[Power of Why? ](http://k2invest.blogspot.in/2016/01/power-of-why.html)

Monday, 8 February 2016

05:41

CharlieMunger tells that

If you want to get smart, the question you have to keep asking is "why, why, why, why?"

Beingcurious is one of our moral duties.

\1. What we can learn from Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardoda Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect,musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist,cartographer, botanist, and writer. He was always curious in searching foranswers for things he did not understand. From '[Creative Whack Pack](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0880793589)'

Don't be afraid to show your ignorance!

[![why-whackpack](file:////Users/kchandra/Library/Group%20Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/msoclip1/01/C371EC0A-72FD-D04A-8259-402386BFC11B.png)](https://janav.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/why-whackpack.jpg)

\2. What we can learn from Carl Braun

CarlBarun a very great businessman, created the CF Braun Engineering company. Thecompany designed and built oil refineries. He had a rule in his company. It iscalled as the five W's. Excerpt from [Elementary WorldlyWisdom – Charlie Munger](http://ycombinator.com/munger.html)

You had to tell who was going to do what, where, when and why. Andif you wrote a letter or directive in the Braun company telling somebody to dosomething, and you didn't tell him why, you get fired. In fact, you would getfired if you did it twice.

Why is this important?

Excerptfrom [ElementaryWorldly Wisdom – Charlie Munger](http://ycombinator.com/munger.html)

You might ask why is this so important? Well, again that's a rule ofPsychology. Just as you think better if you array knowledge on a bunch ofmodels that are basically answers to the question, why, why, why, if you tellpeople why, they'll understand it better, they'll consider it more important,and they'll be more likely to comply. Even if they don't understand yourreason, they'll be more likely to comply.

Iron Rule to Remember

Excerptfrom [ElementaryWorldly Wisdom – Charlie Munger](http://ycombinator.com/munger.html)

So there's an iron rule that just as you want to start gettingworldly wisdom by asking why, why, why, in communicating with other peopleabout everything, you want to include why, why, why. Event if it's obvious,it's wise to stick in the why.

\3. Rote Memorization

Ialways wondered why are the concepts that I studied in school are not useful inreal life. It turns out that these concepts would have been super useful, if Ihad them in usable form. Since I memorized most of these concepts in schoolthey are not available to me in usable form. From [Psychologyof Human Misjudgment – Charlie Munger](http://www.rbcpa.com/Mungerspeech_june_95.pdf)

Well we all know people who've flunked, and they try and memorizeand they try and spout back and they just… it doesn't work. The brain doesn'twork that way. You've got to array facts on the theory structures answering thequestion "Why?". If you do not do that, you just cannot handle the world.

Thisreminds me of Chauffeur Knowledge, speech by Charlie Munger in [AcademicEconomics](http://www.rbcpa.com/Munger_UCSBspeech.pdf)

By the way there's a famous story about Max Planck which isapocryphal: After he won his prize, he was invited to lecture everywhere, andhe had this chauffeur that drove him around to give public lectures all throughGermany. And the chauffeur memorized the lecture, and so one day he said, "GeeProfessor Planck, why don't you let me try it as we switch places?" And so hegot up and gave the lecture. At the end of it some physicist stood up and poseda question of extreme difficulty. But the chauffeur was up to it. "Well," hesaid, "I'm surprised that a citizen of an advanced city like Munich is askingso elementary a question, so I'm going to ask my chauffeur to respond."

\4. What we can learn from Journalists

Inorder to research a story, Journalists relies on six questions. They are who,what, when, where, why and how.  Excerpt from [Brainstorming](http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/brainstorming/)

In this technique you would use the "big six" questions thatjournalists rely on to thoroughly research a story. The six are: Who?, What?,When?, Where?, Why?, and How?. Write each question word on a sheet of paper,leaving space between them. Then, write out some sentences or phrases inanswer, as they fit your particular topic. You might also answer into a taperecorder if you'd rather talk out your ideas.

Now look over your batch of responses. Do you see that you have moreto say about one or two of the questions? Or, are your answers for eachquestion pretty well balanced in depth and content? Was there one question thatyou had absolutely no answer for? How might this awareness help you to decidehow to frame your thesis claim or to organize your paper? Or, how might itreveal what you must work on further, doing library research or interviews orfurther note-taking?

\5. What we can learn from Birthday Paradox Problem

Inthe excellent article on [How to Read Mathematics – Shai Simonson](http://www.ed.sc.edu/raisse/pdf/MathArticles/HowtoReadMathematics.pdf) takes the BirthdayParadox problem and solves the problem step by step. Take a print out of thisand read it several times. If you are really interested in his teachings thenyou should read '[Rediscovering Mathematics](http://www.amazon.com/Rediscovering-Mathematics-You-Do-Math/dp/0883857707)'

Problem Statement: A professor offers to betanyone in a class of 30 random students that there are at least two people inthe class with the same birthday (month and day and not necessarily year).Would you accept the bet? What if there were fewer people in the class?

Solution: Let birthdays of n people beuniformly distributed among 365 days of the year (for simplicity assume no leapyears). We prove that the probability that at least two people have the samebirthday (month and day) equals

1 - ((365 * 364 *... * (365 - n + 1))) / 365 ^ n

For n =30, the probability of at least one matching birthday is about 71%

Findingthe answer to this problem is not important. In fact most of us would have solved the problem in school by memorizing the formula andsubstituting different values for n. What did we learn by doing that? Yes wecould have got 100/100 but what is the use? It is the steps he takes the readerthrough is very important. Spend some time to go through his explanation.It is really worth it.

It shows the power of Why?

[The Psychologyof Human Misjudgement - Charlie Munger Full Speech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqzcCfUglws)

BuffettMungerWisdom

 

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Source

[https://janav.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/why/](https://janav.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/why/)