Hail Mary and the Homerun Ball

Having mentioned a “small ball” approach in  a recent blog post, I realized afterward that of course, it has an opposite number.

These strategies and their uses are well known. They might as well be called the Loser’s Friend, as they are typically employed either by someone so far ahead that they have nothing better to do but rub it in, or so far behind that the drawbacks of these strategies are no longer meaningful. If you are losing anyway the low percentage of success is suddenly HIGHER than your chances otherwise were. It’s time for a Hail Mary.

So besides understanding the situation, what can you do to increase your (probably terrible) odds in a Hail Mary situation?

Counter-intuitively, practice is usually a requirement, not because people like planning to lose, but because they know these situations come up. It’s called “Plan B” not just “B” for a reason. David didn’t go after Goliath with any untried weapons, he chose tools he was good with (even turning down the king’s own sword) before taking on impossible odds.  These strategies are also known as Asymmetrical Strategies because they are often used when two opponents are wildly unequal in expected strength. “Terrorism” is commonly used to inflate tactics that actually do little damage to one side, but cause very strong feelings and allow the smaller side to continue to wage a conflict that they would lose terribly in open battle.

Heavily mismatched chess players are likely to choose the wildest lines of openings. A weaker player may be trying to “get lucky” with a neat tactic not wanting a close battle that he knows he will lose, whereas the stronger player may simply be trying to save time.

Occasionally, Asymmetrical Strategies actually run the other direction, the high cost of a standard business license in the state of California, or the general need for large amount of capital to compete in business are both strategies that heavily favor the already powerful. This happens to have the unintended consequence that terrorist recruiters can focus on those people disenfranchised by a system that perpetuates such things, but it does keep down the competition from those trying to enter the market.

The trouble with a Hail Mary strategy, is that they are often well known to both sides, and those who have the lead may engage in what American Football fans will know as a “prevent defense”.  It may be a long shot to begin with but there are still counter-strategies for these oft-tried tricks. Sometimes, an opponent may have a real weakness as in the tale of Achilles. If you spot it, you should already know what to do. For example, ISIS lacks funding, and only has a finite number of ways to replenish their coffers, usually kidnappings and wealthy donors (their Hail Mary). Saudi Arabia might be on the right trail with their very large fence separating them from the more extreme elements (the prevent defense). A fence that actually encircled them, and allowed them to be trapped under siege could leave their 8 million inhabitants starving and unable to fight, or replenish their ranks. Alas, a fence on just one border does little to slow down the so-called “caliphate”. It’s imperative that it also cut off their finances, and ability to generate new recruits, or else you’ve merely built a picket fence for their new front yard.

Stack ‘Em Deep, Sell ‘Em Cheap!

Amidst the hoopla of the “Eric Garner Story” it was easy to miss the underlying phenomena fueling the events that lead up to that day.

The cigarette tax in New York City is extremely high. As much as three fifths of the price of a pack is just the tax. This necessarily cuts into the profit margins of sellers, while reducing sales due to increased prices. With tremendous amounts of money on the line, and so many with no viable means of surviving financially it was only a matter of time until someone started increasing the number of untaxed cigarettes sold in the city. By some estimates 60-90% of cigarettes of certain brands are fake, depending on what part of the world you are in. People go quite a distance to pick up just five cartons of cigarettes because selling them as singles is their only income.

All told a single truckload of cigarettes can be as much as $200,000 in revenue for the city, EACH. With thousands of people on the streets selling “loosies”, at up to a dollar each, it’s not far fetched to think that a well positioned operation could go through a truckload at least once a week.

That’s ten million dollars a year in lost revenue, minimum, for the city. Naturally, on realizing this the NYPD took the opportunity to arrest those involved, in the hopes of finding contraband on them to charge them with and generally raise revenue through the courts. In the past jumping turnstiles, graffiti projects, and other issues have become the dragnet the cops used, but from about six months prior to the Eric Garner incident, everyone knew that the jig was up. I really don’t know why he persisted the way he did, he had no legal argument to stand on.

The criminal elements trying to make a buck, however, would have made Sam Walton proud. They paid their “employees” nothing at all, forcing them to live as independent contractors, with no benefits, and no guarantee of pay at all, even having to accept all risks, financial, legal, and otherwise.

