Solve For X Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Solve For X. Here they are! All 96 of them:

It’s more difficult to create the problem than to solve it. All the person trying to solve the problem has to do is always respect the problem’s creator.
Keigo Higashino (The Devotion of Suspect X (Detective Galileo, #3))
There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 52 weeks in a year, and X years in a life. Solve for X.
Jenny Offill (Dept. of Speculation)
I'm an equation that only she solves, these X's and Y's by other names called. My way of dividing is desperately flawed as I multiply the days without her" - Page 165
Maggie Stiefvater (Linger (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #2))
I am an equation that only she solves, These X's and Y's by other names called, My way of division is desperatley flawed, while I multiply days without her.
Maggie Stiefvater (Linger (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #2))
Which is harder: devising an unsolvable problem, or solving that problem?
Keigo Higashino (The Devotion of Suspect X (Detective Galileo, #1))
She has a body for years, and I have an astronaut tan. When we make love it will be like (x + 2)(2x -1) = 0, solve for x.
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
I can't live in the dorms and I can't stop people from calling me a freak, but I can always solve for X.
Heidi Cullinan (Carry the Ocean (The Roosevelt, #1))
Having a child together doesn't guarantee a future wedding. Never let your present partner suffer because of your baby mama or baby daddy. Careful of comprising your future happiness for an 'X you can't solve.
Tshepo Ramodisa (Trust)
Everyone hated Calculus. Quadratic equations, parabolas, logarithms, trigonometry - you name it. It was like floating in an endless, frictionless void traveling at x miles per hour at a descension rate of one half the speed of gravity. Solve for x.
Andrew Sturm (The Kirkwood Project)
They know that as long as they keep us undereducated, or with an inferior education, it’s impossible for us to compete with them for job openings. And as long as we can’t compete with them and get a decent job, we’re trapped. We are low-wage earners. We have to live in a run-down neighborhood, which means our children go to inferior schools. They get inferior education. And when they grow up, they fall right into the same cycle again. This is the American way. This is the American democracy that she tries to sell to the whole world as being that which will solve the problems of other people too.
Malcolm X (Malcolm X Talks to Young People: Speeches in the United States, Britain, and Africa)
But life is not evens and odds and solving for x. And sadness? Sadness is an equation made of all variables.
Emery Lord (The Start of Me and You (The Start of Me and You, #1))
You’re familiar with the P = NP problem, right?” Yukawa asked from behind him. Ishigami looked around. “You’re referring to the question of whether or not it is as easy to determine the accuracy of another person’s results as it is to solve the problem yourself—or, failing that, how the difference in difficulty compares. It’s one of the questions the Clay Mathematics Institute has offered a prize to solve.
Keigo Higashino (The Devotion of Suspect X (Detective Galileo, #3))
Life is about solving for x
Jane Lescarbeau
Turning humans into space colonizers is his stated life’s purpose. “I would like to die thinking that humanity has a bright future,” he said. “If we can solve sustainable energy and be well on our way to becoming a multiplanetary species with a self-sustaining civilization on another planet—to cope with a worst-case scenario happening and extinguishing human consciousness—then,” and here he paused for a moment, “I think that would be really good.
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future)
... she wore a masterpiece smile with smudges of paint and graphite across her cheek, and her eyes were a Jackson Pollock painting.
Ellie Lieberman (Solving for X)
Once while spying on my neighbors I solved for x.
Joshua Beckman (Nice Hat. Thanks.)
At X-Feer, we teach how to solve problems not how to write a code because that's the most important thing in coding.
Ahmed Abu Taha
An absent dad who pays for everything is like a mathematician growing a tomato: tomatoes are great, but how about you solve for fucking x?
David Arnold (I Loved You in Another Life)
For those with a math allergy, my duck soup may contain Algebra. 2X=2, solve for X, may cause an extreme reaction. Ask your doctor if BearPaw Duck Farm's SwimmingBird Soup is right for you.
Jarod Kintz (BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm presents: Two Ducks Brawling Is A Pre-Pillow Fight)
We arrive at demonstrations excited, as if our favorite musician is playing on the speakers' stage. We convince ourselves we are doing something to solve the racial problem when we are really doing something to satisfy our feelings. We go home fulfilled, like we dined at our favorite restaurant. And this fulfillment is fleeting, like a drug high. The problems of inequity and injustice persist. They persistently make us feel bad and guilty. We persistently do something to make ourselves feel better as we convince ourselves we are making society better, as we never make society better.
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist)
There was always so much going on. Never any time to stop and smell the roses. Never any roses to stop and smell anyway.
Ellie Lieberman (Solving for X)
Your mind can solve what to do with a better question. Ask, how can I do X (thing you want) without Y happening (worry, fear or concern) by Z (time to accomplish)?
Richie Norton
Douglas Adams amusingly satirized computer addiction of exactly the kind that hit me. The target of his satire was the programmer who had a particular problem X, which needed solving. He could have written a program in five minutes to solve X and then got on and used his solution. But instead of just doing that, he spent days and weeks writing a more general program that could be used by anybody at any time to solve all similar problems of the general class of X. The fascination lies in the generality and in the purveying of an aesthetically pleasing, user-friendly product for the benefit of a population of hypothetical and very probably non-existent users – not in actually finding the answer to the particular problem X.
Richard Dawkins (An Appetite For Wonder: The Making Of A Scientist)
He chewed on his thumbnail, as if racking his brain for a solution to this equation. But life is not evens and odds and solving for x. And sadness? Sadness is an equation made of all variables.
Emery Lord (The Start of Me and You (The Start of Me and You, #1))
First of all, it’s as distant from the engineering labs as possible. I’m not kidding: if someone grabbed a protractor and solved for x (i.e., the point that’s farthest from Levi’s office), they’d find that x = my desk.
Ali Hazelwood (Love on the Brain)
After learning hundreds of hexes, curses, and spells, all of them having variables that had variables of their own, math was simple. Once you solved for x, it didn’t change if the month was different or if the stars weren’t aligned right.
Ben Reeder (Page of Swords (The Demon's Apprentice, #2))
I read it: "A man earned daily for 5 days and 3 times as much as he paid for his board, after which he was obliged to be idle 4 days," it said. "Upon counting his money after paying for his board he found that he had 2 ten-doller bills and 4 dollers. How much did he pay for the board, and what were his wages?" "All right. Think now," Weaver said. "How would you begin to solve it? What's your X?" I thought. Very hard. For quite some time. About the man and his meager wages and shabby boardinghouse and lonely life. "Where did he work?" I finally asked. "What? It doesn't matter, Matt. Just assign an X to-" "A mill, I bet," I said, picturing the man's threadbare clothing, his worn shoes. "A woolen mill. Why do you think he was obliged to be idle?" "I don't know why. Look, just-" "I bet he got sick," I said, clutching Weaver's arm. "Or maybe business wasn't good, and his boss had no work for him. I wonder if he had a family in the country. It would be a terrible thing, wouldn't it, if he had children to feed and no work? Maybe his wife was poorly, too. And I bet he had..." "Damn it, Mattie, this is algebra, not composition!" Weaver said, glaring at me. "Sorry," I said, feeling like a hopeless case.
