I’m confident most of my readers are familiar with Pareto’s Principle, commonly called the 80/20 rule. While the rule started life as a formula to describe the distribution of wealth, it has since found many applications. I’m currently banging my head up against the 80/20 studying for my first exam in 17 years. I’m quietly confident my study thus far will yield 80%. Applying Pareto’s Principle tells me it will take 4 times as much effort to get that last 20%, that’s scary.

I recall being asked by a fellow student if marks mattered. My reply was that I’d interviewed many people and not once did I give much weight to the marks they’d received. I forgot to mention anyone with poor marks would never have even got in front in me. So why should I bother putting in so much more work for the final 20% of marks? The answer is I’m not. I’m not doing it for the extra 20% of marks, I’m doing it as I want to learn this information and retain it.

Retaining the information and folding it into knowledge is what I consider a novel approach. I used to love exams and preferred subjects to be 100% exam based. That’s because I had a phenomenal capacity for short term storage and regurgitation. I was an expert at stick it in and spit it. Sadly at my tender young age my memory is not what it was, though fortunately my knowledge is considerably greater.

This is just a quick note to say I haven’t been and won’t be posting much until after this semester’s final exam on June 16.

My suggested reading is all the articles at GMO and have a long think about their predicted seven year returns for major asset classes. For anyone interested in commodities then this article by Niels Jensen via Data Diary is a must read.

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