I try to write these newsletters with the least personalization possible. But sometimes I can only share something personal, which made me jump to another line of thought which I wish to share. If said out of context, the simplicity of that thought would be lost.

The thing is that I study Natural Resources and Environmental Engineering, a degree which gives you, from day one, the perspective of the planet as a whole. One of its toughest subjects is Statistics & Experimental Designing, a tool that enables you to manage large amounts of data, assign a determined behavior in order to draw conclusions about the probability of a given event to occur, and then try and keep on track of the natural intelligence. How, when, and why…

And so, no matter if we are talking about the climate, the loss of the soil’s fertility, the Greenhouse gases emissions, famine, analphabetism, unemployment, financial speculation, are all processes with a given behavior which has its own probability of being so.

Any process, event, measurement, observation, will have a greater probability to occur within a determined range of average, usual, common values. Whatever falls out of that range will have a decreased probability of occurrence. Now, no matter how small that probability is, the possibility of occurrence of the unthought-of is always there.

The following picture is the Gauss Bell, which represents the probabilities of a certain measurement or data comparison to fall within the surroundings of a determined value (that value is centered in the chubby part of the graph, which represents the existence of a greater probability for something to occur. Towards each side, the narrow “tails” of the graph contain all the improbable to exist values. The area bellow the entire curve equals 1, representing the entire 100%, where all the possibilities, paths, universes and different realities exist; all the possibilities of existence, with more or less occurrence probabilities.

The main axis of Statistics, was to be able to analyze data taken from real life and say this will happen with 95% or certainty, to be sure that something was going to happen, but not so quite. There is always a 10, 5, 1% of probability in which all the improbable, unsuspected, unthought-of options are contained, which are included within the “tails” of the graph.

So, what have I learned from this subject? It might sound as a cliché, but the fundamental truth of all of this is that EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE folks… EVERYTHING.

No matter how improbable it might seem to change things around, to change the system, the unthough-of can always occur. Although our consumption habits are implanted almost in our genes, we can change them. Although society has sunk into an ocean of competition and ego, we can purify ourselves. Certainly, we are made for big things, and having this perspective of hope would not be bad for us.

Have a great week

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