Thinking with Machines was such a joyful read that I finished it in a single sitting during a seven-hour flight. Do read it if you want to understand how AI will change the way we live and work.
Vasant has lived through every major shift in AI, from expert systems to today’s push toward general intelligence. He weaves his life story with what he has learned from applying AI across fields like medicine, sports, and finance.
The chapter on The Edge made me reread it several times. It stayed with me. This post is about that idea.
Roger Federer gave a commencement speech in 2024 at Dartmouth College. Halfway through the speech, Federer asked the audience the following question:
In the 1,526 singles matches that I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches. What percentage of points do you think I won in those matches?
Federer paused to let the audience think, then provided the answer:
Fifty‐four percent. Barely more than half. When you lose every second point, you learn not to dwell on the failures.
How can winning just 54% of the points result in winning 80% of the matches? It felt like a jolt, as if the plane briefly froze in mid-air. I paused to make sure it was true. I couldn’t believe it. The chart below shows how point win percentage translates into match win percentage.
At 50% point wins, you win about half your matches, but there’s an 8% swing depending on whether you win the important moments. Boris Becker had a knack for winning the important points, so even though he won only 52% of his points, his match-winning rate sat at the upper end of what that level usually delivers. Cross 56% of points and you win almost everything.
Federer wins just 54% of the points, yet that small edge compounds into winning about 80% of his matches. There are two important lessons we can take from this.
The first takeaway is about the mindset. Winning requires staying in the present. When you lose nearly half the points you play, the past offers no help. Dwelling on past mistakes only distracts from the real goal, which is to win the match. We cannot change what has happened, and we cannot control what comes next. Stay present, follow the process, and let the result take care of itself.
The second takeaway is about the power of compounding. A small edge, applied again and again, can create outsized results. If a tennis match were decided by a single point, Federer’s match-winning rate would be the same as his point-winning rate of 54%. But a match is made up of many points, and that small edge compounds over time. Win a little more often at each point, and it adds up to a much higher chance of winning the match. That is how Federer turned a modest advantage on each point into winning about 80% of his matches.
Evolution relies on small edges and vast amounts of time to create the diversity we see around us. I first came across this example of the rock pocket mice in the excellent book The Making of the Fittest.
In the deserts of Arizona, rock pocket mice live on two very different surfaces: light sand and dark lava rock. Before the lava flows appeared, almost all the mice were sandy-colored. Once black lava covered parts of the land, a small number of dark mice had a slight advantage.
Predators could spot light mice easily on dark rock, while dark mice blended in. That advantage was tiny, on the order of say about 2%, but it mattered. At first, black mice were extremely rare, barely visible in the population. Over time, that small edge compounded. With each generation, black mice survived and reproduced just a little more often than white mice.
The chart shows how a difference of roughly 1.9% in survival was enough to flip the population over a few hundred years, turning black mice from a rounding error into the majority. Nothing dramatic happened in any single year. The change came from repeating a small advantage over a long stretch of time.
Casinos win the same way. With a small, constant edge on every play, about 5.26% in roulette and around 2% in blackjack, repeated over thousands of bets, losing becomes almost impossible.
The idea of edge applies directly to our lives. Life is made up of thousands of decisions taken over decades. A small edge in how we make those decisions quietly stacks the odds in our favor.
Take health. Lifting weights a few times a week, walking a few miles a day, eating reasonably well, and sleeping enough each give us a small edge. We are not competing with anyone else here. We are competing against chronic diseases. These habits do not guarantee outcomes, but they help us avoid most of the problems that are within our control, and leave the rest to chance. None of these decisions matter much on their own. Taken together over years they matter a lot.
The pattern is the same everywhere. Tennis, evolution, casinos, and life all reward small edges applied consistently over time. Nothing dramatic needs to happen on any given day. You just need to show up, play the point in front of you, and let compounding do the heavy lifting. That to me is the edge.
Seeking Wisdom 