╠ The Numbers Game╣

I've always grown up believing that everything can be broken down into numbers. The reasons why we do things can always be broken down into a cost/benefit analysis and thus the best outcome can always be reached.

However my stint in retail has made me rethink this. Following my method you should easily be able to write programs to tell you where to put what products in order to get the highest sales. But life is not so simple. There are far too many random factors the main one of which is that all people while possibly similar are inherently different.

Before I was blindly believing that my up and down days were something to do with myself. One such fear I had was that if I was ever late my nerves got the better of me for not performing and it made me perform worse. However after turning up an hour late one day I had a scorcher that put this fear to rest.

As much as statistics can help us, when it comes day to day there are simply too many elements to factor them all in. Of course overall your average may be higher if you use statistics as a guide, but they are by no means a be all and end all.

This applies to marketing as much as it does retail. Much like with any day you get a different set of customers walking through the door, with each communication of an ad, the audience changes. The past helps but situations are never the same.

Thus I must change my view, life cannot be ruled by statistic driven decisions. Statistics are simply guides. It is our ability to simply consider the stats and then make gut decisions that gives us the best possible outcome.