Feb 2019

Hello girlies.  Hello oldest, middlest, and littlest.  (whisper: hello peanut)

Biggest math girl, you were my first mathbaby. 
Middlest math girl, you are an artist, and a force of nature.  I love your wonderful heart.
Littlest math girl, you are brave, and engaging. 

I love you all.  I love you dearly.  You are my favorite people in the whole wide world.

I don't think you heard that.  You might think you did, but I don't think you did.
Classes that I have been in say that when I am self-controlling and think to myself "I'm being a good example", I am in fact kidding myself, because on the outside you have no visibility to what happened.  Those classes say I should narrate, so you can get clues, and see what you are missing.

And now... I return to work. I wish to get the right kind of free time to build this in a suitable and properly noble enough way to be valuable and meaningfully empowering to you when you eventually get to read it.

I should narrate what "I love you means" when the thought traverses my heart.

-Mathdad.

January 2019

Hello girlies.  All three of you.  It is January.  My letters are less frequent, not more.  I don't like that.  My interactions, face-to-face with you are more, not less, and i do like that.  I don't like the zero-sumishness of that.

I love Liz Ryan.  She has a heart, a soul, and a humanity that make me feel valued.  Her approach is very pro-human.  It is the antonym of tyrannical, a more win-win and proactive.  I like it.

Here are some of her webpages:

• (Forbes) 
• (Linked IN) I read this one a lot
• (her page) 
• (Inc)  
• (Glassdoor) 

 So I would like to share some game theory with you girlies.  I read this article (link).  Here is the text of it:

Q. You are very quick to tell people to start job hunting. Sometimes you have to stay and fight.‬ ‪

A. In any other industrialized country I would agree with you, but in the US we have a curious thing called employment at will. You can be fired for any reason, or no reason at all.‬ So staying and fighting can mean getting fired and losing your income before you have a new job. Interestingly, launching a stealth job search and speaking your truth at work both require the same ability:‬ the ability to step through fear. It’s scary to launch a stealth job search, and scary to speak your truth to your boss. Whichever path you choose, you will grow muscles. There is no wrong answer. Do what your gut tells you to do.‬

I would like to tell you about "Game theory" which is better called "Decision Theory" and is the math of making good decisions.

Let's say your boss is a bit of a punk.  Let's say he is verbally denigrating, but not in such a way that there are recordables for HR.  Let's say that he takes things you initiated, things you and only you could make, things that you pushed into being - your children - and claims that they were his, and he alone should get rewarded for them.  (This is not my current boss, Jan 2019, just so you know.)  So you don't like that, and you want to be able to pay rent and buy food while not suffering these moral injustices, so you want to look for a job elsewhere.

Here is a single person, single action, decision matrix.  The rows are actions on your part.  The columns are fundamentally distinct ways the universe responds, they are what reality is. It isn't about the boss, but about whether a husband (or hub) should buy flowers for his wife (or sweetie) if he is unsure that it is his anniversary.  A guy might say getting it right is a win, missing it is a loss, but buying flowers on a non-anniversary is a slight loss, and not buying flowers on an anniversary is a wash.  Wins are +10.  Washes are 0.  Losses are -10's.  small losses can be -5.

+--------+------------+-------------------+---------+---------+
|        |            | Anniversary       | Row Sum |         |
+--------+------------+-------------------+         +---------+
|        |            | Today | Not Today |         |         |
+--------+------------+-------+-----------+---------+---------+
| Action | Buy flower |  +10  |     -5    |    5    | <-- -10="" 0="" code="" flowers="" no="" this="">

 The row (action) with the highest sum is the one where you have the best result no matter the outcome.  A high tech big-brother weights the scores by their estimated probability of occurrence.  If you forget every day of the year, then the weight for getting flowers on the anniversary is 1/365 and the weight for buying flowers but today not being the anniversary is (365-1)/365.




So let's think about the boss.  If you do a normal job search, he can (and likely will) fire you for it.  If you do a stealth job search, then he is less likely to find out until you have a better place to go, and you can have a better work environment.  If you tough it out he might change, find another target/victim, or he might get worse.  Here is a plausible matrix.  If he suddenly becomes less of a jerk during the stealth search, there is no harm and no foul, though I would say leave, because he can just as suddenly change back.




+--------+----------------+----------------+---------+----------+
|        |                | Current        | Row Sum |          |
|        |                | Situation      |         |          |
+--------+----------------+----------------+---------+----------+
|        |                | Better | Worse |         |          |
+--------+----------------+--------+-------+---------+----------+
| Action | Stick it out   |   +10  |  -10  |    0    |          |
+        +----------------+--------+-------+---------+----------+
|        | Stealth Search |   +10  | +10   |    20   | <-- code="" this="">

So people who rob, who have gotten away with it, are much more likely to do it again.  Recidivism rates for all types of crimes are something like 43% over 5 years; that is with prison time, not without.  Petty tyrants with no expectation of punishment do not stop, they only escalate.  This would give a probability weighting to the cells, substantially lowering the "better" column.




You might have different numbers.  Your stuff might look different.  You could get different results.  As long as the values that you place in the cells are realistic for you, and are the best you can get, then you can make better decisions.




Make good decisions, kiddos.  I love you.

-MathDad