Play Hard...

There are birds that fly many hundred miles without a halt. Someone mentioned this to the cicada and the wren, who agreed that such a thing was impossible. 'You and I know very well', they said, 'that the farthest one can ever get even by the most tremendous effort is that elm-tree; and even this one cannot be sure of reaching every time. Often one finds oneself dragged back to earth long before one gets there. All these stories about flying hundreds of miles at a stretch are sheer nonsense.'

Now, that was a classic story. What we learn from it, will be an exercise problem. But here I have a different story to tell. At Singapore all these Chinese type(Mongoloid-Asian) people they really walk very fast. Most of them simply run! Sometimes, when I go for the bust stop I find someone just running to the stoppage. At first I used to wonder 'Why is this moron running so fast? The bus is not even there’. So, after slowly reaching there I find him still panting, give him a smirk and when the bus arrives just get on it together. I win! (Or, do I?)

But then comes the revelation! Every now and then I find that I am just 30 paces behind; there comes the bus, the running guy gets on it and says me sayonara. He wins! And the rate is alarmingly around 2 out of 10.

So, now I stop and reflect. You see, even if I go running still I might lose a bus by being just 30 paces behind. But at least I could say, ‘I couldn’t have made it anyway. No regrets!’ But when I go slow, and the Japanese/Chinese guy says me sayonara. I actually start to regret! I say, ‘I wish I had started faster a bit early.’

Observation, the china man didn’t know whether there will be a bus just when he reaches the stoppage. Still he is not slowing down. And managing to win 20% of the time! And when I win (!), I actually be just equal to him (we get on the bus together). Given all the unbelievable things human being has achieved, 0.2 is a huge winning chance which you cannot just give away.

Moral of the story: Play Hard!

 

Exercise:
1.    What do you learn from the story of cicada and wren? Does it help?
2.    Is ‘sayonara’ a Japanese or Chinese word?
3.    This is a mathematically intriguing problem about the bus story. So follow carefully- As I don’t know when the bus will arrive, it is always possible that just 30 paces before reaching the stop the bus arrives and leaves me. I mean, if the distribution of bus arrival is same, no matter how first I am walking I will have the same number of hit and miss scenario. Then at the beginning why should I walk fast to bus stoppage?
4.    What is the thing that qualifies this blog to be included in this scientific blog listing?