

Why Becoming an Entrepreneur is a "No-Brainer" - NewWorldOrder
http://how2livelife.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-becoming-entrepreneur-is-no-brainer.html

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ojbyrne
The writer's grasp of probability is almost as bad as the graphic.

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mattmaroon
The only thing worse than his grasp of probability is his grasp of the English
language. How the hell did this make top page here?

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NewWorldOrder
If you plan on being at startup school, maybe I can express in plain English
to you face-to-face "how the hell" this story made top page...I'll be the guy
in the Purdue t-shirt.

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dkokelley
Ouch, the logic hurts.

Major Premise: 2 out of 3 millionaires are entrepreneurs.

Minor Premise: You could be an entrepreneur.

Conclusion: You could have a 2/3 chance of being a millionaire.

 _Am I getting the argument correctly? I'm hoping that I'm missing something
or interpreting it wrong_

The argument presented is invalid. This does not mean that _you_ (or all
entrepreneurs) have a 2/3 chance to making it to millionaire, but that
millionaires have a 2/3 chance of being an entrepreneur. The question to ask
yourself is how many entrepreneurs _aren't_ millionaires? What if 9/10
entrepreneurs go bankrupt? The decision is not quite as easy as the author
makes it out to be. Maybe only 1/3 millionaires are royalty, but 9/10 of
royalty are millionaires. It makes more sense to be the 1/3 royalty than the
2/3 entrepreneurs. Your odds are better. (Crazy examples used for educational
purposes only. You can't decide to be royalty in my experience.)

Please don't misunderstand my motives. I have very strong entrepreneurial
leanings and I hope to support myself in the future by my own ventures.

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NewWorldOrder
your absolute chance of becoming a millionaire isn't 2/3. 2/3 millionaires are
entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial route to millions is at least double that
of the non-entrepreneurial route (assuming there are no more entrepreneurs
than there are non-entrepreneurs -- a reasonable assumption)...in the example
game given at the post, the non-entrepreneurial route is assigned the chance
of 1/3 (assuming 1 out 3 non-entrepreneurs are millionaires -- not so
reasonable assumption)...so 2/3 is at least double of 1/3.

To be clear, if there are 30 millionaires and 3K non-entrepreneurs and 3K
entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurial route obviously wouldn't be 2/3, but it
will be double that of the non-entrepreneurial route.

Excuse the confusion.

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paulgb
Ok, I see your reasoning, but I think it would be better to word it like this:
"You are (statistically) twice as likely to be a millionaire if you are an
entrepreneur than if you are not an entrepreneur (assuming that less than two
thirds of the total population are entrepreneurs)."

But this still leaves a correlation/causation problem if you want to use it to
imply that choosing the entrepreneurial path makes one twice as likely to
become rich.

