Statistically Speaking

New York City the city that never sleeps?  Maybe because there is enough traffic to pay for the salary of the night shift.

If you can’t find it in New York City – it doesn’t exist.  Again maybe there is enough traffic  to support the special specialty shops. (google button shop – did you know there are seven button shops in New York City?).

With 90% of the world now connected to some sort of wired or wireless Internet service there is an opportunity to serve all  sorts of micro-markets for all sorts of good, bad and indifferent things. But in the people-to-people world there is still the need to make sure there is enough foot traffic to sustain your business before you can get financing. Communities know they have arrived when they can support one of the national coffee and donut shops. Tim Horton's, Starbucks, Second Cup, etc...all have their marketing departments watching demographics to see where their next 'opening soon' sign should go.

Statistics are fundamental to business, but they can also help us understand a lot that goes on in the world around us.

My commute to work is somewhere between 35 minutes and 180 minutes. A lot of time to ponder life.  I leave at the same time, but not necessarily arrive at the same time - the joys of commuting. After several months of being in traffic it seemed that there were always ‘stupid drivers’ on the road, maybe more so during the full moon, or the day after a play-off hockey game, or the day after a daylight savings time shift.  One would think that at least on some days sanity would rule the road. Days when everyone knew what lane to be in for their exit, the speed limit, how to merge, etc.... What are the odds of this happening?

Considering that at any given time a certain percentage of people are on some sort of cold medication, on some sort of upper, downer or side-wayer, are mad at the world, late for work, first time on this part of the road, sleep deprived, sans their morning coffee, or over-coffeed, ADHD, etc... it is likely that there will always be number of a stupid drivers, and it really only takes one to mess up the drive for everyone behind them. There is an old joke that one out of three people are crazy, and if the person on either side of you looks normal guess who is the one? This is actually not far off the mark, apparently the statistic is around 27%. So aside from situations where there is an effective filter, in any interaction with the general population approximately 27% of those you encounter are actually not entirely present in the moment. Does this change how you interact with the world?

Filters such as employment interviews and social dynamics can only weed out the obvious misfits. The cold medicated, sleep deprived, mad at the world or late onset psychological-disordered can still be in the next cubicle and not be spinning and puking green pea soup. So now consider that, even with some very effective filters,  a certain percentage, but now  less than 27%, are still not entirely present in the moment. Does this change how you interact with the world?

If one looks at leadership qualities and at ‘leaders’ there seems to be almost a noble group of leaders and an evil group of leaders. It is actually only in the motivations that the noble group and the evil group demonstrate notable differences – the sociopathic leader is only one or two shades different from the rest. So, in spite of years of rigorous filtering, the reprobates leading the ‘Enrons’ of the world still manage to reach a high level of achievement. Considering that a certain percentage of the leaders you work with are potentially from the dark side, does this change how you interact with the world?

Now consider that you may be the one on the wrong side of the filter. In many ways you still demonstrate to the rest your fundamental characteristics. Does that change how you interact with the world?

Next blog, a look at the bell curve, it started as a graph of the population distribution of one measure of intelligence - can we consider it a demonstration of skills and competencies?