Hovey M. Tyndall - Improving Your Happiness and Success

IMPROVING

YOUR HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS

How a Simple Mathematical Approach Can Lead To Personal, Professional and Political Happiness and Success Through Better Decision Making

By

Hovey M. Tyndall

Copyright 2020 by Hovey M. Tyndall

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All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or manner, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Created in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number:2020912363

ISBN:Softcover 978-1-64908-050-9

eBook978-1-64908-049-3

Republished by: PageTurner Press and Media LLC

Publication Date: 8/18/2020

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Table of Contents

Possible Other Applications Utilizing Relative
Importance and Relative Performance44

Introduction

W hile it is probably likely that there is no statistical basis of support for this, I suspect that some 90% of the population of the developed world either does not like mathematics or does not understand mathematics.At least that is my experience.The main purpose of this book is to demonstrate to those 90% that, despite what they think, some very simple approaches utilizing numbers and simple mathematics can significantly improve ones life at home AND at work AND who is politically elected, in terms of both happiness and success.And happiness and success can be very different.In addition, if you are in business, or work in a business environment, what you will learn in this book can be extremely helpful to you and your organization in making critical business d ecisions.

Another way to view mathematics in a context of happiness and success is through set theory.Set theory is a mathematically logical approach to viewing various groups of elements.A set that is the intersection of two sets contains elements that belong to both sets.The ninety-five percent group referred to above would likely consider the intersection of the sets of things mathematical and the sets of things called success and happiness as being a null set, that is that there is no commonality whatsoever.The thesis of this book, however, is that, in fact, the intersection of these two sets is quite large as you will see in the examples provided in this book.

In this book, I discuss in detail the terms relative importance and relative performance with respect to several characteristics involved in a subject. If the relative importance and relative performance are both rated high, that is great and should be maintained. If the relative importance is rated high and the relative performance is rated low, this is an importance issue and must be corrected, perhaps by adding additional resources. If the relative importance is rated low and the relative performance is rated high, this suggests a restructuring and/or lowering of the resources applied. If the relative importance is rated low and the relative performance is rated low, this i s also an
acceptable situation.

Chapters 1 through 7 describe how ones personal happiness and success can be greatly improved by applying the simple mathematical principles

Chapter 1

Choosing a Restaurant

T he other day, knowing that one of my friends went out on a first date with a woman that he had recently met, I asked him how his evening went.He replied, It was quite nice.That answer did not satisfy me, so I asked, Okay, but on a scale of 0 to 10, how would you rate the compatibility between the two of you?He thought about it a few moments and answered, About an 8.5.That told me a lot more because, had he said she was a 10, that would have told me one thing, and had he answered a 5, that would have told me something else completely.So, by applying a little math, really just numbers, I found out a lot more than the quite nic e answer.

Lets say you live in the City of Lights, Paris.(Having traveled to many places in my lifetime, it is the only place that I said to myself, having arrived there, Im in Paris! Im in Paris!)Yesterday was payday and you would like to take your wife out for dinner.She is a good cook, but likes to go out occasionally and be waited on. Lets assume that there are five reasonable French restaurants within walking distance of where you live.You and your wife sit down on the couch, get a pad of paper, and begin to do a little numbers exercise.You ask her, What criteria or attributes would you like to consider in choosing the restaurant that you would like to go to tonight.After much back and forth, you both agree that there are five key criteria: price, quality of the food, breadth of the menu, level of service, and the atmosphere within the r estaurant.

The next question to be answered is how important are each of these attributes to your wife on a zero to ten basis, relatively speaking.After much discussion and give and take, but giving your wife the upper hand in this instance (always a smart thing to do), you and your wife agree on the following relative importance (RI ) ratings:

Price:7

Food qu ality8.5

Menu breadth5

Service level10

Atmos phere7.5

You and you wife have been to three of these restaurants and have friends that have been to the ones you have not been to.After much discussion, a little arguing, and some phone calls, you and your wife come up with following relative performance (RP) ratings with the idea that, on balance, the restaurant with the best overall score will be your choice for the evening.The performance scores for each of the five restaurants are shown below. In this example, a high score or evaluation represents favorability for all criteria except price, for which the higher the score, the higher the price and the more unfavorable it is; how this can be handled will be sh own below:

As indicated above, the rating for price needs to be converted so that high is favorable and low is unfavorable in order to be consistent with the other attributes.One way to do this is to subtract each rating for price from 10.Thus, the ratings for price for each of the restaurants, as shown below, now represent the situation in which a higher score represents a more favora ble price.