Jennifer Donnelly (A Northern Light)
And I knew then what I’d known since my period came: my body was trouble. I had to pray the trouble out of the body God gave me. My body was a problem. And I didn’t want any of these boys to be the ones to solve it. I wanted to forget I had this body at all.
Elizabeth Acevedo (The Poet X)
Through the works of Weinberg, Glashow, and Salam on the electroweak theory and the elegant framework developed by the physicists David Gross, David Politzer, and Frank Wilczek for quantum chromodynamics, the characteristic group of the standard model has been identified with a product of three Lie groups denoted by U(1), SU(2), and SU(3). In some sense, therefore, the road toward the ultimate unification of the forces of nature has to go through the discovery of the most suitable Lie group that contains the product U(1) X SU(2) x SU(3).
Mario Livio (The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry)
But architects are not makers of public policy, and while they can design whatever they please, they can build only what a client wants to pay for. It is not the architect’s role to solve the problem of housing the poor. It is the architect’s role to give the poor the very best housing possible when society decides it is ready to address this urgent problem. The same applies for education and health care and every other social need that can be satisfied, in part, by more and better buildings: it is the job of architects to design the best buildings, the most beautiful and civilized and useful ones, but society must be willing to address these problems before the architect can do his or her best work.
Paul Goldberger (Why Architecture Matters (Why X Matters Series))
When I took over as chair of the fashion program, I was horrified that only the faculty member was allowed to speak in a critique. I'm talking about perfectly nurturing teachers. But the rule was there would be no call of hands for students to contribute their feedback. It was embedded in the department's culture. That was alarming to me. When I was teaching, I was the least important person in the room as far as I was concerned--my students' points of view mattered most. I wanted to learn who they were and teach them to respect one another's perspectives. I would start off by saying something like, "I am having trouble understanding how this work solves the problem at hand. Here are some things about the work that I appreciate: X, Y, Z. But I see these virtues independent of the problem we're solving.
Tim Gunn
Boys have wanted to kiss me since I was eleven, and back then I didn’t want to kiss them. And then it was grown-ass boys, or legit men, giving me sneaky looks, and Mami told me I’d have to pray extra so my body didn’t get me into trouble. And I knew then what I’d known since my period came: my body was trouble. I had to pray the trouble out of the body God gave me. My body was a problem. And I didn’t want any of these boys to be the ones to solve it. I wanted to forget I had this body at all.
Elizabeth Acevedo (The Poet X)
King and Malcolm X were often portrayed as antagonists, in part because of Malcolm’s vitriol and because of comments attributed to King in a 1965 Playboy magazine interview conducted by Alex Haley. But the recent discovery of Haley’s unedited interview transcript shows that King was not as critical as Playboy made him sound. The magazine quoted King saying of Malcolm: “He is very articulate, as you say, but I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views … I have often wished that he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to solve our problem. And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery demagogic oratory in the black ghettoes, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief.” Here’s what King actually said. PLAYBOY: Dr. King, what is your opinion of Negro extremists who advocate armed violence and sabotage?
Jonathan Eig (King: A Life)
It's all over, it's all over,' I muttered to myself. My grief resembled that of a fainthearted student who has failed an examination: I made a mistake! I made a mistake! Simply because I didn't solve that X, everything was wrong. If only I'd solved that X at the beginning, everything would have been all right. If only I had used deductive methods like everyone else to solve the mathematics of life. To be half-clever was the worst thing I could have done. I alone depended upon the inductive method, and for the simple reason I failed.
Yukio Mishima (Confessions of a Mask)
He saw his life as the axiom of equality, but they saw it as another riddle, one with no name—Jude = x—and they had filled in the x in ways Brother Luke, the counselors at the home, Dr. Traylor had never written for him or encouraged him to write for himself. He wishes he could believe their proofs the way they do; he wishes they had shown him how they had arrived at their solutions. If he knew how they had solved the proof, he thinks, he would know why to keep living. All he needs is one answer. All he needs is to be convinced once. The proof needn't be elegant; it need only be explicable.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
The framing format I like has five key elements. You’re an entrepreneur trying to solve horrible problem X, usher in wonderful vision Y, or fix stagnant industry Z. Don’t mention your idea. Frame expectations by mentioning what stage you’re at and, if it’s true, that you don’t have anything to sell. Show weakness and give them a chance to help by mentioning the specific problem that you’re looking for answers on. This will also clarify that you’re not a time waster. Put them on a pedestal by showing how much they, in particular, can help. Explicitly ask for help. Or, in shorter form: Vision / Framing / Weakness / Pedestal / Ask
Rob Fitzpatrick (The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you)
One day, Carmona had an idea. Axcom had been employing various approaches to using their pricing data to trade, including relying on breakout signals. They also used simple linear regressions, a basic forecasting tool relied upon by many investors that analyzes the relationships between two sets of data or variables under the assumption those relationships will remain linear. Plot crude-oil prices on the x-axis and the price of gasoline on the y-axis, place a straight regression line through the points on the graph, extend that line, and you usually can do a pretty good job predicting prices at the pump for a given level of oil price.
Gregory Zuckerman (The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution)
Security is a big and serious deal, but it’s also largely a solved problem. That’s why the average person is quite willing to do their banking online and why nobody is afraid of entering their credit card number on Amazon. At 37signals, we’ve devised a simple security checklist all employees must follow: 1. All computers must use hard drive encryption, like the built-in FileVault feature in Apple’s OS X operating system. This ensures that a lost laptop is merely an inconvenience and an insurance claim, not a company-wide emergency and a scramble to change passwords and worry about what documents might be leaked. 2. Disable automatic login, require a password when waking from sleep, and set the computer to automatically lock after ten inactive minutes. 3. Turn on encryption for all sites you visit, especially critical services like Gmail. These days all sites use something called HTTPS or SSL. Look for the little lock icon in front of the Internet address. (We forced all 37signals products onto SSL a few years back to help with this.) 4. Make sure all smartphones and tablets use lock codes and can be wiped remotely. On the iPhone, you can do this through the “Find iPhone” application. This rule is easily forgotten as we tend to think of these tools as something for the home, but inevitably you’ll check your work email or log into Basecamp using your tablet. A smartphone or tablet needs to be treated with as much respect as your laptop. 5. Use a unique, generated, long-form password for each site you visit, kept by password-managing software, such as 1Password.§ We’re sorry to say, “secretmonkey” is not going to fool anyone. And even if you manage to remember UM6vDjwidQE9C28Z, it’s no good if it’s used on every site and one of them is hacked. (It happens all the time!) 6. Turn on two-factor authentication when using Gmail, so you can’t log in without having access to your cell phone for a login code (this means that someone who gets hold of your login and password also needs to get hold of your phone to login). And keep in mind: if your email security fails, all other online services will fail too, since an intruder can use the “password reset” from any other site to have a new password sent to the email account they now have access to. Creating security protocols and algorithms is the computer equivalent of rocket science, but taking advantage of them isn’t. Take the time to learn the basics and they’ll cease being scary voodoo that you can’t trust. These days, security for your devices is just simple good sense, like putting on your seat belt.
