How short lived is our memory?

Years ago I read a quote that said “To get into the history books, you need to read a history book”. I did not gather the depth of the quote until years later.

As a kid the school system forced me to study a bunch of subjects from English literature, Grammar and Composition, History & Geography, Math, Science, Moral Science & Religion and a long list of extracurricular topics. During my college years I wondered why? I could not make the connection between a course in History & Geography to a career in Engineering.

After I started working I realized how little we remember and how little we apply from our coursework. How about the Russian and French revolutions and corporate organizations; Regional and natural resources to global sourcing; Asian economic systems as related to regional instability and risk; Shakespeare’s plays and interpersonal relationships.

A couple years Black and Scholes’ received a Noble prize in Finance for the Black and Scholes Option pricing model based on Brownian motion. Who could have though of comparing stock price movement to Brownian motions and using the ideology to predict financial derivatives.

I know a good friend who built a corporate organizational model based on heat and mass transfer principles to predict career movement.

An article in the New Yorker by Stephen Dubner on Steven Levitt’s research is another great example. Their new book Freakonomics might make interesting reading.