Problem Solving

Why are some people good in problem solving? Is it nature or nurture? Are there any tricks or gimmicks that we can used to become an effective problem solver? Click here to read the rest.

Geometric Series and Gordon Growth Model

In 1991 letter to shareholders, Buffett explained his thought process in valuing a business. Given below is the excerpt from the letter. A few years ago the conventional wisdom held that a newspaper, television or magazine property would forever increase its earnings at 6% or so annually and would do so without the employment of additional…

The Rule of 72

The rule of 72 states that, if you want to find the number of years it would take to double your money at a given interest rate (r), you divide 72 by r. For example at 8% compound interest it would take 9 years (72 / 8) to double your money. I have been using this rule…

Working Backwards

I came across an interesting problem in the book How to Solve It by G.Polya. How can you bring up from the river exactly six quarts of water when you have only two containers, a four quart pail and a nine quart pail, to measure with? Given below are the containers. Notice that they are not…

Mathematical Induction

A team in Germany made over 270,000 dominos to fall and created a world record. It took a week for them to set this up. How do they know for sure that if the first domino falls all the dominos will fall? They came to that conclusion by knowing two facts The first dominos falls.…