The overall generating of massive revenues from tiny increments and sheer force of numbers is a strategy overlooked by many in spite of its tremendous potential. There was a time, when instead of living on the streets  I was the occasional teenager handing some change to someone Since being out here, I’ve run into so many blatant fools who complain about exactly that behavior as a “waste of time”. Admittedly, it would take a large percentage of people, and a large number of them, before it would amount to much, but in busy urban areas, like Times Square where nearly two million people per day pass it would add up far more quickly than hoping for the rare occasion when someone can afford to give much more, especially when times are tough, and not many can afford it.

Just like the panhandler I spoke with was shortsighted in bemoaning people who give small amounts, many business managers lose sight of the piecemeal strategies that have empowered Google, facebook, Wal-Mart, and countless other giants of the small slice space to dominate the business arena. It’s now the reason that every other thing seems geared toward “blowing up” or “going viral”. Generating those big numbers can lead to big profits even one tiny piece at a time.

Planning Your Steps with Algorithms

An algorithm, simply put, is a flowchart of the steps you will take, including the various options you plan to exercise for each contingency you are able to plan for. In computer science practically speaking one must plan for every contingency before coding something up, or the computer will fail in a number of ways, depending on which contingency the programmer failed to plan for.

The logic behind the algorithm also tends to determine the efficiency of the overall program, and is therefore one of the main “sticking points” in computer science instruction. Frequently taught in terms of “search” the ability to sort through a pile of data points to find the one you are looking for is an important function for a computer to fulfill.

An algorithm is also an important way of organizing information, and activities, for example, a family trying to set up an emergency plan for a natural disaster like an earthquake, may set it up in terms of an algorithm (and probably should).

If it happens during the day > Kids follow teachers’ instructions, Mom checks on Kids, Dad checks on Mom. If all is fine Dad stays at work if not checks on Kids, then checks on Mom.

If it happens at night > Rendezvous at mailbox out front, if everyone is fine check on old lady next door, if not find missing party.

Team sports can set plays according to an algorithm, search and rescue parties can use them for more efficient search, nearly any activity that wants to benefit form a prearranged st of instructions to individual members to coordinate their efforts will all benefit from a properly constructed algorithm.  Even an individual wanting to be a step ahead can predetermine large parts of their path by this method, and with practice it only takes a moment to come up with one.

Generally you would build this algorithm around “conditional logic”, as in, IF this event should happen, THEN we will use our emergency algorithm. So the earthquake happens, now what.

If it happened in the day > Kids follow teachers’ instructions, Mom checks on kids at school, Dad contacts Mom, if all is well stays at work, if not checks on kids at school, then looks for Mom.

If it happened in the night >

Cooperation is Key, Dreaming Big with Stag Hunt

in game theory models the Stag Hunt is the visionaries greatest tool. It goes something like this

A group of hunters are walking in the forest. If anyone wants to hunt a hare, he may, and he will get one pound of meat. If anyone wants to hunt a stag he may, but will need the cooperation of the entire group to bring down the stag. A share of the meat from he stag will be ten pounds each. If anyone chooses to hunt the hare, he may not hunt the stag, and anyone hunting the stag will be unable to catch anything, if anyone chooses to hunt hare.

The best payoff for each hunter is for them to cooperate and hunt the stag, but it only takes one shortsighted fool to ruin it for everyone. This model scales really well, and its variations are primary arguments for pursuits of world peace, space travel, and the banning of biological weapons.  A prosperous global peace is greatly beneficial to all, but it only takes a few shortsighted idiots to wreck it by causing near endless global conflicts, usually because they have figured out how to make money from it.

The most exciting application is usually in space travel and colonization, where everyone’s cooperation toward that pursuit could greatly benefit all, but it can be difficult to maintain support of enough people to see such projects through to their ultimate benefits.

Nearly all socialized (I tend to define government activities that maximize economy of scale for the benefit of the general public as “socialist”, so even public roads and the like are socialist programs) programs have the same issues, the difficulty is in keeping shortsighted “anti-government” types from becoming bureaucrats and wrecking the program by simply causing work stoppages and unlawfully denying benefits to those who qualify.

Many group projects fall into this classification in one form or another. The next time you have a big idea, don’t forget to put some effort up front into motivating support and getting enough people on board to keep the “hare hunters” at bay.

