Is Success a 'Regression to the Mean?'

Hi Guys,

I have been reading the book ‘Thinking, fast and slow’ written by Daniel Kahneman. It is an interesting book on how our mind works and how we often get things wrong. Yesterday, I was reading an interesting chapter in the book titled ‘Regression to the mean’. In the chapter, he defines the formula for Success.

Success = Talent + Luck

Great Success = A Little More Talent + A Lot of Luck

Success is often attributed with Talent alone. More often than not, we hear people saying that a person was highly successful because he was very talented. People often forget the luck factor associated with it. An equally talented person might not be even half as successful as him.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book ‘Outliers’ would quote people with high IQ and explain how they were not very successful. People generally say that Albert Einstein had high IQ and that was a reason for his success. But, there are lot of other people in this world who have high IQ too, but they end up just being show pieces.

Gladwell would also explain the time factor as to how people who were born in the 1950s had significant advantage than others since when they graduated in 1970s, Computers were in the forefront and they capitalized on that. Not all people would have been benefited out of that, but a few people like Michael Dell and Bill Gates had that luck in them.

Being a cricket fan, I had some thoughts on the game. Most of the great innings would have had some luck factor associated with that. I am a big fan of Sachin and I don’t remember his famous Sandstorm innings at Sharjah against Australia when he hit back to back centuries. When I watched them a few days back, I saw that in the first century, he had an edge that fell between three fielders. In the final, he had an inside edge that missed the stumps by inches. On any other day, he could have got out. Have two chances in back to back matches and getting to be known as the greatest innings has a bit of luck along with his great batting.

If you see players like Mike Hussey or Mathew Hayden or Stuart McGill, they got into the team late. They were not able to get into the team despite the talent. If they were in their 20s today, they would have been selected easily into the team. But, now when the Aussie team wants big talents, they find it hard to get one.

Daniel Kahneman says that the law of averages will catch up with everyone. It is driven by maths and has always happened in the past. We often hear that sportsmen would be nervous after a good performance and would not perform properly. The opposite case would also happen and people would say that they had nothing to lose. But, Kahneman says it is how things happen. This is known as ‘Regression to the mean’. As per Kahneman, good or bad things are not bound to continue for a long period. Everything would tend to move towards the mean.

Just as I was writing this, a point came to my mind. Is Success a ‘Regression to the mean?’ Is luck the main factor that contributes to a person’s success? Sachin might have been a bit lucky here and there, but didn’t he outperform many other batsmen? How come Sebastian Vettel won 8 straight races? Is Usain Bolt lucky to win continuously?

I think that Luck is very much important for the initial success. But then on, you need real talent to go forward. How many batsmen would have got a chance to play for India? A few lucky ones. But how many among them has played more than a few matches? A real talented player would survive, but a player who was just lucky would be thrown away.

Gladwell would have written about the ‘10000 Hours’ concept in Outliers. For anyone to be successful to be in a field, they need to practice for 10000 Hours in order to be perfect. A real talented person who have done this.

There might be few exceptions everywhere. Some would be really lucky and some would be really unlucky. But generally, we can say that a talented person would be successful in life. But for him to reach the heights, he needs certain amount of luck too.

For a person to be one among the top, you need to have the right talent at the right time with a right amount of Luck!

Happy Reading!

Nice memories of the Quiz Competition!

Hi Guys,

In my last post, I mentioned that I’ll be writing about my memories of the Quiz competition. A mixture of good fortune and misfortune yielded us the 3rd prize.

The competition occurred last Wednesday (11-2-10). There were 7 teams (1 from each department). Each team consisted of 3 members.  In our department myself, Raja and a junior (whom I didn’t know before) participated.

We didn’t prepare anything before the event. The event was by 3.30 pm in the seminar hall. We went by 3 pm. Some EEE boys were standing there reading some huge books. Naanga jollya ninnu kadha pesitu irundhom! Namakum mathavangalukum oru difference vendama?

We were called by 3.30 pm. The HOD of English department was the Quiz Master. We were team 5. There were 5 rounds in all, namely General, Science & Tech, Sports, Rapid fire and Visuals. A correct answer yields 2 points for a direct question and 1 point in case of a passing question. This applied for all the rounds except the 4th.

We didn’t score any points by the end of 1st round. In the 2nd round we scored 1 point. The question was “When Graham Bell discovered Telephone, what did he speak in the phone?” It came to us as a pass question. I remembered that he called his assistant.  I said “Please come here”. He was expecting the exact answer.  But other teams also failed to give the exact answer. So, he awarded us with the point. The actual answer was “Mr. Watson, come here! I need you”.

The next round was Sports round. We had a lot of luck in this round. A question was “When and where did India win its 1^st Olympic hockey gold medal?” I remembered it was in 1928, but I forgot where. The next team answered it was at Amsterdam. So we got .5 marks each.  Another question was “In a golf match if a ball is lost, how long will they search?” Team 6 answered “10 minutes” I guessed it was 5 and it ended as the right answer.  Another question was “In which game, the term Long and Short Corner is used?” We knew it is Hockey. Finally our direct question was “In a game of Tug of War, what is the maximum number of players?” Raja told me it was either 7 or 8. I told him to go ahead with the answer. He said 8 and it was the right answer. By the end of this round 4.5 points were added to our table. Scores of Significant teams at the end of this round were as follows

Team 1 (EC)-5… Team 2 (CS)-2… Team 5 (Mech)-5.5… Team 6 (MCA)-5.5… Team 7 (MBA)-7…

The next round was Rapid Fire. The rules were: there will be 10 questions. The answers should be in yes/no format. The team leader must answer the questions. A correct answer meant +1 and a wrong answer meant -1, whereas a pass meant 0. In this round Team 1 scored 2 points (4-2), team 2 scored 7 points (8-1).

