Mr Gauss gets Killed by a Fat Tail

After spending a lot of time on my own and with the quiet to reflect I look back on this last year and draw the most satisfaction from the way our kids have adapted and thrived in their new environment. Ever the libertarian I was adamant that the kids adapt in their own time. Now for those believers in the Gaussian Distribution or better known "Normal" distribution of the Bell Shaped Curve I want you to know there is nothing normal about it. Just like the financial wizards and mainstream economists who believed the economy and the stock market behaved according to this "Normal" Distribution curve were unceremoniously killed by the bear markets "fat tail"; so do we make the mistake in believing kids/people develop according to a normal distribution. This distribution curve is nothing more than an elegant statistical equation which groups people in probabilities based on an observed historical sample. Unfortunately the formulae hopelessly fails to capture the reality in which a far greater proportion of the statistical outliers occur within the main body of the bell than the statistics would have us believe. What am I saying? I am saying that the world doesn't exist in an orderly patterned way, yes nature may present some order on the surface but beneath the veneer is a chaotic process developing in a manner that is far from normal. Take the current financial malaise, according to many Nobel winning economists this type of event should only happen once every few million years, but history shows us that it happens surprisingly frequently. Noted French Mathematician Bernard Mandlebroit published a book a few years ago where he provided excellent scientific proof refuting the normal distribution, so if you want to understand what I said more eloquently turn there for guidance. So Berman what is your theory now that you have bashed one of the most relied on, trusted, statistical tools the world has ever known.

 

If we as a people develop chaotically or as I would prefer us to believe, in patterned chaos (no this is not a contradiction, far greater mathematicians can prove patterns within Chaos Theory) then we need to provide broader scope in our categorization of what seems to the narrow thinking mind as normal. If a child achieves mastery of mathematics at 10 instead of 8 is that abnormal? If a child develops their 1st friendship at 8 instead of 5 is that abnormal? Yes I am speaking from an idealistic perspective as we as humans are  part of society and within society there are norms. It isn't well accepted for a 20year old to be in grade 7 I take the point, and it does a child no favours emotionally to be in a class that they are not coping with, and by the same token a child a lot older than his or her peers is not done any favours either as their emotional self worth is challenged by the school scoring system and the perception of their intelligence. The same theory applies to those positive outliers. For instance there are some kids who develop far quicker physically or mentally than others, by teaching them that they are special often backfires when the laws of nature slow down this early growth to more normal levels and the kid who was so special becomes average. This too leads to emotional baggage.  What we as parents need to accept is that societies ranking system of what is generally considered as normal is far from accurate and furthermore we as parents need to tap into the patterned chaos that provides us with the most accurate clues in our most precious assets development and potential.

 

As a libertarian committed to a free market my views on letting the kids develop in their own way needs to be tempered with the reality that kids are not fully comprehending participants of the game called life, and we as parents have the unfair advantage of experience which we need to use to coach these bundles of energy/potential. To achieve this balance one needs to almost be like a composer of a complex orchestral score. Where I lean too far to the left Ilana balances the equation with her exquisite intuition to the right,and when the discipline components sees me too far to the right she balances me to the left. Together this year we have made music, as our kids have developed at school, made friends and gained in health, albeit at a pace much slower than "normal" but quick enough to make a parent more happy than any material possession could achieve.