Playing the Odds with Statistics

Data Science is all the rage these days, and there are lots of things that go into that, but in the end, it’s just a more advanced version of a simple concept: the odds.

Different people express chance different ways, and this is where it can get very confusing. One in three, is not three same as 1:3. The first one is describing an event that will happen once of three opportunities, the second would be used to describe something that happens once in FOUR opportunities, and this can lead to some terrible miscalculations. If you aren’t accustomed to stats, try picking one methodology to avoid this particular confusion.

Of course, things can often be expressed in percentages, and this is as good a metric as any for poker math. If you watch poker on ESPN, or youtube, you will see these percentages listed during the play. What is being stated, is the “expected” outcome, as if this same hand could be run thousands of times, and the results divided by one hundred – a 50% to win before the flop means that the player with that percentage, if they could see all the cards would expect to win half of the time.

This is not the only factor poker players use, as the game involves a lot of observation, psychology, and game theory elements. But it IS informative, as when paired with the other pieces of information that a good player will be quick to ascertain it gives them a rough idea of how much they should expect to make from a certain bet.

So how can you use this in real life?

A lot of people are accustomed to dealing with Boolean values. A thing can only be true or false, black or white, etc. With incomplete information, as often happens in the real world, such values often become so difficult to ascertain that they are either too slow, outright impossible, or not cost effective to ascertain. This is where being able to express oneself with something more informative than a shoulder shrug or a “maybe” can be helpful. Of course, if you are dealing with someone else who is attempting to express to you the different possibilities and their relative likelihoods understanding what they are communicating is much easier if you have mastered these basic concepts.

The Cat, the Spider, and the Fly

Sometimes biology is a better teacher than any lecturer, but it takes a keen eye, an open mind, and a bit of patience.

Let’s consider the curious case of the spider, the fly and the housecat.

“Welcome to my Parlor” is an excellent poem, about a keen invitation to a fly by a spider, the fly finally succumbing to flattery, and being eaten. While I doubt narcissism has aided many arachnids, the weaving of webs certainly has been their trademark hunting strategy for eons now. It’s a great way to get a meal, and if you’ve ever watched Japanese garden spiders weaving away in the early morning sun they are a fantastic sight, often adorned with pink, purple, and yellow on their black and grey bodies they hang motionless awaiting visitors of flies, butterflies, honeybees and the like. Masters of engineering they choose a location out of the way of predators who might destroy their work, but still near enough the flowers their own prey will seek out soon enough. Upon completion they move to the center where they will be best placed to wrangle a meal no matter where in the web it first becomes entangled. When lunch finally arrives they package it up for later, and renew their post.

In contrast, cats are attracted to motion. On seeing a fly buzzing in the kitchen they will often sit directly below it for a quarter of an hour or more, with heads swiveling like little radar towers. Ears perked, eyes bright, they actively gather information about their quarry. As the fly buzzes here and there attracted by foods, or garbage, or the drafty air currents (who really knows what a fly is thinking) the cat sits below trying to discern a pattern, any patten, however fleeting in the motion overhead. It’s nearly impossible to discern predictive information from true chaos, but the cat’s hopes are soon found with merit. Here, it will probably first flinch, feigning the first few strikes that will eventually take it to the heights above, self-testing, gauging distance. Suddenly, the real strike comes, and up the cat goes with wild acrobatics, plucking lunch from thin air and casually strolling away licking his lips.

You may find countless examples in nature of multiple solutions to similar problems. It’s an excellent way to study problem solving in a live context, where millions of years of research and development has already been done for you. The student need only learn the art of remapping solutions onto similar problems to get great value from such efforts.

When All Else Fails: Brute Force and Iteration

“Brute Force” as a term used by hackers and computer scientists generally refers to a simple algorithm or method, repeated until a desired result is achieved. It takes a lot of time, sometimes expressed as “linear” time. That’s exactly as long as it sounds like. Imagine a number line extending toward infinity and starting at one, count every integer until you get to the one that I’m thinking of.

This is one of the primary ways of cracking passwords, and why it’s such an important idea to pick a good one

Sometimes there just ISN’T a clever trick or a way to work around the problem. That’s when Brute Force comes into its own.

A few key points to improve the results when you’re reaching for your Brute Force hammer.

