Is there such thing as a sigma male ? WTF is a sigma male ?

Sigma males are supposed to be these introverted types who “refuse to fit into any hierarchical categorization.”

Non-sense.

Hierarchy is not something you determine, or chose to be included or excluded from. So this “sigma” males are “lone wolves”. That’s just being an introvert, thank you. What they’re trying to say -I hope I got this right- is that sigmas don’t have followers, as opposed to alphas who have a lot of followers and lead them. It is assumed, by default, alpha males lead a lot of people…but that requires charisma and mass influence, doesn’t it ? Some people have it, some people don’t. Picking up a sub-category of alphas-those without followers- and naming it “sigmas” is disingenuous.

An alpha male is just that -whether he is leading anyone or not. Are you lacking followers, aren’t recognized by society or your community, and want to call yourself “sigma” ?

You’re either an alpha(2% or less of males) or a beta (98%). This whole thing “sigma” males is ridiculous. Why do you care about recognition, anyways ? Why do you need an audience to your greatness ? Whether a man has witnesses to his being is immaterial. When you are competing with another males – and we all compete one way or another- and you get noticed or not makes no difference.

Sigmas are the introverts who have no standing or human assets to show off, but still wanna be called “alphas”.

Until next time,

Your Man,

Max Cantor

“First, to calculate the expected value of an investment don’t use the average (also called the arithmetic mean); use the geometric mean. The difference is simple, but powerful.

Imagine you have three investment options, each equally likely. They return 100%, 50% and 0%. The arithmetic mean/average/expected value is 50%: (100+50+0)/3. The geometric mean is 0%: cubic root of (100500). The Kelly criterion says don’t invest. Quite a different result.

Second, size your investment properly. Invest too much and bankruptcy looms. Bet too little, and your returns won’t amount to a pile of beans.

How do you calculate how much to bet? Kelly criterion says to bet more the greater your edge and the likelihood of success.

KC = W - (1-W)/R

KC = kelly criterion (the percentage of your balance sheet to invest) W = probability of winning R = win/loss ratio…”

Tom Tonguz

Professional venture capitalists use it…

Until next year,

You Man,

Max Cantor

When you have some spare time, I invite you to listen to this talk

“If you are going to be an expert archer,

You must shoot before you think.

Otherwise I’ll be too late.”

Alan Watts

Meanwhile, in investment banking… Steve McLaughlin of Financial Technology Partners LP is “comfortably the highest paid investment banker in America [WSJ, Dec. 5th, 2021]

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Subscriptions are only $8.95 a month (full access to archives included) or $1.99 per article. To show your support subscribe.

From: Elysium Health

They analyze “over 100,000 sites of DNA methylation to calculate your biological age.”

NOTE: I have no affiliation to the company and are not getting paid for referencing them.

Global Procurement and Sourcing Specialization through Coursera from Rutgers University, N.Y.

From the Curriculum: “Strategic Sourcing, then move on to the very important topic of Supplier Management. In Supplier Management, you will learn how to select and evaluate suppliers, implement appropriate contracts, and how to mitigate risks. In Supply Market Analysis, you will learn and understand various tools and techniques to evaluate supply markets. Lastly, the course will cover the very important topic of negotiation. Outside reading will be provided to reinforce your knowledge. In addition, case studies will be used to bring these learning to life, and assessment will be used to test your overall knowledge.”

Security in Google Cloud Platform Specialization from Google Cloud Training

“Launch your career in Cloud Security. This self-paced Specialization gives a broad study of security controls, best practices, and techniques on Google Cloud. Through recorded lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on labs, participants explore and deploy the components of a secure Google Cloud solution, including Cloud Identity, the GCP Resource Manager, Cloud IAM, Google Virtual Private Cloud firewalls, Google Cloud Load balancing, Cloud CDN, Cloud Storage access control technologies, Security Command Center, Stackdriver, Security Keys, Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys, the Google Data Loss Prevention API, and Cloud Armor. Participants learn mitigations for attacks at many points in a Google Cloud-based infrastructure, including Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks, phishing attacks, and threats involving content classification and use.”

Introduction to Cloud Computing offered by IBM

4 months to complete, 2 hours per week effort

Skills developed: Hybrid MulticludCloud NativeDevops, Iaas,PaaS, Saas Cloud Computing

Python for Everybody Specialization by University of Michigan

Aprox. 8 months to complete, 2 hrs./week

Course description: “This Specialization builds on the success of the Python for Everybody course and will introduce fundamental programming concepts including data structures, networked application program interfaces, and databases, using the Python programming language. In the Capstone Project, you’ll use the technologies learned throughout the Specialization to design and create your own applications for data retrieval, processing, and visualization.”

