Our Own Ignorance

So Joe Bidden is credited as saying during the crash of 1929 FDR got on the TV and calmed Americans while putting a plan into action to solve the crisis. The problem is that in 1929 Herbert Hoover was the President and the first 200 TV sets were not in use until 1936.

No wonder with leadership like this we don't understand the workings of the market. But I said I would talk about measuring events and I need to explain that in this post.

When I teach Introduction to Physics in my College Classes, there is a process that I like to do with my class that revolves around the scientific process of understanding Physical events. I bring in a phone book and I ask a student to pick any topic that might be in the yellow pages of the phone book.

Once the students suggested fence builders, once they suggested Massage Therapists... The topic has been widely varied. But the results have been consistent. Once we have a topic and a phone book sitting on the desk unopened, we begin to determine the number of listings in the phone book for the topic selected. Yes it would be easier to just open it up and count, but the example would be lost.

Typically we start by guessing the population for the area, then depending on the nature of the service we guess the numbers associated with the grouping and so forth. By making enough guesses we then combine our guesses and numbers to get us to a final result. Once we have come to our final result, we open the book and count the number listed. In all the semesters I have taught this topic, we have never been wrong by more than 10%. In many cases we have been spot on. How does this work and how does it apply to the election and the market. I will post that more, I need to go look the market - oddly enough my long purchases from yesterday are up in the pre-market LOL I might want to sell them and take some profit have to see how much money it is.