In our turn I made blunders. The 1st question was right, 2nd one was “New York was once known as New Amsterdam”. I should have passed, but I answered yes. It was wrong. The 3rd one was right. 4th one was “Atlantic ocean is the largest ocean in the world”. It was very clear that Pacific Ocean is the largest. I was going to answer No, my junior team mate said yes to me and I blurted yes. The 5th question was “James Cook discovered Australia” I was quite sure he did, but I was not dead sure. So, I passed, but the answer was yes. We were 0. My mind was clouded by then. I was not even able to listen to the questions. Raja told me the answer and I repeated them. We scored 4points (6-2). Team 6 confused more than us. They finished with 0 points (4-4). Team 7 scored 9 points (9-0). The scores were

Team 1 (EC)-7… Team 2 (CS)-9… Team 5 (Mech)-9.5… Team 6 (MCA)-5.5… Team 7 (MBA)-16…

It was clear Team 7 was the winner. The competition was for the 2nd prize. The 5th round was visuals. A photo will be displayed and we needed to identify who it was. We identified it correctly getting 2 points.  But team 2 got a pass question and also answered their direct question scoring 3 points. So the result was

1st: Team 7 with 18 points

2nd: Team 2 with 12 points

3rd: Team 5 with 11.5 points.

We could have got the 2nd place with a little effort. But it was all mind game. You need to be cool. A good lesson learnt at the end of the day.

Anyway it was good to win the 3rd prize. There were appreciations from my classmates. Even the faculty members appreciated us and it was quite unexpected!

Happy Reading!!!

P.S: Some Interesting information from the Quiz:

• The animal that sleeps standing is horse.
• Albert Einstein got his Nobel Prize for Photoelectric effect, not for the Relativity Theory.
• Nobel Prizes are given from 1901.
• India got a chance to participate in the 1950 Brazilian football world cup. But they didn’t participate since they didn’t know to play with football boots.
• 1 Nautical Mile= 1.115 kms.

What went worng in the Paper Presentation?

Hi Guys,

Last week, there was an interdepartmental paper presentation in our college. It was named Mosaic, since Mosaic has all the colors in it and this paper presentation event had all the departments participating in it.

I and Bala Kumar sent a paper titled ‘Locomotion Simulator’ and we were selected to present our paper. We were confident of presenting the paper well, but we collapsed there. Personally, it was a very embarrassing situation for me. After the presentation, I thought about the mistakes we committed and learnt a lot from it.

First of all, we were overconfident. We went to a symposium in another college last year and won the 2^nd prize. Before that presentation we discussed a lot about how to present and how to answer the questions. This time we didn’t converse at all. We just went and presented the paper.

Another reason was the ‘judge factor’. The main judge was from EEE department. So he was in favor of EEE papers. But thinking about it later, I realized that was a very natural thing. Our paper was also mechatronic in nature since it had to do a lot with microcontroller. So the fact was we didn’t impress him. That was the truth.

In paper presentations we need to finish it within time. The allotted time was 10 minutes, but we finished our paper in 6 minutes, which created an impression that ours was a very short one. There were a lot of things in our paper and we failed to elaborate them.

Finally my friends told that we were affected by ‘bad luck’. When we were presenting our paper, there was a sudden power cut. Though it came back in 5 seconds, it took 10 minutes for the projector to work. Though that is not a very normal thing, sometimes these sorts of things occur. Thinking about it I remembered something that I read in ‘The Last Lecture’ written by Randy Pausch. I present the matter below

Chapter 46: All You Have Is What You Bring With You. Page No: 160

… I’ve admired people who are over-prepared. In college, I had a classmate named Norman Meyrowitz. One day he was giving a presentation on an overhead projector and in the middle of his talk, the light bulb on the projector blew out. There was an audible groan from the audience. We’d have to wait ten minutes until someone found a new projector.

“It’s okay”, Norm announced. “There’s nothing to worry about”.

We watched him walk over to his knapsack and pull something out. He had brought along a spare bulb for the over head projector. Who would even think of that?

Our professor, Andy Van Dam, happened to be sitting next to me. He leaned over and said, “This guy is going places”. He had that right. Norm became top executive at Macromedia Inc., where his efforts have affected almost everyone who uses Internet today.

Another way to be prepared is to think negatively.

Yes, I’m a great optimist. But when trying to make decision, I often think of the worst-case scenario. I call it “The Eaten by Wolves Factor”. If I do something, what’s the most terrible thing that could happen? Would I be eaten by the wolves? …

So, I decided the next time I’m on to something important I would think about “The Eaten by Wolves Factor”, so that I would be comfortable in those situations.

Apart from us, the paper presentation was good. There were many innovative topics like Micro engines, MEMS, Image Processing, Hybrid Vehicles, AI, etc. Gowthaman and Ganesh suffered a lot. They were the last to present and none of the judges seemed to listen to them. They were interested in winding the section.

Failure is the Stepping Stone of Success!

Happy reading!!!

P.S: To know more about Randy Pausch and his last lecture please visit www.thelastlecture.com