The Stacking Benjamins Show Ben Orlin Reveals the Fun Side of Math! (SB1587)
Oct 14, 2024
Ben Orlin, author of 'Math with Bad Drawings' and engaging math teacher, joins the discussion to bring the joy back into numbers. He reveals how understanding statistics and standard deviation can uncover hidden stories in finances. Ben emphasizes embracing mistakes as essential for learning, and his humor makes math relatable. The talk also highlights investing strategies for achieving millionaire status through patience, while Doug shares amusing trivia about mean and median averages, showing that math can indeed be fun!
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2008 Career Fair
- Ben Orlin describes the Yale career fair during the 2008 financial crisis.
- Investment bank tables were empty, leading many graduates to alternative careers like teaching.
Dice and Probability
- Rolling multiple dice creates a bell curve, concentrating results around the average value.
- Multiplying a single die roll yields more extreme outcomes, highlighting a crucial statistical difference.
Mortgages as Dice
- The 2008 mortgage crisis mirrors the 'one die multiplied' scenario, where seemingly independent mortgages became correlated.
- This correlation amplified risk, leading to widespread defaults when the housing market dipped.