Why you should keep trying.

The Math/Statistics behind "aspire to perspire"

If you entered Oshodi underbridge on a hot afternoon, picked 500 men at random, get their weight measured with a weighing scale and plot the data you get on a histogram graph, you are likely to get something like this:

Most of the weight you measured will be clustered around a midpoint that is known to statisticians as the mean/average. On the left side of the chart, you’ll find a few people who are underweight and on the right side of the chart, you will find some other people who are overweight. But the majority of the men’s weight you will measure is most likely to fall within the normal range so your data will likely cluster around the middle just like the chart above.

If seventy-five students in a class sat for an exam in an optimal environment (no cheating, class was well taught). If the score gotten by each student in that exam is plotted on a histogram graph will very look very similar to this:

The majority of the students will get scores close to the average score of the class. Of course, there will be a few students that will get very low scores when compared to their other classmates, and in every class, you will have the geniuses who will blow everyone out of the water with their very high and outrageous scores.

For those that are very observant, you'll have noticed that the two histogram graphs above are quite similar, yeah, it's not a coincidence, it’s called a normal distribution.

The idea behind a normal distribution is a very simple one. Most data we deal with and measure on a daily basis are normally distributed, meaning that you will find most/majority of the data clustered around the mean, with a few ones on the wings(left and right). So if you take the weight of a certain population, most of them will weigh somewhere around the mean/average with a few people very underweight and some other few people, same with class scores in a test/exam, majority of the students will get scores close to the class average, a few students will get very low marks and some other students(usually little in number) will get a very high mark.

A lot of data in the real-world setting are normally distributed; Weight, Height, Scores in exams, Intelligent Quotient Score, Shoe sizes e.t.c

You know what else is normally distributed? t it's the result you get from your efforts. In the course of our lives, we involve ourselves in many things, we try out of a lot of stuff and get different rewards from these things we do. If we plot the reward/payoffs from the things we try on a histogram, you'll likely have a normal distribution chart. Which means you will get some few mediocre reward from your efforts, most of the payoff you will be getting from your effort will likely fall in the middle/average range(not good/not bad) and of course, you will have the few efforts that will give the great result you have been expecting; these are the kind of results that changes the trajectory of our lives.

Most times, we tend to give up after getting average/mediocre rewards from most of our efforts, it’s very exasperating, I know, but the "law of normal distribution" says that if we should keep trying, someday we are going to get those outsized rewards and big payoff that will make us really feel fulfilled and achieved.

The story of many popular celebrities and people who have made it in life followed a similar path before they finally had their big break, they tried their hands on a lot of things that gave them average/poor rewards before they had their big break. Beneath that one story that makes them look really successful is a thousand stories of failures and average returns.

The result and payoff from your current effort might be very underwhelming, and you might have done a lot of things and the reward might seem very meagre. Keep trying, normal distribution says that you should get your big break soon, and the very interesting thing about big breaks is that, you don't need a lot of them, you only need one and you might just be settled for the rest of your life. Just keep trying. “If you give up, na you fuck up.”