If you managed a supermarket, your decisions would depend upon several factors:
- The probabilistic distribution of a diverse set of outcomes (How much beer and chips your customers are likely to buy on a summer weekend)
- How much you’d like to stake with each decision (What percentage of your inventory would be perishable fruits and veggies)
- Other people’s decisions (Which brand of dark chocolates your competitors hold and which ones your customers prefer)
Decision making is hard to teach, and therefore, we don’t include it in the school curriculum. What if we taught kids to play poker instead? Playing poker has the potential to teach the most crucial aspects of decision making. While playing every hand, you have to think of probability, risk and adapt your strategy to other people’s decisions.
Including poker to the school curriculum is one of those crazy ideas that makes sense the more you think about it. Besides, its more fun than cramming facts that are of no use to anybody.
Inspiration: Seth Godin
Observations 