On Deltas

Delta commonly refers to the Delta Air Lines, the second largest airline in the world in terms of passengers. I personally haven't had the pleasure of enjoying their services, but if other airlines are to be considered when plotting a trend, I don't really feel that bad. Hopefully no more flying for a while. Except for a possible trip to Oktoberfest as Luftwaffe seems to be offering dirt cheap tickets to Munich in September.

Beside those horrid jet-propelled sardine cans, delta should also bring back to mind the math and physics classes from school (you know, that place you go to get certified...). Delta signifies change or difference in a value and quite often absolute change. I never really did get around to switching my mindset to completely embrace relative change. Absolute change was always a lot more concrete: you invested 1k at 10e per share and the share price is now 11e, meaning that the delta is 1e in share price or 100e in your total investment's value. Of course +10% would've also worked, but then it gets tricky when you're mentally tracking values and one day it goes +5%, then -0.47% and then +1.53%. A lot easier to just remember that it was at 11e and now it's at about 11.67e.

The problematic thing with looking at absolute change is that, because it's absolute, it sort of makes you lose perspective. An increase of 1e from 10e is only a 10% increase whereas it's a 100% increase from 1e to 2e. Meaning? Instead of the 1.1k, you would now have 2k. But because of this absolute mindset, a conscious effort needs to be made to grasp this as it's not embedded directly into the way the world is perceived. At least not for me.

As is so often the case, the "real" world applications and implications are also sort of interesting. When things are going well, you demand relatively high successes. But after a crash, you're still in the same mindset and demanding similar absolute increases in your well being, without realizing that in a relative sense the demands are entirely ludicrous. Gyms, for instance, are nice places if your intent is to obtain the physique of Christian Bale (who we're incidentally going to see in the new Batman movie later today, and who makes an absolutely brilliant Patrick Bateman). The problem is that while you're pumping iron, you slowly gain strength and mass. Well, that's not really the problem. The problem arises when you go on a break, maybe because of a surgical operation which requires you to take a couple of months off from physical exercise. Now go back to the gym and demand similar absolute values and perform the routines from a couple of months back. The result? You guessed it: moving your arms or squatting down will, well, cause pain.

But to summarize, one thing that I should take away from this is that I need to learn to look at things from a relative perspective. Small absolute increases my be large relative increases and always going for the absolute highest payoff may not be realistic or even feasible. But I guess age will also correct this flaw...