“Data is the sword of the 21st century, those who wield it well, the Samurai.”
Jonathan Rosenberg
Let’s talk about people skills. And let’s use stats in this episode to improve them.
Has it ever happened with you that people tend to quite often disappoint you right after you’ve just appreciated them?
Either it has, or you don’t appreciate the people in your life often enough. 🙂
In this episode of The Unlearning Playground Podcast, I talk about one powerful tip on better understanding this dynamic of dealing with people using a statistical fact that goes by the name regression to the mean.
Stay with me till the end of this episode to actually improve upon your people skills multifold.
Do I deliver on the promises?
Only one way to find out.
Dig right in.
Until next time.
Peace out.
<OUTLINE>
| 00:00 | Intro |
| 01:33 | Rewards vs punishments – What works better? |
| 04:44 | The core concept – Regression to the mean |
| 06:16 | Luck and exams |
| 09:20 | The sports illustrated jinx |
| 12:12 | Why this is hard to understand |
| 14:53 | Key takeaways from this episode |
Check it out on your platform of choice.
Or listen on the custom player below
People skills are an important part of any job we humans do.
Now that’s another advantage our brand new toys, the AI bots, would have over us.
For the time being, of course.
People skills, in fact, play a fundamental role in all aspects of our lives, not just our jobs.
Being a good parent, a worthy partner, a dear friend, a reachable relative, a loving sibling, a caring child – we get better at all of these and many more roles we play in our everyday lives if we are good at our people skills.
And one thing I usually find fundamentally lacking in a lot of people is the ability to understand other people around them and also to understand the bigger picture concerning the situation around them.
This was the key motivation to stitch together this particular episode of The Unlearning Playground podcast.
It was a difficult episode to design, because I wanted to cover a rather tough concept in a manner that’s easy to understand and at the same time, I wanted to be a bit esoteric too so as to help put forward a contrarian point of view, something that I consider to be a hallmark of my content.
The thread I pull on, in this episode, is of understanding and reading our expectations from people around us better.
And to build on it, I use the concept of “regression to the mean”
Regression to the mean is a well known statistical fact. Well known of course only in circles that study and/or use mathematics regularly. And well understood only in circles that love it. Each of these circles only keeps getting smaller and smaller.
I personally think that it is one of those facts of nature that can be used to explain a whole lot of things not concerning maths per se, but concerning our everyday lives in general.
It helps to explain why, even though rewarding people for improved performance works better than punishing them for not doing so well, we lack the motivation to appreciate when people around us do good but never need an external push to voice our disappointments.
It helps to provide a better and a more practical explanation for stuff like jinxes or that hindi version of them – “nazar lag gai“.
I think it’s time you get going to the playground. This is easily one of the most impactful episodes I have done on the podcast so far, and I know there are better ones coming.
You can catch up on all the episodes from our playlist here.
For this current episode, get into it here.