If a big corporation opens a branch in your local community, how you see that move on a transactional level may tell about you more than you think. There are three ways to view the start of the new business in your community.

1. these “rich” folks are here again to exploit our people and make more money for themselves.
2. this is an opportunity for my people to play the game smarter and gain more from this interaction.
3. this is an opportunity for the corporation to expand and achieve its financial goal. …

Game theory, invented by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, tries to model and understand pragmatic human behavior through social interactions. Because we live in a competitive world, it is hard to marry our proclivity to cooperate or compete. In the Game theory, outcomes depend on the actions of other players. This depicts the actual world because the interference of other people in our community influences virtually all of what we do.

Prisoner’s dilemma, an example of game theory, demonstrates a scenario where cooperation is a terrible choice. …

Selling is easier when you don’t have to sell but help

I feel like everybody hates to sell. Well, except some weirdly wired people who just get excited when talking about products or services they have tried or one they are obligated to sell. According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 4.3% of the world is in sales, and for good reasons. Nobody wants to convince anyone to buy anything. It is not only uncomfortable for you, but it is also uncomfortable for the person you are trying to coax.

With the use of social media, email marketing…

I could feel blood dripping down the walls of my chest. The sensation was like a tickle on the inside. I may have burst a vein or an artery. My mind was racing. I couldn’t understand what was happening. I grabbed my chest with both hands, one overlapping the other like a doctor performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on himself. I limped, then I stopped walking. I was trying to breathe deeply. Calm down, Prince! calm down, Prince!

Sometimes, this weird sensation is like a sting of a bee, sharp and instantaneous. It leaves a paralyzing fear. …

I had published two articles on Medium before I joined the Medium partner program. I have always been an avid reader and an aperiodic writer. While reading great articles here on Medium, I decided to flex my writing muscles. I thought I had great ideas I wish to share. So why not earn some money doing so?

To maximize my earning potential, I clicked on every article like this one I am writing this moment. If the title had anything to do with “Medium earnings” or “Medium how-to”, you can bet I read it.

“How I earned my first $XXX…

When a layperson thinks of randomness, they think of the outcome of rolling a fair die or tossing a coin. If you roll a fair die, any of the six probable outcomes have an equal chance of showing up. Non technically, we understand that the outcome of rolling the dice was not a result of any known deterministic factor. It showed out of randomness.

A phenomenon is random if the outcome happens haphazardly, unpredictably, or by chance. Broadly, there are two types of randomness;

Randomness due to lack of knowledge: Also called classical randomness, occurs when an outcome seems random…

The People Who Make Ideas Go Viral

Malcolm Gladwell started his best-selling book, The Tipping Point, with the story of how an old and dying shoe brand rose to become, according to Gladwell, the staple of the wardrobe of the young American male. The Hush Puppies shoe style resurrected and won several awards just because some young folks started to wear the shoes. Some designers picked and used the shoe for an haute couture. And by word of mouth, the shoe style had infected people like a virus.

The Tipping Point is about how information, fashion, and trends spread like viruses and the people behind this epidemic-like…

Understanding Probability

I have heard people give definitive figures on the probability of the existence or nonexistence of a God. A friend told me there is a 99% probability that a god doesn’t exist (he got that from Richard Dawkins, I believe). Probability is a simple way for us to make sense of the world full of uncertainties. In some games and lotteries, we can use probability to make better bets against the alternative outcomes.

Sometimes, it is as simple as the probability problem they give in elementary school. If I ask you, what is the probability that you’d pick a green…