All this courses started May 31, 2020.

Good luck,

Max Cantor

Free Online Ivy Leagues classes

Example: Improve Your Communication Skills on Coursera ( 4 weeks long) started today !

So let’s get started the year:

Dark Matter of the Mind

with Daniel Everett, anthropologist, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentley University. Link here

From the description of this course:

• Why the ‘dark matter of the mind’ shapes our ideas and attitudes.
• How epigenetics undermines the idea of genetic determinism.
• The flaws in the thinking behind universal archetypes, language and myths.
• Why neural flexibility is the key for our species’ success.
• The evolutionary importance of our relationships with animals
• How language functions as a cultural tool.
• What it means to have a sense of self.
• How we should imagine the mind as part of the body…

Introduction to Big Data (from Microsoft)

Starts today ! January 9th, 2019 !

Instructor: Graeme Malcolm,Senior Content Developer, Microsoft Learning Experiences

Link

Introduction to Machine Learning

Started Jan. 6th, over 8 Million enrolled.

This course is offered by Stanford. Approx. 56 hours to complete.

From course description: you”ll learn Logistic Regression, Artificial Neural NetworkMachine Learning (ML) Algorithms, Machine Learning.

Link (it’s on Coursera)

Intro to Python: Fundamentals

Starts Jan. 9th. Link

What you’ll learn

• Python 3 fundamentals
• Strings and List manipulation
• Methods to Iterate through strings, lists and ranges
• Creating, reading and writing to files

Introduction to Python: Absolute Beginner

Started today, Jan 9th, also. Effort: same as previous course (3-4 hours weekly).

From the course description:

What you’ll learn: (from this course description)

• Using Python in Jupiter Notebooks
• Gathering input and manipulating input/output
• Building reusable Functions with parameters and return values
• Decisions and repetition using conditional statements and loops

We thank reader Conrad for these tips.

And a fun video from me:

Of particular interest I think is the piece Can They Ever Catch Up ? (Rebecca Beyer) about the millennials who graduated around the Recession who are still unable to buy a home, get a decent job, and have to survive on “catch-as-catch-can” gigs.

Did you know Stanford had an Art of Living free course from 8 years ago still up on their Vimeo Feed ?

1 – "Introduction to The Art of Living" from Stanford Humanities on Vimeo.

Books

” Maimonides (1120-1190) was a brilliant Hispanic Jewish scholar who lived in Spain and Egypt in the 12th century. In addition to being a philosopher, Maimonides also worked as a medical doctor. The Guide for the Perplexed, originally written in Arabic, and soon translated into Hebrew and widely read, is his best known work. The framing story is that it is a letter written to one of his students, to prepare him to understand the background of the Merkabah (the Chariot of Ezekiel) narrative. In the course of this, Maimonides delves into the most difficult questions of theology and reality itself, many of which are still controversial today. Did the universe have a beginning? Will it ever end? What is the nature of evil? Does the complexity of organic life imply some kind of rational design? “

Blog post from the VC world

As a Seed Investor, Do I Want Softbank to Invest In My Best Companies Or Not? by Hunter Walk, partner at Homebrew

We have to thank Fink and Theo, two long time readers, for these updates.

Course: Analytics Storytelling for Data Science: (on Edx from Microsoft instructors)

Length: 6 weeks

Price: Free

Starts: Today: Aug. 17, 2019

From the Course Description:

What you’ll learn

• How to apply storytelling principles to your analytics work
• How to improve your analytics presentations through storytelling
• Guidelines and best practices for creating high-impact reports and presentations

Conference to attend: HustleCon (2-day in December)

50 Startup Interview Questions from pathrise

I looked at these job-hunter questions chuckling sometimes (How do you measure success ?) but I understand job-seekers have a lot of work ahead of them.

Remember, If you got the Book of The Underdog if are ahead of your competition. You’ve jam-packed a solid boss frame and you know who’s interviewing you and what they are really looking for.

Startup pitch (after Series A,B)

Revenue by Use Slide

Uber’s Pitch Desk

Uber IPOed in May, and here’s their pitch template

That’s it for today. As always, you can comment below (social media comments get ignored and no DMs, please) if any of these links and suggestions were useful to you.