Jason Fried (Remote: Office Not Required)
I have these very deep feelings that white people who want to join black organizations are really just taking the escapist way to salve their consciences. By visibly hovering near us, they are “proving” that they are “with us.” But the hard truth is this isn’t helping to solve America’s racist problem. The Negroes aren’t the racists. Where the really sincere white people have got to do their “proving” of themselves is not among the black victims, but out on the battle lines of where America’s racism really is—and that’s in their own home communities; America’s racism is among their own fellow whites. That’s where the sincere whites who really mean to accomplish something have got to work.
Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
The first thing I tell them...is they can't join us. I have these very deep feelings that white people who want to join black organizations are really just taking the escapist way to salve their consciences. By visibly hovering near us, they are "proving" that they are "with us." But the hard truth is this isn't helping to solve America's racist problem. The Negroes aren't the racists. Where the really sincere white people have got to do their "proving" of themselves is not among the black victims, but out on the battle lines of where America's racism really is- and that's in their own home communities; America's racism is among their own fellow whites. That's where the sincere whites who really mean to accomplish something have got to work.
Malcolm X
Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction. He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy. He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years. I don’t want to be the person who ever has to compete with Elon. You might as well leave the business and find something else fun to do. He will outmaneuver you, outthink you, and out-execute you.
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future)
This is usually accomplished by taking X-rays of the affected joints and analyzing blood for an ANA and rheumatoid factor (RF). Unfortunately, Lyme disease can cause false positive ANAs and rheumatoid factors due to a patient’s overstimulated immune system. This can lead to a mistaken diagnosis of lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. This is why drawing a CCP (cyclic citrullinated peptide) is so important. It is a specific marker for rheumatoid arthritis and will help determine whether the patient has true rheumatoid arthritis or not. Patients with a positive ANA or RF often are prescribed immunosuppressive drugs, such as steroids or immunomodulatory drugs, like Enbrel or Arava. These treatments can have dire consequences for the Lyme disease patient who is co-infected, since they are already immune-suppressed, and steroids can cause their underlying infections and subsequent manifestations
Richard I. Horowitz (Why Can't I Get Better? Solving the Mystery of Lyme and Chronic Disease)
Two mathematicians were having dinner. One was complaining: ‘The average person is a mathematical idiot. People cannot do arithmetic correctly, cannot balance a checkbook, cannot calculate a tip, cannot do percents, …’ The other mathematician disagreed: ‘You’re exaggerating. People know all the math they need to know.’ Later in the dinner the complainer went to the men’s room. The other mathematician beckoned the waitress to his table and said, ‘The next time you come past our table, I am going to stop you and ask you a question. No matter what I say, I want you to answer by saying “x squared.”‘ She agreed. When the other mathematician returned, his companion said, ‘I’m tired of your complaining. I’m going to stop the next person who passes our table and ask him or her an elementary calculus question, and I bet the person can solve it.’ Soon the waitress came by and he asked: ‘Excuse me, Miss, but can you tell me what the integral of 2x with respect to x is?’ The waitress replied: ‘x squared.’ The mathematician said, ‘See!’ His friend said, ‘Oh … I guess you were right.’ And the waitress said, ‘Plus a constant.
Michael Stueben (Twenty Years before the Blackboard (Spectrum))
Leaning back in the couch, she let her mind relax. Think, Heather. Think. She visualized a grid containing the origin of a coordinate system. A perpendicular set of lines labeled “x axis” and “y axis” appeared to float before her. She drew a single point located right three ticks and up four ticks from the origin on the grid, then followed up with another point, connecting the two with a line. It was there, floating perfectly in the air before her. Right, she thought. She added another dimension to the grid to form a cube, and into this cube she drew spheres, ellipsoids, cubes, and pyramids. It was easy. The equations came faster and faster, as if she had fumbled around and found a switch in the dark. A part of her mind turned on, big time. Adding a fourth dimension was easy. She took her three-dimensional grid cube, shrank it to the size of a pinhead, then formed a line of these cubes. Five dimensions formed from a plane of the 3D grid cubes. Six: a cube made of cubes. Seven dimensions: a line made of the new cube of cubes. On and on the mental sequence spun from her mind. Easy. Oh so easy. She no longer had to think about the equations that represented the shapes. Merely visualizing the shape brought the corresponding equations to her mind. She didn’t have to solve them; she just knew them. It was beautiful beyond her wildest imaginings.
Richard Phillips (The Second Ship (The Rho Agenda, #1))
DR. KING: Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettoes, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence can achieve nothing but negative results. Those who are fired up in the audiences go home and face the same unchanged conditions; what is left but for them to become bitter, disillusioned and cynical. The extremist leaders who offer a call to arms are invariably unwilling to lead what they themselves know would certainly end in bloody, chaotic total failure. The struggle of the Negro in America, to be successful, must be waged with positive efforts that are kept strictly within the framework of our democratic society. This means reaching and moving the large groups of people necessary—of both races—to activate sufficiently the conscience of a nation. It is this effort that the S.C.L.C. attempts to achieve through the program which we call creative non-violent direct-action. PLAYBOY: Dr. King, would you care to comment upon the articulate former Black Muslim, Malcolm X? DR. KING: I have met Malcolm X, but circumstances didn’t enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views, as I understand them. He is very articulate, as you say. I don’t want to seem to sound as if I feel so self-righteous, or absolutist, that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. But I know that I have so often felt that I wished that he would talk less of violence, because I don’t think that violence can solve our problem. And in his litany of expressing the despair of the Negro, without offering a positive, creative approach, I think that he falls into a rut sometimes.
