What Did You Learn From Math?

[sravi]

What are some awesome paradigm shifting truths that you learned about life, business and the universe thanks to math?

For me it is the realization that cutting corners just isn't worth it if one sits down and does the actual math. Money if it isn't spent, grows exponentially with time.

I love sitting down with a spreadsheet and doing scary life math or calculations these days.

 

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[RazorCut]

The biggest paradigm shift for me was Pareto's law, the 80/20 principle. I try to use it as much as possible as it is so powerful, especially in business. Knowing there is a big disparity between related figures that you can then use for your advantage is very enlightening.

For example knowing that 80% of your profits will come from 20% of your products and 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your customer base. So finding ways of reducing the costs of those top selling products and identifying the commonalities of your best customers so you can focus on marketing to similar audiences will make a huge difference to your bottom line with the least amount of time and effort.

We should all be leveraging the Pareto principle wherever we can.

 

[Andy Black]

The biggest paradigm shift for me was Pareto's law, the 80/20 principle. I try to use it as much as possible as it is so powerful, especially in business. Knowing there is a big disparity between related figures that you can then use for your advantage is very enlightening.

For example knowing that 80% of your profits will come from 20% of your products and 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your customer base. So finding ways of reducing the costs of those top selling products and identifying the commonalities of your best customers so you can focus on marketing to similar audiences will make a huge difference to your bottom line with the least amount of time and effort.

We should all be leveraging the Pareto principle wherever we can.

And that 80/20 is fractal in nature. Do 80/20 twice and you end up with 64/4.

Half our results could be coming from only 5% of our input.

 

[Andy Black]

Other learnings from Maths:

• Maths Exam Tips

Be neat. Be methodical. Keep moving.

 

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[Ernman]

I love the universality of math. Unlike the rules of language..."i before e, except after c, and wherever else it's wrong" 2+2 is always 4.

 

[Rawseed]

Money if it isn't spent, grows exponentially with time.

I'd change what you said to "Money well invested, grows exponentially with time."

 

[Olimac21]

I loved math when I was a kid because the more you practice the better you got at it, period and there was only one correct answer, not like in social sciences subjects where your answer is open to interpretation

It is an exercise of persistence and logical thinking, if you do 100 exercises of something you are struggling with it is almost impossible to not see improvements.

Recently I read from Charlie Munger the importance of decision trees and inversion (Invert the problem) very basic ideas but powerful if applied correctly.

 

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[Ing]

I love maths, because its straight and honest!
NO bullshit!

 

[Tubs]

When I was in middle school I remember being bored in class and messing around with my calculator. I started messing around with adding up how much I made at my part time job to see how much I'd make over the course of a year and how long it would take me to make a million dollars if I didn't spend any money.

250 years!

So I started calculating for full work weeks with higher wages. Even without factoring in any expenses it was taking an incredibly long time. So I ended up realizing early that a job couldn't make you rich. Messing around with the numbers I realized the importance of scale pretty early on. But I didn't really think of any realistic ways to implement it and promptly forgot about it when I went to lunch the next period