Friday (after)Noon Lights: April 3, 2020
A bit late on the post here, but we did our second session on Uncertainty and Randomness, covering a Masters in Business Episode, an article from The Atlantic and with guest Brian White.
The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks
By Ben Cohen (interviewed on Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz)
March 29, 2020
This is an excellent introduction to the Masters in Business Podcast, which I strongly recommend. The episode covers how we understand and deal with randomness as it applies to companies, sports and various other disciplines. There are various excellent points and I would not be doing it justice to summarize them, but you can access it above.
In addition to a walk down memory lane with NBA Jam, one interesting discussion was on how listeners did not like how actual randomness would lead to Apple or Spotify having the same song or artist in a row when set to random shuffle, so these companies had to remove the true randomness in their shuffling algorithm to not upset us.
The Uncertainty Virus
The Atlantic
Jerry Useem
April 2, 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/uncertainty-virus/609223/
This insightful article tied together our current conditions with the stock market’s crash in 1929 and noted the ongoing human struggle with uncertainty. One of many notable quotes captures a main point that we discussed: “FOTU [Fear of the Unknown] is not only a fear but the fear on which all the others rest. … And marketers prey on FOTU all the time. A comedian friend of mine once had a bit about shopping in the dairy aisle and spotting a bottle of “cow-dung free” milk. The joke makes a serious point: Once we’re aware of things we don’t know, we start to wonder about things we might be unaware of not knowing.”
Many thanks to Brian for joining us and for sharing his knowledge and insights.
I hope to post the summary and links from the third session which focused on Luckin Coffee soon...
Take care,
PB