The Rule of 57

 Rule of 57

Subtle yet powerful.

Jeremie said, "Hey, this is an emergency situation! Let me drive because I am a better driver."
Jacob replied, "I agree you are the better driver, but you are also the better navigator. So, you sit right there and navigate. I am a terrible navigator..."

A wonderful fusion of rejection and flattery; a rare case indeed. What do you think?

The better driver should drive? The better navigator should navigate? Jeremie should drive and navigate? It's a problem when Jeremie is better than Jacob at both. 

"Too many cooks spoil the broth."

Let's discuss very basic math because this math cannot trouble you anymore. At times, 1+1 does not equal to 2. Sometimes, 1+1 is less than 2, just like the two cooks who spoiled the broth. Individually, they would have made you better broths! I am sure you have heard/read about that before but did you know what else it could imply? Precisely! The Rule of 57.

Presently, I want to emphasise about how 1+1 is greater than 2. Maybe you already know; it is called teamwork. Had Jeremie been without Jacob in the emergency situation, he might have had to drive and navigate himself. Although he is the better of the both, what are the odds that he could alone be better than the team? But what is the The Rule of 57?

You could surely ask, "Why did he have to navigate instead of driving?" It is possible that Jeremie wanted to drive because he didn't want to navigate. However, given the situation, we could get a rough estimate using math.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Jeremie has been rated 7 as a driver and 7 as a navigator;

Jacob has been rated 5 as a driver and 5 as a navigator.

Now there is something called "place value" in math which nicely translates to priority.

Now, the navigator is more important in a case where Jeremie and Jacob, in a "easy-to-drive" yet "not-easy-to-navigate" road-system, need to reach the nearest hospital immediately. Jacob would have probably agreed if their priorities and constraints were sorted differently.

The question remains - Why Rule of 57? Honestly, this is backed by a frail logic, which you might have guessed already. The team's winning potential is 57 if Jacob drove and Jeremie navigated which is less than 75 in the alternate case. In this case, navigation is given a higher priority hence, 75 is the optimised output. What's special about 5 and 7? In truth, it doesn't really matter because we have got more important things to do!

Have you ever come across situations where you must do something you don't want to because you need to?