At first, math and entrepreneurship may seem like two topics that are very far apart, but in fact, there are some very interesting connections between the two. Allow me to explain.
In school you learn about how to solve various math problems. Your teacher, assuming she was nice, generally gave you problems that you could solve. Ok, you may not have been able to solve them, but they certainly were solvable, and by solvable, I mean they had an analytical or direct solutions. These are generally problems that in theory you could solve without the aid of the calculator. At some point in school, you may have been exposed to problems that could not be solved using analytical methods, or if they could, they would have required a lot of time to do. These type of math problems, and techniques, are generally learned in a class called numerical analysis/methods, although your other classes may have exposed you to some of these concepts as well.
So what does any of this have to do with entrepreneurship? Well, entrepreneurs generally solve problems using the strategies of numerical analysis, and in particular iterative techniques. In numerical analysis many problems are not solved directly, but iteratively. Given some initial condition, either you, or some computer then attempts to find the answer. However, depending on the initial condition, it could take quite awhile (or a lot of iterations and wrong answers) to get to the right answer. Under certain circumstances, the process may even break down and not work at all. Lastly, using iterative numerical methods, you never get exactly the right answer. There is some error.
In contrast, analytical and direct approaches to problems are not iterative. You work through and rationalize through a serious of steps that get you to the right answer. There are no mistakes or recalculations along the way (for the most part). The downside of this approach is that some problems cannot be solved this way, or if they can, you will have expended an enormous amount of energy getting there. While I have simplified the differences between the two approaches, the essence of the relationship is there. Entrepreneurs are iterative and imprecise. They make mistakes along the way. They often lack the elegance of analytical methods and they are rarely 100% correct. But on the upside, this allows them to solve problems that bureaucratic and more rationale methods would struggle to solve.
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