watch the video here:

Aspen ideas festival – Eric Schmidt answer to the Buzz Machine\’s Jeff Jarvis

Always Connected – Off The Grid Services

I went last week to record an episode of a TV show where I was a contestant – Millionaire Hot Seat in Melbourne Victoria. They recorded 5 shows in one day and had a rehearsal for each one so it was a long day. As part of the requirements you were not allowed to bring any electronic device into the studio and we were searched for them as a precaution. Therefore not wishing to leave a laptop or a mobile phone lying around in the waiting area or the meeting room I left them all behind at home and because I traveled by public transport and had lunch with a friend of mine I was gone from 11.00 in the morning until after midnight.

In a sad indictment of my life this left me feeling edgy all day (on top of the adrenaline from the show itself – you will have to watch to see if I won or not as they made us sign confidentiality agreements for until after the show airs). This had me thinking about a few things, first of all how integrated into our way of life mobile phones and the internet have become in such a short time frame; and secondly the possibility of companies supplying premium services to “connected” people so that they can “get off the grid” for a while. I am sure that there are services ike this available but I can only see them growing over time as mobile services and internet connectivity become more ubiquitous.

Meanwhile I will do what I can for my own addiction.

Paul

Time Perspectives and its Effects on Success

Philip Zimbardo prescribes a healthy take on time

Philip Zimbardo in an interesting talk at TED. Part of the talk looks at a study on children who were tested to see if they would take an immediate treat or wait for twice the treat. 2/3 went for the immediate treat and a follow up study 14 years later saw huge differences between the two groups – those that resisted and those that did not with the resist group having higher test scores, getting in less trouble, and being far more future focused. The video goes on to talk about optimal time perspectives for success.

The message is similar to that of situational leadership. That you need to have balance between the perspectives and you need to learn to be more fluid and move between perspectives dependent on the situation. He says that past gives you roots, the future gives you wings and the present gives you energy and you need that balance. Interesting perspective

http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html?awesm=on.ted.com_17

Asymmetry, Iran and the Internet