1. This is usually people’s first response, when it should often be their last. Check carefully to make sure a better option isn’t available. Why use a ‘leave no stone unturned’ strategy to find a fugitive, if bloodhounds are available? After searching high and low for a better method, take a deep breath, and commit to the task at hand.

2. Optimize. Back to the password cracking analogy, there have been many lists of the most common passwords, published in order of frequency. Just knowing that a given set of passwords is not evenly or randomly distributed through the population, the obvious thing then, would be to start at the most common (the key that opens the most doors gets tried first), and work your way toward random groups of characters. (This is why you should NEVER use a password from this list). This is hardly the only thing to do to optimize, again, look high and low before proceeding to the next step.

3. Hurry up. In password cracking terms this would mean getting a faster computer. For physical applications (checking out groceries, for example) this means breaking the task into simple steps, and getting well versed in each step, so that no one speed bump can hold up the whole process. This step can be reattempted often to find further improvements once a venture is already underway.

That’s really about it. Brute Force is rarely a genius technique. But knowing when and how to use it, and being willing to try in earnest may be the difference between success and failure in certain applications.

Know your Limits with the Circle of Competence

In the infamous words of the inimitable Samuel L. Jackson “Now you’re assuming…and everyone knows when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of U and umption.”

People speculate, guess, assume, and generally go beyond what is truly known to them. It’s not always bad, it’s good to stretch our limits. It’s when you’re stretching your limits and DON’T KNOW IT OR CAN’T ADMIT IT that disaster usually strikes.

At Berkshire Hathaway, (the company run by mogul Warren Buffett) the executives run on a principle known as the Circle of Competence. It’s simply the clear delineation of when you are going into new territory so that you can be more learning focused in the initial stage of a new venture.

Buffett has been profiled in several biographies, and countless articles on business. Most large investors think his annual report is required reading. In

Snowball

he details his company’s plans for venturing into emerging markets, especially Korea, where the business culture is vastly different, and even the market trading information for shares of stock is presented, not only in another language, but in a wildly different format. This is outside his team’s Circle of Competence.

Simply recognizing that you are out of your element is the difference between using Google Maps before you leave the house to plan a trip, and driving in circles in an unfamiliar part of town.

Some people let their egos get in the way, and simply can’t admit they don’t know something (THERE ARE NO STUPID QUESTIONS WHEN YOU LEAVE THE CIRCLE OF COMPETENCE – ASK AWAY!!).

If you are graphing the “Circle of Competence” from a side view, make sure to include steep slopes. Minimize the gray area (which mostly consists of the questions you KNOW you need to ask first to begin expanding your circle), and clearly define the information pertaining to the subject that you are certain of.

Get in the habit of labeling guesswork and speculation as exactly what they are, if asked a question, give answers in the format of what you are certain of, (labeling your uncertainty here) what you are uncertain of, and if possible where to seek out further or better information. It’s a good habit of getting into, that clarifies communications and prevents others from drawing unfounded certainties from your guesses. It helps YOU do the same.

Houdini’s Magic Strategies

Harry Houdini was a famous and brilliant magician, escape artist and illusionist who had a number of strategies worth considering when you want to “WOW” your audience.

The Handcuff Trick

Prior proper planning – This one came down to having the right trick up your sleeve, sometimes literally, but usually Houdini’s collection of keys was kept in the back, if an unfamiliar pair of cuffs were presented well,

Sometimes, Houdini had to free himself from so-called freak handcuffs, one-of-a-kind cuffs with only one key to open it. In that case, he insisted on testing the key first. While he fiddled with the cuffs, an assistant headed backstage and searched Houdini’s huge collection of keys for one that looked similar to the freak key. The assistant handed the fake key to Houdini, who then returned the fake key to the owner while he palmed the real one.

Obviously this requires having the right tools, a prearrangement with an assistant and the right moves to pull it off. This isn’t something you can whip up on the fly, which makes it all the more astounding when audiences see it.

Metamorphosis

Practice makes perfect – This is still a great trick performed by many amateur and small time magicians with patient wives and girlfriends.

The secret of the illusion is surprisingly simple:

This one is about perfection through sheer force of repetition. I know a lot of jugglers who do some amazing things, because they practice, much, often, and they are constantly improving. This method works for everything from typing to knife-throwing, and countless others. Next time you see a skill you wish you could acquire, don’t be afraid to commit some extra time and effort to getting it just right.

