What is (a+b)2 ???
You must be thinking what sort of a question is that. Obviously
it’s “a2 + b2 +
2ab”
But today I learnt something else. Today I learnt how to visualize (a+b)2, or for that
matter(a+b)3
Hello everyone, and welcome to another exhilarating class of
Dr.Mandi… today the day began in one of the most unexpected ways. Today we ‘saw’
what we had been mugging up for years. And you can see my excitement in my
anxiety to just tell you how and what surprise did Dr.Mandi revealed today in
class. But let me start from the beginning…
For the last few days a toy was lying in one of the corners
of our class that Dr.Mandi had brought with him nearly a week ago. We all were
curious to know what it was but couldn’t find out. Today was the day when finally Dr.Mandi picked it up and asked
us what it was. We had no idea. It a cube made of tiny plastic pipes that could
be dismantled.
Then came the hint, “what is (a+b)2?”. One of the
students gave the obvious reply that we all know. But that was the surprise. One
of my friends picked up the hint and understood what the toy was actually. And when
Dr.Mandi asked him to explain it to all of us what he grasped, he shared that
if you look closely, each of the 12 sides of the cube was made of two distinct
pipes, one red and the other yellow. If we assume that the red coloured pipe is
“a” and the yellow coloured pipe is “b”. Then (a+b)2 is nothing but
the area of the face containing the side chosen… to make it more clear, let me show you one of
the sides of the cube with the pipes denoted as a and b. you can see how the
entire surface area contains ‘a2’, ‘b2’ and two ‘a*b’…
Hence the simple formula that we had been learning for so many years was
nothing but an area. J
Similarly he explained how (a+b)3 would mean we
are talking about nothing but the volume of the cube. This is the beauty of Dr.Mandi’s
class. He explained to us how small-small things carry meaning in them and how
easy it is to neglect them and just be confined to their upper meaning. He made
us realize how interesting education can be if shared in the right manner…. Hope you will never forget the formula now
;-)
Now was the time for some management to begin… and the
agenda of today’s class was “SMART goals”. But we all knew that Dr.Mandi would
not just give us a lecture on smart goals. And it was true, he began the topic
with another surprise from his MAGIC BAG… He took out a snail (obviously not a
live one, but only its shell) and handed it over to us… to observe!!
The thing that we had to observe was the “SPIRAL” nature of
its shell’s growth. How it began with a small centre and EVOLVED as it moved
out… This is how our Goals should evolve… in a spiral… If today we have
achieved 20, tomorrow we should aim for 25, then 35, then 50 and so on………. We must
never limit ourselves but should evolve as a Fibonacci Series evolves…
1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 and to infinity…
This is known as Goal Setting. The higher you set the goad,
the more you achieve. If your Goal Achieved is higher than you Goal Set, then
you undermined your abilities. You must always, and always Set for more than
your potential, then only you will be able to strive for better results and
grow with every attempt. Dr.Mandi used a simple graph to explain to us what
should be the relation among our potential, goal set, goal achieved and
previous achievement.
If you believe that your potential is at B, then your Goal
Set should be A…
A – Goal Set
B – Potential
C – Goal Achieved
D – Previous Achievement
This concept where higher expectations lead to higher
results was derived from
Pygmalion, a
play by George Bernard Shaw and
hence is called as the Pygmalion effect. To give you the precise definition of
Pygmalion effect,
The Pygmalion
effect, or
Rosenthal effect,
is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the
better they perform.
Finally it was the time for the class to prove that we will
always follow this principle of aiming high in our managerial and personal
lives. And then we again saw those interesting tower building cubes in front of
us. this time again we were asked to build a tower. Last time, if you remember,
we built a tower of 16 blocks and Dr.Mandi told us that till date the max
height achieved was that of 27 blocks…
So we began our tower building, but this time it wasn’t ‘Craftsmanship’…
this time we were coordinating, thinking, seeking help and improvising. And we
surely did keep our expectations high. We kept a target of 50 in mind. And with
that target set, we beat our previous record and made a tower of 24 blocks.
HURRAY!!!
But that was not what we had in mind. We tried again and
finally broke the previous set record by creating a tower with 28 blocks…
That is the power of Expectation and Organization…!!!!
Hope you enjoyed the long post and were able to learn a
thing or two… Do let me know how you found the post and please comment… Thank
you!!!