Thread by @cryptoseneca

You are leaving A LOT on the table if you think of MATH as some useless subject taught in school.

Math, when taught correctly, is a PRACTICAL skill you can use in your day-to-day to improve your life.

How though?

{A Thread}

👇👇👇

A good understanding of Math will allow you to see the world more for what IT IS than for what you would LIKE IT to be.

All the while enabling You to make better decisions while dodging easy bullets:

Some examples:

Survivorship Bias:

Things we fail to see due to biases towards the “surviving” data points.

We focus on the One winner and not the Million losers.

Lebron
Steve Jobs
Zuckerberg

The result is thinking that to Win at that level is Easy.

Confirmation Bias:

Notice how Hard it is to find people that can hold an opinion but be open to counter ideas?

We look for ideas that support our strongly held beliefs.

That is what makes it so easy to Not SEE anything that goes against it.

Linearity and Non-linearity

Almost nothing functions in a way where More of a thing keeps giving more of another thing.

e.g.

“Drinking water is healthy”

So drinking more and more water should make you healthier and healthier?

Not so.

Too much of it and it will kill you.

Another example of non-linearity:

“She’s gone through two divorces in the past 10 years”

So that means in the next 30, she will go through another 6?!

Not so.

Lottery:

The chances of winning the lottery are so ABYSMALLY SMALL that it NEVER makes sense for you to buy a ticket.

1 in 100,000,000+

You are more likely to be killed by a vending machine than to win the lottery.

So, literally, anything makes more sense than buying it.

Finance:

Beyond basic budgeting and saving..

'Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it ... he who doesn't ... pays it.'

If you don’t get it, you’ll probably be paying it today and for the rest of your days.

Power Law or 80/20 Rule:

A small minority account for the majority of the distribution.

- Few players make most of the money
- Few convicts account for most charges
- Few planets account for most mass

It’s ubiquitous. Don’t be surprised.

Bell Curves:

The outliers are WORLDS APART from the average.

If you compare your salary with the top or bottom 1%, you are missing the point.

To get a better sense of reality, look closer.

Complex systems:

Systems made up of many variables that all interact with each other.

WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO PREDICT THESE.

It’s the reason why we are clueless in regards to:

- weather more than few days out
- macroeconomic behavior
- human brain or behavior at scale

Lovely.