Jonathan Eig (King: A Life)
The liberal element of Whites are those who have perfected the art of selling themselves to the Negro as a friend of the Negro, getting the sympathy of the Negro, getting the allegiance of the Negro, getting the mind of the Negro, and then the Negro sides with the White liberal and the White liberal uses the Negro against the White conservative so that anything that the Negro does is never for his own good, never for his own advancement, never for his own progress, he’s only a pawn in the hands of the White liberal. The worst enemy the Negro has is this White man who runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negroes and calling himself a liberal and it is following these White liberals that has perpetuated the problems that Negroes in America have. If the Negro wasn’t taken, trapped, tricked, deceived by the White liberal then Negroes would get together and solve our own problems. It was the White liberals that come up with the Civil War, supposedly they say, to solve the Negro, the slave question. Lincoln was supposedly a White liberal. When you read the true history of Lincoln, he wasn’t trying to free any slaves, he was trying to save the union. He was trying to save his own party. He was trying to conserve his own power and it was only after he found he couldn’t do it without freeing the slaves that he came up with the Emancipation Proclamation. So, right there you have deceit of White liberals making Negroes think that the Civil War was fought to free them, you have the deceit of White liberals making Negroes think that the Emancipation Proclamation actually freed the Negroes and then when the Negroes got the Civil War and found out they weren’t free, got the Emancipation Proclamation and they found out they still weren’t free, they begin to get dissatisfied and unrest, they come up with the...the same White liberal came up with the 14th Amendment supposedly to solve the problem. This came about, the problem still wasn’t solved, ‘cause to the White liberal it’s only a political trick. Civil War, political trick, Emancipation Proclamation, political trick, 14th Amendment to this raggedy Constitution, a political trick. Then when Negroes begin to develop intellectually again, and realize that their problem still wasn’t solved, and unrest began to increase, the Supreme Court...another so-called political trick...came up with what they call a Supreme Court Desegregation Decision, and they purposely put it in a language...now you know, sir, that these men on the Supreme Court are masters of the King’s English, masters of legal phraseology, and if they wanted a decision that no one could get around, they would have given one but they gave their Supreme Court Desegregation Decision in 1954 purposely in a language, phraseology that enabled all of the crooks in this country to find loopholes in it that would keep them from having to enforce the Supreme Court Desegregation Decision. So that even after the decision was handed down, our problem has still not been solved. And I only cite these things to show you that in America, the history of the White liberal has been nothing but a series of trickery designed to make Negroes think that the White liberals was going to solve our problem and it is only now that the honorable Elijah Muhammad has come on the scene and is beginning to teach the Black man that our problem will never be solved by the White man that the only way our problem will be solved is when the Black man wakes up, cleans himself up, stands on his own feet, stops begging the White man and takes immediate steps to try and do for ourselves the things that we’ve been waiting for the White man to do for us. Once we do them for ourselves, once we think for ourselves, once we see for ourselves then we’ll be able to solve our own problems and we’ll be recognized as human beings all over this earth.
Malcolm X
Well it had to be the Beatles, didn’t it? Totally unknown in the U.S. at the time, they could go completely unnoticed in Dallas. It was a brilliant scheme, and they were rewarded for their work with a lifetime of money and fame.” “Even Ringo,” muttered the tall man. “Especially Ringo,” Jimmy added. He cringed at the thought. It could just as easily have been Pete Best, if only he were a better shot.
Randy X. Porter (Jimmy Solves the JFK Assassination)
What do you do when you are convinced you are working on the wrong problem? When a doctor thinks that a patient’s minor symptoms mask something more serious, she will tell her patient, “Mr. Jones, I can treat your headache, but I think it’s a symptom of something more serious and I’d like to do further tests.” In the same way, you should go back to your client, or your boss—whoever it was that asked for your input in the first place—and say, “You asked me to look at problem X, but the real impact on our performance will come from solving problem Y. Now I can solve problem X, if that’s what you really want, but I think it’s in our interest to focus on Y.” If you have the data to back you up, the client can either accept your recommendation or tell you to stay on the original problem, but you will have fulfilled your responsibility to act in the client’s best interests.
Ethan M. Rasiel (The McKinsey Way)
Many people believe overlearning means studying or practicing until mastery is achieved. However, in the research literature, overlearning refers to a learning strategy in which a student continues to study or practice immediately after some criterion has been achieved. An example might be correctly solving a certain kind of math problem and then immediately working several more problems of the same kind. Although working more problems of the same kind (rather than fewer) often boosts scores on a subsequent test, doing too many problems of the same kind in immediate succession provides diminishing returns. “In the classroom and elsewhere, students should maximize the amount they learn per unit time spent studying or practicing—that is, they should get the most bang for the buck. How can students do this? The scientific literature provides an unequivocal answer: Rather than devote a long session to the study or practice of the same skill or concept so that overlearning occurs, students should divide their effort across several shorter sessions. This doesn’t mean that long study sessions are necessarily a bad idea. Long sessions are fine as long as students don’t devote too much time to any one skill or concept. Once they understand ‘X,’ they should move on to something else and return to ‘X’ on another day.
Anonymous
Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction. He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy. He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years. I don’t want to be the person who ever has to compete with Elon. You might as well leave the business and find something else fun to do. He will outmaneuver you, outthink you, and out-execute you. One
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future)
Erik wondered if they saw the irony of such a tiny complex expecting to find the cure from the very lives they minimized in comparison to the whole. If such small, little lives mattered not, how could they believe anything they did would matter?
Ellie Lieberman (Solving for X)
I’m praying, he thought to himself.  He’d never been one for church, preferring to take his divine inspiration from what surrounded him.  But lying here with Olivia, touching her reverently, he felt something shift inside him, something large and profound, as though he’d finally learned the answer to a riddle he’d been trying to solve. 
Zoe Archer (Lady X's Cowboy)
Dude, I think I’ve solved the next riddle! Meet me tomorrow morning for breakfast. Seriously. Breakfast. If your butt isn’t out of bed by ten o’clock, I’m coming up there with a Taser and a pot of coffee. – May (on Trick’s voicemail)
Cherie Priest (I Am Princess X)
9. Solving quadratic equations: using a standard formula and by completing the square Solve each of the following quadratic equations twice: once by using the formula, then again by completing the square. Obtain your answers in surd, not decimal, form.1. x 2 + 8x + 1 = 0 2. x 2 + 7x − 2 = 0 3. x 2 + 6x − 2 = 0 4. 4x 2 + 3x − 2 = 0 5. 2x 2 + 3x − 1 = 0 6. x 2 + x − 1 = 0 7.−x 2 + 3x + 1 = 0 8.−2x 2 − 3x + 1 = 0 9. 2x 2 + 5x − 3 = 0 10.−2s 2 − s + 3 = 0 11. 9x 2
Anonymous
Matt didn’t tell me what code to write. He didn’t know what kind of app he wanted. He didn’t write lengthy specs. He would just say, Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do X? Or, Dude, is there some way we could do Y? He didn’t know anything about software, a fact that ended up being a boon because when he asked me to solve a problem, I became more engaged.
