Who says there is no Luck?

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. - John Heywood.

On 14th July 2019 two events defied above proverb.

New Zealand lost the Cricket World Cup because of a rule which was as good as deciding the winner based on tossing of a coin. Please note England team also played excellent cricket.

Despite better in all parameters Roger Federer  lost Wimbledon 2019 finals. Remember DJokovic played equally well and won a hard earned victory.

Now what luck is:

Buffet made a return of 8000% return on USD 25 million invested in See's Candies (1972). 

First on the return:

“We put $25 million into it and it’s given us over $2 billion of pretax income, well over $2 billion, and we’ve used it to buy other businesses,” Buffett said. 

Now on Luck:

And now it’s confession time. It should be noted that no consultant, board of directors or investment banker pushed me into the mistakes I will describe. In tennis parlance, they were all unforced errors.

To begin with, I almost blew the See’s purchase. The seller was asking $30 million, and I was adamant about not going above $25 million. Fortunately, he caved. Otherwise I would have balked, and that $1.35 billion would have gone to somebody else. 

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is an economist. I came to know about Thomas Sowell from Prof. Sanjay Bakshi. An article detailing his best of thoughts was captured in Happy 89th birthday (June 30) to Thomas Sowell, one of the greatest living economists by Mark J Perry.

Article contains 15 quotations of Thomas Sowell. I highly recommend reading it. I will reproduce one quote here:

Diversity. “If there is any place in the Guinness Book of World Records for words repeated the most often, over the most years, without one speck of evidence, “diversity” should be a prime candidate. Is diversity our strength? Or anybody’s strength, anywhere in the world? Does Japan’s homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer? Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity — or does the very word “Balkanization” remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times? Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization?

“When in Rome do as the Romans do” was once a common saying. Today, after generations in the West have been indoctrinated with the rhetoric of multiculturalism, the borders of Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic have been thrown open to people who think it is their prerogative to come as refugees and tell the Romans what to do — and to assault those who don’t knuckle under to foreign religious standards.

It has not been our diversity, but our ability to overcome the problems inherent in diversity, and to act together as Americans, that has been our strength.”

A twitter handle Thomas Swoell presents Daily Quotes from Thomas Sowell. 

Why Gadgets are banned in exams?

Examination centers ban usage of Electronic Gadgets.

It is high time even interviews should ban usage of Electronic Gadgets. Below video will blow you away:

To understand the process listen to Arnav Kapur ted talk: