A year or so agao I got an email from a "financial advisor". This one was in English and not marked from Nigeria so I opened it and read it. Fascinating proposition. The author pitched me thus:
"I'm going to send you an email a month with a market prediction for the next month - up or down. I'm willing to bet you that I can get this right for 6 straight months and as proof of my ability I'll give you a half a year's worth of predictions. If I am ever wrong you get a course in financial planning for free. If I am right 6times in a row you agree to buy my course for $xx" .
I've seen other propositions like this and really had to think it through...I mean how could anyone pick 6 things in a row and then it came to me...its the law of large numbers at work. No one responds to these things anyway and I didn't but in my email each month like clockwork I got the prognostication sure enough I got 6 for 6.
Here is how he did it. He started with a purchased email list of 50,000 (about a $300 investment). The first letter out he sent to 25,000 with an "market up" forecast and 25,000 with a market down. He got 25,000 wrong and didn't send to them again. The next month he split the 25,000 into an "up 12,500 and down 12,500". The third month he split the 12500 again and so on.
I got this amazing tally of 6 straight months of him being right as did about 80 people. Probably enough were impressed to buy his offering.
Numbers are interesting.
"I'm going to send you an email a month with a market prediction for the next month - up or down. I'm willing to bet you that I can get this right for 6 straight months and as proof of my ability I'll give you a half a year's worth of predictions. If I am ever wrong you get a course in financial planning for free. If I am right 6times in a row you agree to buy my course for $xx" .
I've seen other propositions like this and really had to think it through...I mean how could anyone pick 6 things in a row and then it came to me...its the law of large numbers at work. No one responds to these things anyway and I didn't but in my email each month like clockwork I got the prognostication sure enough I got 6 for 6.
Here is how he did it. He started with a purchased email list of 50,000 (about a $300 investment). The first letter out he sent to 25,000 with an "market up" forecast and 25,000 with a market down. He got 25,000 wrong and didn't send to them again. The next month he split the 25,000 into an "up 12,500 and down 12,500". The third month he split the 12500 again and so on.
I got this amazing tally of 6 straight months of him being right as did about 80 people. Probably enough were impressed to buy his offering.
Numbers are interesting.
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