Jeff Lawson (Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century)
Remember, to believe in a racial hierarchy is to believe in a racist idea. The idea of an achievement gap between the races—with Whites and Asians at the top and Blacks and Latinx at the bottom—creates a racial hierarchy, with its implication that the racial gap in test scores means something is wrong with the Black and Latinx test takers and not the tests. From the beginning, the tests, not the people, have always been the racial problem. I know this is a hard idea to accept—so many well-meaning people have tried to “solve” this problem of the racial achievement gap—but once we understand the history and policies behind it, it becomes clear.
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist)
they edible? In the Cubing world, we refer algorithms as a combination of cube movements or rotations that are certain to give a predictable result. Front Faces! (What’d you say about my face?) Calm down there, buddy. By front face, we are referring to which side of the cube should be
Ciel Publishing (How to Solve a 2x2 Rubik's Cube: A Solution Guide for Kids! Solve the Pocket Cube and Impress Your Friends! (Step by Step, Color-Illustrated))
The white man—give him his due—has an extraordinary intelligence, an extraordinary cleverness. His world is full of proof of it. You can’t name a thing the white man can’t make. You can hardly name a scientific problem he can’t solve. Here he is now solving the problems of sending men exploring into outer space—and returning them safely to earth. But in the arena of dealing with human beings, the white man’s working intelligence is hobbled. His intelligence will fail him altogether if the humans happen to be non-white. The white man’s emotions superseded his intelligence. He will commit against non-whites the most incredible spontaneous emotional acts, so psyche-deep is his “white superiority” complex.
Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
Sum Fibonacci Style Sequences Create A 3x3 Magic Square Create A 4x4 Magic Square From Your Birthday Convert A Decimal Number To Binary The Egyptian Method / Russian Peasant Multiplication Extract Cube Roots Extract Fifth Roots Extract Odd-Powered Roots Conclusion More From Presh Talwalkar Why Learn Mental Math Tricks? Mental math has a mixed reputation. Some consider it useless because calculators and computers can solve problems faster, with assured accuracy. Additionally, mental math is not even necessary to get good grades in math or to pursue a professional math career. So what's the point of learning mental math and math tricks anyway? There are many reasons why mental math is still useful. For one, math skills are needed for regular tasks like calculating the tip in a restaurant or comparison shopping to find the best deal. Second, mental math tricks are one of the few times people enjoy talking about math. Third, mental math methods can help students build confidence with math and numbers. Mental math tricks are fun to share. Imagine your friend asks you to multiply 93 and 97, and before
Presh Talwalkar (The Best Mental Math Tricks)
We convince ourselves we are doing something to solve the racial problem when we are really doing something to satisfy our feelings.
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist)
Angling, in essence, is about converting something very insignificant (the bait, with negligible or even zero food value, maybe a worm that has been dug up or a few colorful but inedible fibers) into something very substantial: a fish big enough to feed a family. It could even be expressed as a mathematical equation: energy input (measured in calories or joules) + x = energy output. And the magic catalyst x that makes this apparent alchemy possible, this creation of something from nothing, is… human inventiveness and ingenuity. This is something we all have, baked into our DNA and yearning for expression, and it’s the part of our nature that should always be engaged when we are on the water, constantly interrogating the particular problem that we are trying to solve. Even
Jeremy Wade (How to Think Like a Fish: And Other Lessons from a Lifetime in Angling)
The original problem of racism has not been solved by suasion. Knowledge is only power if knowledge is put to the struggle for power. Changing minds is not a movement. Critiquing racism is not activism. Changing minds is not activism. An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change. If a person has no record of power or policy change, then that person is not an activist.
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist)
Inference is a hard thing, maybe the hardest thing. From the shape of the clouds and the way they move we struggle to go backward, to solve for x, the system that made them.
Jordan Ellenberg (How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking)
Joining the world of shapes to the world of numbers in this way represented a break with the past. New geometries always begin when someone changes a fundamental rule. Suppose space can be curved instead of flat, a geometer says, and the result is a weird curved parody of Euclid that provides precisely the right framework for the general theory of relativity. Suppose space can have four dimensions, or five, or six. Suppose the number expressing dimension can be a fraction. Suppose shapes can be twisted, stretched, knotted. Or, now, suppose shapes are defined, not by solving an equation once, but by iterating it in a feedback loop. Julia, Fatou, Hubbard, Barnsley, Mandelbrot-these mathematicians changed the rules about how to make geometrical shapes. The Euclidean and Cartesian methods of turning equations into curves are familiar to anyone who has studied high school geometry or found a point on a map using two coordinates. Standard geometry takes an equation and asks for the set of numbers that satisfy it. The solutions to an equation like x^2 + y^2 = 1, then, form a shape, in this case a circle. Other simple equations produce other pictures, the ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas of conic sections or even the more complicated shapes produced by differential equations in phase space. But when a geometer iterates an equation instead of solving it, the equation becomes a process instead of a description, dynamic instead of static. When a number goes into the equation, a new number comes out; the new number goes in, and so on, points hopping from place to place. A point is plotted not when it satisfies the equation but when it produces a certain kind of behavior. One behavior might be a steady state. Another might be a convergence to a periodic repetition of states. Another might be an out-of-control race to infinity.