The East Indian Needle Trick

Contingency – As with the multitude of ways that Houdini beat handcuffs this trick often required some planned improvisation.

When Houdini allowed the spectator to examine his mouth, he spread his upper and lower lips away from his gums and teeth with his fingers. The fingers naturally hooked around the lips into the cheek area. Houdini hid the packet under one of the fingers. If the spectator insisted that he move his fingers, Houdini merely slipped the packet under his tongue.

Having a prearranged backup plan can get you out of trouble in a hurry. Sometimes the answer is obvious, others will require creatively reverse engineering trouble spots to get ahead of them, but the result aids in flawless execution, with fewer (or no) hiccups.

The Vanishing Elephant

Empathy – We often think of empathy as sympathy, but they are really two different things. If you’re sharing in someone else’s grief at a funeral, that’s sympathy. If you’re a chess player considering the moves that will be available to your opponent after you execute the plan you are currently considering, that’s empathy.

Tigran Petrosian was a famous Grandmaster not for making good moves, but for ensuring his opponent couldn’t make any. Many people scored draws against him, but it was nearly impossible to beat him. His thinking process could most likely be described as, “I see you have a great move there. Let me ruin that for you.”

I personally employed a similar method in youth soccer, it worked well, if somewhat more aggressively. We simply made sure to steer our opponents to one side of the field where the defense was bunched up and waiting. Our formation from their vantage point made it look like they were making progress, when the move was really lateral.

No one quite remembers how Houdini made the elephant vanish. I propose the mechanics don’t matter as much as carefully choreographing the audience’s experience. Disney is famous (or infamous) for planning every minute particle of an experience at one of their theme parks, to the extent every employee you see is considered to be “in the show” and they refer to anything park goers don’t see as “backstage”.

This leads to the most incredible marketing strategies as well. In fact the entire concept of “marketing” is based on the need for empathy in addressing potential customers’ needs, before ever designing or building a product. Starting from empathy reduces advertising costs by bringing the need for advertising down to simply informing the customer, that the product they want exists, the price it’s available at and where to acquire it. No fancy sales pitch is ever going to be as good at convincing someone, as a person suddenly finding a product they were already wishing existed.

Parable Thinking and the Genius of Jesus

Imagine for a moment your boss says to your team of 12 that he wants you to start a movement. That movement has to last at least two thousand years and become one of the most dominant movements in the history of the world. You get no weapons, you’ll be hunted by the largest army the world has ever known from day one. Your funding and resources? Good luck with that. As you start to zone out at the sheer impossibility of your new job duties he mentions casually that he’ll be out of town on business, and make sure everything is in order upon his return.

You got problems.

So how do you solve these problems when the guy doling out these instructions has not really done much besides miracles (which he didn’t leave any notes about), and speaking in riddles?

About those riddles. What exactly is a “fisher of men”? It’s the description you give to a fisherman about his new recruiting duties. He’s about to remap a mental model of fishing onto recruiting (aka “evangelism”). You see, if you’ve never been fishing you might not really grasp the skill set in the first place, but it’s important to understand, as the adage goes: “There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore (or in a boat), with a stick, like an idiot.” But it IS a skill set. There’s a time to reach for a gaff, a time to reach for a net, and a time to pack it in, because the storm’s coming.

So many of his followers were from the working classes that he drew the parallel of judgement as a boss coming in unexpectedly (as many of them could likely relate to) and haranguing workers about their laziness, or commending them for a job well done. Naturally, the way to be prepared not knowing when the boss is coming, is to always be prepared.

So how does one unpack this kind of toolbox for practical application outside the spiritual and religious realms? It’s not easy, Jesus said this technique would hide the secrets of the Kingdom from the wise.

Many strategists advocate simply adding more tools to he box, and that’s not a bad idea. Studying other disciplines and the problem solving techniques they use is likely to lead one to start borrowing their mental toys for use in one’s own field and that’s kind of the point.

A while back a curious study of Nobel Prize winners came out noting how many of them took up various arts as a hobby. Of course, correlation is not causation, except that 7 out of 10 of them pointed at their artistic hobby as leading directly to their Nobel Prize.