KING - Paul the Octopus versus Katherine the Human

You must have heard about Paul the Octopus, haven't you? Owing to his extraordinary clairvoyant skills, this little guy made quite a few headlines during the last World Cup in South Africa. He now even has his own Wikipedia page. 

It was because of his uncanny clairvoyant abilities that he became so famous that recently he was even offered a free retirement in one of Spanish zoos. You would think that Spaniards, with their economy on the rocks, would have more important issues to take care of first, but apparently not. The Paulie guy, after all, predicted their World Cup final victory over the Dutch. While Spaniards love the guy, I think in Amsterdam it's his whole family that must be hugely popular now: the octopus dishes must be ranking very high among the Dutch folks these days. 

So what exactly was Paul's feat? He predicted flawlessly the winner of several matches during the World Cup, most of which involved the German squad as Paul lives in Germany, although the last winner predicted by Paul during the 2010 FIFA World Cup was the Spanish team competing against the Dutch in a match that did not involve Germans.

In fact, Paul predicted the winner of 8 matches in a row. The probability of this happening by chance is 1 over 2^8 (2 to the 8th power) which translates into the ratio of 1 to 256. I may write another article to show you to calculate this, but that's not the point right now. Sounds like a small number, doesn't it? Well, perhaps, but not smaller than 0.001, and only about two times lower than 0.01. Is it really such a great feat?

Let's have a look at the following picture. 

It represents a one day trading record of KING's first student, one Katherine. On this day, pretty volatile and thus good for quick trading that KING methods are particularly suitable for, she logged 40 trades, all of them winners.

What is the probability of accomplishing something like that by pure chance? Using the model we used to find the probability of Paul's prophetic feat, we can easily find out that it is 1 over 2^40 (2 to the power of 40). The latter number amounts to:

1099511627776 

or

1.099511627776 x 10^12  

or

1 trillion, 99 billion, 511 million, 627 thousand and 776.

I got these numbers from WolframAlpha. It is from the very same fabulous knowledge engine (thanks, Dr. Wolfram!) that I got the following comparisons (the tilde character means approximately).

Comparisons:

~ 0.055 x the number of red blood cells in the human body (~ 2x10^13) 

or 

~ 3.7 x the number of stars in our galaxy (~ 3x10^11)

or 

~ 10 x the number of people who have ever lived (~ 1.1x10^11).

Yes, 2^40 is indeed a true astronomical number, and so its inverse has to be very, very tiny. It is much, much smaller than 0.001, a bit more than a billion times.  

So, you know what, Paul? The Spanish may love you and the Dutch may want to eat you, but you are still no match for Katherine. Face it, dude: this chick rules!

And I can't help but notice that while Paul has become such a celebrity, Katherine still lives in relative obscurity. Life's just not fair, but she actually likes it this way... Or so she tells me. I think I can understand it. After all, not everyone, even in this celebrity obsessed country wants to be another Kardashian. 

But the really interesting issue and the punch line here is this: are you beating the Paulie guy or is he beating you?

Is 8 winners in a row something that happens to you once in a blue moon or is it a fairly common occurrence? Because for a decent KING trader, it's the latter. 

And that's the memo. I hope I did not interrupt any of my Dutch clients their octopus dinner ...

P.S. Yes, Katherine's results are real. They may not look normal to most, but I did refuse to apologize for that in the past when I was about to launch the first KING mentoring session (see it here) and I still do. And, boy, was I ever validated more than when just within days of starting that session PP and then Dick produced similarly brilliant results? See, that's what you get when you are not afraid to leave your comfort zone and that's what I got for sticking to my guns. You want the "normal" results? We don't show them here at KING's place because the normal results are for normal people and normal people is what guys like Paul the Octopus have for lunch. So if you really insist on being normal, you better watch out: Paul's cousins are coming after you. Run! Or you may as well become a KING trader. Beats living in the constant fear of hungry cephalopods big time ...