James Gleick (Chaos: Making a New Science)
That is, he would have started over from the beginning to solve with, again, both p and q non-negative. This is totally unnecessary, however, as at no place in the solution to x3 + px = q did he ever actually use the non-negativity of p and q. That is, such assumptions have no importance, and were explicitly made simply because of an unwarranted aversion by early mathematicians to negative numbers. This
Paul J. Nahin (An Imaginary Tale: The Story of i (square root of minus 1))
when he first got electromagnets implanted in his fingertips allowing him to sense magnetic fields, he did not suddenly feel exhilarated by his newly expanded sensory capabilities, as most people had assumed he would. “What I felt,” he said, “was terrified. I was like, these things are fucking everywhere, and we can’t see shit. We are totally fucking blind.” “Exactly,” said Marlo. “We can’t even see X-rays. I mean, how lame is that?” But
Mark O'Connell (To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death)
I. Penance is a true Sacrament, instituted by Christ for the forgiveness of post-baptismal sins. II. Penance is a Sacrament distinct from Baptism. 24 THE POWER TO FORGIVE SINS III. The words of Christ recorded in John XX, 23, are to be understood of the power of forgiving and retaining sins in the Sacrament of Penance, not of preaching the Gospel. IV. For the remission of sins there are required three acts by the penitent, which are as it were the matter of the Sacrament of Penance, viz.: contrition, confession, and satisfaction. The terrors with which the conscience is smitten upon being convinced of sin, and the fiduciary faith generated by the Gospel, are not sufficient to obtain forgiveness. V. Imperfect contrition, which is acquired by means of the examination, recollection, and detestation of sins, is a true and profitable sorrow, and does not make a man a hypocrite and a greater sinner. VI. Sacramental confession is of divine institution and necessary to salvation, and auricular confession is not a human invention. VII. Auricular confession comprises by divine right all mortal sins, even those which are secret, and may law fully extend also to venial sins. VIII. The confession of all sins, as demanded by the Church, is not impossible, but a duty incumbent on all the faithful of both sexes. IX. The sacramental absolution given by the priest is a judicial act, not a bare declaration, and must be pre ceded by confession on the part of the penitent. X. Priests alone have the power of binding and loosing, and can exercise it even if they are in a state of mortal sin. XL Bishops have the right of reserving cases to them selves, and from such reserved cases no priest may ab solve. XII. God does not always remit the whole punishment together with the guilt of sin, and the satisfaction of peni tents does not consist in the faith wherewith they appre hend that Christ has satisfied for them. XIII. Satisfaction for sins, as to their temporal pun ishment, is made to God through the merits of Christ, by the punishments enjoined by the priest, and also by those voluntarily undertaken by the penitent himself, and con sequently, Penance is more than merely a new life. XIV. The works of satisfaction performed by the penitent do not obscure the doctrine of grace, the true worship of God, and the benefit of Christ's death. XV. The power of the keys which Christ gave to the Church is not merely the power to loose, but also to bind, and therefore enables priests to impose punishments on those who confess.
Joseph Pohle (The sacraments: A Dogmatic Treatise, Vol. 3)
Fourth, you should lay out a road map for the rest of the speech: “I will begin by describing X, next I will argue Y, and finally I will propose Z.” This is not a time for subtlety; be direct and explicit. If you are going to use visuals to support your speech, you should spell out these three steps in an “agenda” slide. Such an explicit road map helps your audience see how the different components of your argument fit together in a logical fashion. The body of your speech should have a clear structure with a logical progression. One possible structure is: • Here’s the problem. • Here’s my analysis. • Here’s how we could solve this problem. Another possible structure might be: • Here’s an issue of current interest. • Here’s my take on this issue. • Here’s how we might rethink this issue in the future.
Robert C. Pozen (Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours)
As I’ve said throughout this book, networked products tend to start from humble beginnings—rather than big splashy launches—and YouTube was no different. Jawed’s first video is a good example. Steve described the earliest days of content and how it grew: In the earliest days, there was very little content to organize. Getting to the first 1,000 videos was the hardest part of YouTube’s life, and we were just focused on that. Organizing the videos was an afterthought—we just had a list of recent videos that had been uploaded, and you could just browse through those. We had the idea that everyone who uploaded a video would share it with, say, 10 people, and then 5 of them would actually view it, and then at least one would upload another video. After we built some key features—video embedding and real-time transcoding—it started to work.75 In other words, the early days was just about solving the Cold Start Problem, not designing the fancy recommendations algorithms that YouTube is now known for. And even once there were more videos, the attempt at discoverability focused on relatively basic curation—just showing popular videos in different categories and countries. Steve described this to me: Once we got a lot more videos, we had to redesign YouTube to make it easier to discover the best videos. At first, we had a page on YouTube to see just the top 100 videos overall, sorted by day, week, or month. Eventually it was broken out by country. The homepage was the only place where YouTube as a company would have control of things, since we would choose the 10 videos. These were often documentaries, or semi-professionally produced content so that people—particularly advertisers—who came to the YouTube front page would think we had great content. Eventually it made sense to create a categorization system for videos, but in the early years everything was grouped in with each other. Even while the numbers of videos was rapidly growing, so too were all the other forms of content on the site. YouTube wasn’t just the videos, it was also the comments left by viewers: Early in we saw that there were 100x more viewers than creators. Every social product at that time had comments, so we added them to YouTube, which was a way for the viewers to participate, too. It seems naive now, but we were just thinking about raw growth at that time—the raw number of videos, the raw number of comments—so we didn’t think much about the quality. We weren’t thinking about fake news or anything like that. The thought was, just get as many comments as possible out there, and the more controversial the better! Keep in mind that the vast majority of videos had zero comments, so getting feedback for our creators usually made the experience better for them. Of course now we know that once you get to a certain level of engagement, you need a different solution over time.
Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
The current world record holder as the fastest speedcuber is Feliks Zemdegs of Australia. He solved a 3 x 3 Rubik’s Cube at an amazing 4.737 seconds
Daniel Ross (Rubik's Cube Best Algorithms: Top 5 Speedcubing Methods, Finger Tricks included, A Beginner's Guide with Easy instructions)
Philanthropic capital should not be doing what at-scale capital can do. It’s at-risk capital. We’re okay if 30 percent of our portfolio fails, as long as we fail fast, learn fast, and move fast. Another 30 percent can get spun out into companies that are structured in a way that is equitable and generous and can execute. And 30 percent are doing good things but might limp along financially, and that’s okay too. We have that 30x30x30 appetite for what success looks like. If we tell ourselves everything needs to be successful, we’ll miss out on a lot.
John Doerr (Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now)
I look at the risk/reward dynamic in investing this way: You can lose only 1x of your money. But the upside can be many, many times the sum you put in—sometimes 1,000x or more.
John Doerr (Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now)
The failure here is an example of a common flaw in our approach to adaptive challenges: we try to solve them with technical solutions. Terrified of the unknown, we seek to replace problems we have no idea how to address with those we know how to solve. This is a form of ‘work avoidance’, a term coined by Heifetz[x]. If you have ever procrastinated by spending your whole afternoon making a brightly-coloured work plan, and then congratulated yourself on being productive, then you will be familiar with the concept. By focusing on what they know they can measure – the extent to which a lesson went as planned – some professors may avoid the harder work of trying to gauge the learning of their students.
David Franklin (Invisible Learning: The magic behind Dan Levy's legendary Harvard statistics course)
Difficulty is not, of course, a reason to reject or ignore a poem. Especially in reading the poetry of the twentieth century, one often willingly assents to Allen Tate’s statement that “poetry . . . demands both in its writing and in its reading all the intellectual power that we have.” There is a distinction, however, between the difficulty of obscurity and the difficulty of complexity. The latter emerges naturally from any attempt to capture a new feeling or idea for poetry. But with Graham, as with so many self-consciously modernist poets, the difficulty seems to fall into the first category. Her poems are obscure because they seem unfinished, because they reside in the privacy of the poet’s mind and not in the public realm where poet and reader discuss things in common. As long as Graham asks the reader to fill in her blanks and solve for her x’s, she has not realized poetry’s greatest and most enduring possibilities.
