Regression to the mean is a common statistical phenomenon that can mislead us when we observe the real world. Learning to recognize when regression to the mean is at play can help leaders avoid misinterpreting data and seeing patterns that don’t exist One of the main functions of a leader is to minimize the number of bad judgements or decisions and to address the weak spots in the system. Learning about "Regression towards the mean" certainly helps them a lot. Why am I talking about this now? It's because of the recent test match between India and Australia. What has that got to do with this statistical concept? Ever since I read the book "Thinking Fast and Slow" by the Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, I have falling in love with this concept. This book which mainly deals about biases that cloud our reasoning - reveals that there is a whole set of logical errors that we commit in our daily lives based on our intuition and our brains do not deal with simple statistics very well. One of the errors which he explains in detail is the "Regression towards the mean" Let me explain what it is. The notion of regression to the mean was first worked out by Sir Francis Galton. The rule goes that, in any series with complex phenomena that are dependent on many variables, where chance is involved, and extreme outcomes tend to be followed by more moderate ones. So I bet that India after this famous and record breaking OTP numbers 492040840410 (Total:36, do not share this OTP with anyone) will obviously show a better result in the next innings. What do you attribute this increase to - towards the motivational speech of Ravi Shastri? Or the intervention of Saurav Ganguly or the increased application of all the batsmen or a combination of all? Taking the famous example from Daniel Kahneman's book - Kahneman recalls watching men’s ski jump, a discipline where the final score is a combination of two separate jumps. Aware of the regression to the mean, Kahneman was startled to hear the commentator’s predictions about the second jump. He writes: Norway had a great first jump; he will be tense, hoping to protect his lead and will probably do worse” or “Sweden had a bad first jump and now he knows he has nothing to lose and will be relaxed, which should help him do better. Kahneman points out that the commentator had noticed the regression to the mean and come up with a story for which there was no causal evidence. This is not to say that his story could not be true.
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In this ever increasing world of complexity, SIMPLICITY is the sought out skill that will differentiate between success and failure. This was the view of Edward DeBono and I would like to take this opportunity to take you all on a brief tour of what does simplicity means in this 30 minutes video. I also plan to have a full version of this topic later in this month, Wish you all view the video and let me know the comments and improvements possible. I have tried to keep in short - although it is a very big topic. It's my experiment to keep in simple. Let me know your comments in a simple way, Just leave a "+" sign if you like it or a "-" sign if you feel it needs to be improved. Cannot make feedback any simpler. If the poor boy cannot come to Education then Education must go to him The internet today is doing exactly what Swami Vivekananda said. The internet has penetrated into everyone - irrespective of time zones, geography, language, and medium. The smartphone's hegemony makes perfect our evolutionary sense: Humans have a deep urge to acquire knowledge/information. Even before the monkey descended from the trees, our brains were wired for survival. At that point of time it was foraging for food. Nothing has changed since then except that today we need to forage for information too. I am not trying to rationalize why we are constantly urging ourselves to check the phones every 3 minutes and multitask. We have all got into this habbit irrespective of our likes or dislikes. Monkey see - monkey click - monkey swipe - monkey gets reward. What instant gratification has done is to make the brain's focus ability lower than when electronics were not prevalent. The amount of screen time in this age of digital distraction has become a buzz word amongst all parents’ conversation and thinking. One question which immediately pops-up is whether the brains which are wired for survival has evolved to include information foraging into its skill set? We can see this in other primates and I believe that it was critical then in the system for survival that they seek out for food which now has been hijacked and directed to seek out for information. The disturbing part in this evolution is that it has started driving us, like addictive behaviour, into the negative cycle even though we know the after effects of this habits. The follow up question which comes is why do we then engage in this info-foraging even after knowing it could be self-destructive or counter-productive? The remarkable ability of the human brain is to set really high-level goals, which are sometime complex too. This ability to chase these goals collide with our known fundamental limitation in trying to enact the goal. We call these abilities as cognitive controls. In plain English it means the process by which goals or plans influence our behaviour. This process can inhibit automatic responses and even influence working memory. There is a triad - Attention, Working Memory & Goal management which runs inside our brains that tries to switch between the three causing us to perform multi-tasking. This is where it is self-destructive and we all fail. Why? The Millennials are next in line to run this crazy, messed-up world. Millennials, in my dictionary, are those born between the years 1995 and 2005, so this generation includes all those born after globalisation in India. There is, however, a serious problem with this generation that needs to be addressed, and that is their intense lack of dedication in anything. This problem stems from many factors of their different upbringings. Before I setup the context, I would like to spend some time on what dedication means to me. While searching the internet for some research material I accidentally fell upon this data - Ezra Pound's The Cantos is a 120-section poem which explores the author's controversial opinions on government, economics, war, fascism, and a whole lot of other seemingly non-poetic topics. Pound also famously spent 57 years on this collection, which was still unfinished at the time of his death. Leave the unfinished part but look at this man’s dedication to work on his goal for more than half a century. Mindboggling it is – I can’t even think of how he got himself to motivate for this long. Most of us would have given up within 5 weeks (MAX) from start of this poem collection of his. Another example (this time with a positive end) is “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell. It reportedly took journalist Margaret Mitchell 10 years to write and publish her staggering Civil War-era tome novel. I can only imagine her level of dedication. To start a project that would take almost a decade to complete seems almost incomprehensible to me with no surety that the outcome will become famous or successful or both. So is dedication necessary for all of us? Well to answer it plainly it is the only ingredient that you require for a guaranteed success. So what are some of the reasons why the generation of today are having less inclination for dedication towards work, play, life, family etc.? There seems to be clearly some kind of common trend across the globe. The possible causes may be [Spoiler Alert – A bit lengthy read but worth every word] Social media is a boon for all the online retailers. Well it's a generalization but still looks to be true. Most of them try to entice their users to make that final click so that they earn something from online. I like social media since it allows me to make friends with people I know and those whom I don't know but share a common interest. It also allows me to build network, get instant gratifications on my opinions and at a lot of time provides the freedom from actual work in my office. Having said that, social media can also turn out to be your main hindrance towards success. One of the main hindrance it does to in your focus or concentration. On countless occasions I have found myself lost while browsing through YouTube or click on tweets, watching Big Boss troll videos and Tamil cinema memes. [The list is endless, trust me] In all these times, I have never realised that this time is hurting my success factor. Just like everyone I am also ambitious and do not want to waste time, rob my precious hours, and steal my success - it all starts with a little click to kill your time [you would have planned for 10 minute break] but you wind up losing considerable amount of your productive hours. Social media is also addictive in nature, once you allow your temptation you will be sucked into it, [Make me reminded of my Grandma's Jhangiri, it all starts with one and ends with 12 and a SLAP] Not only that, it also gives you a false sense of connection and without your knowledge your privacy is invaded to an considerable extent. So you are wondering, having said all these negative how can we make this villain work for you? I have found 3 methods [not calling them easy] where I am the one in control. |
AuthorVasudevan is a Leadership Mentor and an Executive coach. I run an online website geared towards helping creative entrepreneurs and future managers to build their dreams. Archives
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