Luck vs. Logic!!!

I had an interesting experience today in my Marketing Strategy class that reminded me of the movie Ajnabee in which Akshay Kumar makes well calculated moves, and bases everything on perfect logic but still losses out to Bobby Deol who bases his moves on sheer “Itefaq” in win-loose game. We were asked by our professor to play a game. The rules of the game were that each person has to write a number on the paper between 0-100. Anyone who writes a number equivalent to 0.7 of the class average will win the game.

Did you catch the caveat! You know that everyone else is trying to win and hence try to put across a number that is 0.7 time of what other will think will the winning number. The concept the Prof was trying to push across was to think the rationality of the competition and understand the level to which we should try to go before killing each other. Imagine this number was your profit margin and with this win-loose situation whole industry is going to crash. Anyways, back to the game. I applied my rationality that most people will think till three steps – 0.7 * 0.7 * 0.7 * 100 ~35 (we were to write in whole numbers). I decided to go one step deeper to win and came up with 25. I wasn’t still convinced as I thought i can’t win at 25. First because many people will write 25 and second, some people will be just 2 steps deeper and some will be 4. I trusted my class to be more rational than me and decided to push my no: from 25 to 27 to accommodate the increase in average the 2-level-deep rational people will cause. I applied my logic and was eagerly waiting for results. Results were announced & class average was 26. I missed by a whisker.

A quite shy guy, Manoj, sitting next to me emerged as the winner. He was the only one to write 26 in the whole class. Wow, I thought my logic was pretty close but he did better. I was fairly satisfied though until I happened to talk to Manoj how exactly he came up with 26 and here’s what he said that left me dumb-folded. “My b’day is on 13th and its extremely lucky for me. I submitted my ISB application on 13th, interviewed on 13th as well. Numerous times, it has paid off to me. So, I was sure that I will be putting any number as a multiple of 13. 13, 26 & 39 were the only options since I know people here will go for a kill. I choose the middle one and it worked. That’s it”. As simple as that and he defeated me!

I may sound too committed to win above. The story is just a little anecdote but think of other issues we face. We put across our best foot forward to learn & win something but things work out in favor of someone who’s thought process was completely radical. Logic vs. Luck - isn’t it. I realize that we may complicate ourselves as much as we can but the true beauty of life lies in simplicity. Many times things are not in our control beyond a limit, and it’s best to leave those elements at the fence and move forward. Accepting and consciously living this fact that luck has a role to play in our lives makes life lot easy to understand, live, and love.