Adam Kirsch (The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry)
Mathematics is not just solving for x, it's also figuring out why.
Arthur Benjamin
The Perfect Pitch Here’s the general framework for successful pitches: 1. Here’s how the world works today. 2. Here’s how the world should work in the future, but here’s what’s broken/missing. 3. Here’s why no one has been able to solve this problem so far (potentially reference folks who have tried and failed). This is a massive opportunity. Whoever solves this problem is going to have to do X, Y, and Z, but will be rewarded heavily. 4. Here’s the secret to how we’re going to fix this. A secret can be a unique insight, approach, technology, invention, or some shift or change in the world that has opened up an opportunity with you being the first mover. 5. Here’s why we’re going to execute the best (best team ever, traction thus far if applicable, your unique experience as a founder, etc.).
Ryan Breslow (Fundraising)
My name is Jo. This year I learned about Shakespeare. I learned about solving for x. I learned about electricity, light, and countless other things in science class. I also learned that we're all stronger than we give ourselves credit for, and that being kind is the most important thing we can be.
Kathleen Gros (Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort Of))
P3 - ten minutes of that movie, or indeed of any movie whose message is similarly dystopian about a post-aging world (Blade Runner), you will see that they set it up by insinuating, with exactly no justification and also no attempt at discussion (which is how they get away with not justifying it), that the defeat of aging will self-evidently bring about some new problem that we will be unable to solve without doing more harm than good. The most common such problem, of course, is overpopulation - and I refer you to literally about 1000 interviews and hundreds of talks I have given on stage and camera over the past 20 years, of which several dozen are online, for why such a concern is misplaced. The reason there are 1000, of course, is that most people WANT to believe that aging is a blessing in disguise - they find it expedient to put aging out of their minds and get on with their miserably short lives, however irrational must be the rationalizations by which they achieve that. Aubrey has been asked on numerous occasions whether humans should use future tech to extend their lifespans. Aubrey opines, "I believe that humans should (and will) use (and, as a prerequisite, develop) future technologies to extend their healthspan, i.e. their healthy lifespan. But before fearing that I have lost my mind, let me stress that that is no more nor less than I have always believed. The reason people call me an “immortalist” and such like is only that I recognize, and am not scared to say, two other things: one, that extended lifespan is a totally certain side-effect of extended healthspan, and two, that the desire (and the legitimacy of the desire) to further extend healthspan will not suddenly cease once we achieve such-and-such a number of years." On what people can do to advance longevity research, my answer to this question has radically changed in the past year. For the previous 20 years, my answer would have been “make a lot of money and give it to the best research”, as it was indisputable that the most important research could go at least 2 or 3x times faster if not funding-limited. But in the past year, with the influx of at least a few $B, much of it non-profit (and much of it coming from tech types who did exactly the above), the calculus has changed: the rate-limiter now is personnel. It’s more or less the case now that money is no longer the main rate-limiter, talent is: we desperately need more young scientists to see longevity as the best career choice. As for how much current cryopreservation technology will advance in the next 10-20 years, and whether it enough for future reanimation? No question about the timeframe for a given amount of progress in any pioneering tech can be answered other than probabilistically. Or, to put it more simply, I don’t know - but I think there's a very good chance that within five years we will have cryo technology that inflicts only very little damage on biological tissue, such that yes, other advances in rejuvenation medicine that will repair the damage that caused the cryonaut to be pronounced dead in the first place will not be overwhelmed by cryopreservation damage, hence reanimation will indeed be possible. As of now, the people who have been cryopreserved(frozen) the best (i.e. w/ vitrification, starting very shortly immediately after cardiac arrest) may, just possibly, be capable of revival by rewarming and repair of damage - but only just possibly. Thus, the priority needs to be to improve the quality of cryopreservation - in terms of the reliability of getting people the best preservation that is technologically possible, which means all manner of things like getting hospitals more comfortable with cryonics practice and getting people to wear alarms that will alert people if they undergo cardiac arrest when alone, but even more importantly in terms of the tech itself, to reduce (greatly) the damage that is done to cells and tissues by the cryopreservation process.
Aubrey de Grey
You do X for Y because you want to solve Z.
Category Pirates (The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different)
As with so many analytical observations, the golden ratio has its origins in ancient Greece but we cannot be sure who identified it first—possibly many generations before Euclid of Alexandria defined it in the sixth book of his Elements: “A line is divided in extreme and mean ratio” if a + b is to a as a is to b.75 In plain English, divide a line in such a way that the ratio between the line and the longer of the two pieces will be the same as the ratio between the longer and the shorter piece. Restated in a more rigorous way, a line segment of length 1 is divided in two pieces whereby (1 / x) = x / (1 – x) or (x2 + x) – 1 = 0. Solving this equation means that x equals approximately 0.618033988.
Vaclav Smil (Size: How It Explains the World)
This is the same dynamic by which, when we were children, they ordered us to finish everything on our plate even if we were already full and in order to persuade us, they would tell us that there are millions of children in the world dying of hunger. However, I know that eating all the food on my plate, to the point of feeling sick, does not solve the problem of world hunger!
Giacomo Bruno (3x Speed Reading. Quick Reading, Memory and Memorizing Techniques, Learning to Triple Your Speed.)
Kids these days are trying to solve for X when X has became the entire universe.
