Deal or No Deal

It's a wonderful game show ever to be created on national television.

Why would it be so?

The game show enables viewers to understand human behaviour and internalise their own personality better. The show applies 3 most fundamental concepts of life. Statistics, risk taking and greed.

As the participant chooses his case to keep, statistics plays its part. He would have a 1 out of 26 chances in choosing the top amount. After that, he would need to eliminate the other cases in an excitment driven show, at times heart-wrenching to the participant. I'll not mentioned the process here as there're many websites that explain it clearly.

What the participant hopes for is to have many of the huge money cases left after the rounds of elimination to ensure that the banker offers the participant a good price for the case he kept.

If the banker offers a low price, the participant enacts the concept of risk taking and opens a few more cases to get that offer to a higher level. Just so often, the risk taking concept changes to greed as the participant gets drawn too deep in thoughts of winning the biggest money amount. The participant takes too much risk for too little return on the belief that he is being lucky which eventually causes him to obtain a lower offer from the banker.

Of course there are rational participants who play the game to the best of their statistical minds and walk away with the most money obtainable, even though that money is not the highest case amount but just the offer from the banker.

So what can be used in all of this in life? Plenty!

First, no matter which type of industry you are working in, statistics plays its part. And for those self-employed, do not think statistics have no part to play. Statistics is being acted upon daily, even with the insurance you bought.

Second, risk taking is part of life. We take risk everyday, from crossing the road to taking the train. But what is most applicable on risk taking is this. Parents take the risk of putting their children into reputable schools with the hope they would turn out good. Pupils take the risk of studying subjects with the hope they would obtain the best grades. Teenagers taking the risk of knowing more friends with the hope they would like best friends but may mixed up with the wrong company.

Well, I believe you get to see the picture. No matter what is done in life, there are risks. It is a matter of how much risk you are taking and whether does the return of the risk (measured in terms of utils and not money) is beneficial to you. Some risks are worth taking, and others not.

Lastly, you must always know why you are there. There, in the sense of where you are, the situation you are in, the event you placed yourself. Know what you objective is. Do not follow greed and forget the reason you are there. Greed has many forms, and many of us know its first, which is money. But greed can also be in terms of utils. With many utils gained, many do forget their first objective, their reason of being there and continue to gain those utils as their greed sets in.

As such, know who you are, what your objective is, and do your statistics to obtain the best risk taking possible. Do not let greed rear its ugly head over you.