Dipti Dhakul
1/11/2020 X Marks the Spot Sound Tangler Riddle-Puzzle The X: The idea of this puzzle is like trying to say something awkward 10 times, but here each X entry has its own subtle pronunciation, which would limber up any tongue in the X-ese language. Another approach is to write them out in whatever order you want pronunciation as you go. You will find both confusingly challenging. X (chi/ki, now YZ indeed? eks, plural exes): eks __ ks gz kzh k/sh h z gzh kh kh eks __ ks gz kzh k/sh h z gzh gzh kh eks __ ks gz kzh ks/h h z z gzh kh eks __ ks gz kzh k/sh h h z gzh kh eks __ ks gz kzh k/sh k/sh h z gzh kh eks __ ks gz kzh kzh k/sh h z gzh kh eks __ ks gz gz kzh k/sh h z gzh kh eks __ xxxxxxxx8 marks the spot Sound Key: -X (own name; X-ray) not listed -(k)/eks (excite, extra, intellectual) -__ (silent: Sioux Falls, faux) -ks (exit, ox, xion, ction) -gz (exert, exaltation, auxillary, exhaust) -kzh (luxury, Tupuxuara-flying dinosaur) -k/sh (complexion, obnoxious, textual) -h (Don Quixote, Xavier) -z (xylophone, Xerox, Xanadu) -gzh (luxurious, luxuriate) -kh (chi, ki) (Overlapping is subtle) *Zenzizenzizenic8 –“the eighth power of a number.” See the archaic word site The Phrontistery online, a great collection of rare, obsolete and extinct words of all sorts. exit.... dlaurent 2 of 2 end
Douglas M. Laurent
It helped us know exactly who we were speaking to at all times. And exactly whose problems we were solving. But simplicity and ease may not be enough to sway you, so let me illustrate why honing in on one niche will make you more money. Reason: you can literally charge 100x more for the exact same product. Dan Kennedy was the first person to illustrate this for me, and I will do my best to pass on the torch to you in these pages. Niching Product Pricing Example: Example Dan Kennedy taught me this (and it changed my life forever). Let’s say you sold a generic course on Time Management. Unless you were some massive time management guru with a compelling or unique story, it would be unlikely it would turn into anything significant. What do you think “yet another” time management course is valued at? $19, $29? Sure. Nothing to write home about. Let’s just say $19 for illustration sake. **Now we shall unleash the power of niche pricing in various stages on your product** So let’s imagine you make the product more specific, keeping the same principles, and call it “Time Management For Sales Professionals.” All of a sudden, this course is for a more specific type of person. We could tie their increase to even one more sale or one more deal and it would be worth more. But there are a lot of sales people. So this might be a $99 product. Neat, but we can do better. So let’s go down another level of niching and call our product…. “Time Management for B2B Outbound Sales Reps.” Following the same principles of specificity, now we know our sales people probably have very experienced deals and commissions. A single sale would easily net this salesman $500 (or more), so it would be easy to justify a $499 price tag. This is already a 25x increase in price for almost an identical product. I could stop here, but I’m going to go one step further. Let’s just niche down one last level…. “Time Management for B2B Outbound Power Tools & Gardening Sales Reps.” Boom. Think about it for a second, if you were a power tools outbound sales rep, you would think to yourself “This is made exactly for me” and would happily fork over maybe $1000 to $2000 for a time management program that could help you achieve your goal.
Alex Hormozi ($100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No (Acquisition.com $100M Series Book 1))
This 3x5 No is a very empowering way to teach problem solving skills. It's also a great way to keep the environment positive and pro-active.
Christy Largent (31 Positive Communication Skills Devotional for Women: Encouraging Words to Help You Speak Your Truth with Confidence)
one way to guard against Syndrome X is to ignore the “best” medical advice, to shun the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet everyone “knows” is good for theheart. If you have Syndrome X—and 60–75 million Americans do— that “good” diet can be deadly. If you have the syndrome, carefully dieting to lower your total cholesterol or LDL cholesterol won’t solve the problem. In fact, conscientiously doing so may make a heart attack even more likely.
Gerald Reaven (Syndrome X: Overcoming the Silent Killer that Can Give You a Heart Attack)
Rather than asking customers explicitly about feature X, Y or Z, one approach to defining the MVP is to ask, “What is the smallest or least complicated problem that the customer will pay us to solve?” This approach runs counter to the typical cry for more features, which is often based on what the competitors have or what the last customer visited had to say. The MVP is the inverse of what most sales and marketing groups ask of their development teams.
Steve Blank (The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company)
It’s not as though the show couldn’t end story lines when it needed to. The biggest emotional payoff of “Aprocrypha” comes in the resolution of the murder of Scully’s sister. The episode does a fine job of both “solving” the mystery and yet showing the complete lack of satisfaction that the solution provides our heroine. Melissa is still dead. A scene at the cemetery drives the point home, and it’s during that scene that we learn that Melissa’s killer died in his jail cell. There’s no vengeance or catharsis or relief, and the forces that ordered the hit remain unpunished and unidentified.
Zack Handlen (Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to The X-Files)
do unto one side as you would do unto the other.
Arthur T. Benjamin (The Magic of Math: Solving for x and Figuring Out Why)
y = mx + b
Arthur T. Benjamin (The Magic of Math: Solving for x and Figuring Out Why)
With only a single X chromosome, males need every one of those 1,500 genes. With two X chromosomes, females have double the necessary amount. You can think of it like a cake recipe calling for only one cup of flour. If you decide to put in two, it will change the results in a most unpleasant fashion. The female embryo uses what may be the most time-honored weapon in the battle of the sexes to solve the problem of two Xs: She simply ignores one of them. This chromosomal silent treatment is known as X inactivation. One of the chromosomes is tagged with the molecular equivalent of a “Do Not Disturb” sign. Because males require all 1,500 X genes to survive, and they have only one X chromosome, X inactivation does not occur in guys. And because males must get their X from Mom, all men are literally, with respect to their X chromosome, Momma’s Boys—unisexed
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
This is completely wrong, Manson argues, because happiness is a fleeting state. Once we solve our momentary happiness algorithm, a new algorithm will inevitably appear, whispering to us that yeah, X is okay, but if we could just achieve something even better, then we’d really have it made. Everything is relative.
Worth Books (Summary and Analysis of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life: Based on the Book by Mark Manson (Smart Summaries))
Turning humans into space colonizers is his stated life’s purpose. “I would like to die thinking that humanity has a bright future,” he said. “If we can solve sustainable energy and be well on our way to becoming a multiplanetary species with a self-sustaining civilization on another planet—to cope with a worst-case scenario happening and extinguishing human consciousness—then,” and here he paused for a moment, “I think that would be really good.” If some of the things that Musk says and does sound absurd, that’s because on one level they very much are. On this occasion, for example, Musk’s assistant had just handed him some cookies-and-cream ice cream with sprinkles on top, and he then talked earnestly about saving humanity while a blotch of the dessert hung from his lower lip.
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future)
Not all problems can be solved; just because you’ve assembled examples of inputs X and targets Y doesn’t mean X contains enough information to predict Y. For instance, if you’re trying to predict the movements of a stock on the stock market given its recent price history, you’re unlikely to succeed, because price history doesn’t contain much predictive information.
François Chollet (Deep Learning with Python)
Share the Solve for X methodology
Patrick Bet-David (Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy)
Henry “owes Joshua one.” One what? How do you quantify a favor? On what basis do you say that this many potatoes, or this big a pig, seems more or less equivalent to a pair of shoes? Because even if these things remain rough-and-ready approximations, there must be some way to establish that X is roughly equivalent to Y, or slightly worse or slightly better. Doesn’t this imply that something like money, at least in the sense of a unit of account by which one can compare the value of different objects, already has to exist? In most gift economies, there actually is a rough-and-ready way to solve the problem. One establishes a series of ranked categories of types of thing. Pigs and shoes may be considered objects of roughly equivalent status: one can give one in return for the other. Coral necklaces are quite another matter; one would have to give back another necklace, or at least another piece of jewelry—anthropologists are used to referring to these as creating different “spheres of exchange.
David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years)