Go With Your Heart Not Your Brain

During college, I had a liking towards necklaces made by Tiffany and Co..

One year, I was taking one of the hardest courses at Carnegie Mellon University – Decision Analysis and Decision Support System (DADSS). It was taught by Paul Fischbeck, an intelligent, somewhat handsome, 6’3” (estimate), slim, professor who received his Ph.D from Stanford University and went to the military. The class taught me how to use mathematical equations and/or formulas to quantify factors, analyze outcomes of all possible decisions, and recommend the most optimal option. The goal was to analyze the consequences of decisions in an economic fashion, often in complex scenarios. Zzz.

After graduating with this major, people usually worked in consulting, legal, government or just about anything social science related. I never thought that it would one day help me do what I do now, drug dealing. Kidding!

What was I saying again? Oh yes, Decision Analysis and Decision Support System (DADSS) class and Tiffany and Co..

For Christmas, these people who may or may not have the same blood type as me, who may or may not also have the same DNA as me, offered to buy me one (1) necklace from Tiffany and Co.. Only one. How cheap of them!

My DADSS class happened to assign this homework which was to present a decision that I must make, sort out the options, list three factors to quantify the options, quantify them, and recommend one option that was most mathematically optimal. So, I chose to analyze which Tiffany and Co., necklace I should ask for.

The factors I finalized on were:

• Retail price, they ranged from 150 USD to 225 USD
• The presence or vacancy of the Tiffany & Co. logo on the necklace
• Aesthetics

After quantifying these factors, I applied blah blah blah (you probably don’t care), and concluded that I was to go with option B.

When I saw that the result was option B, I wasn’t happy. I didn’t want it. But, how was this possible when the math told me that the most optimal option was B? I added in the conclusion of my paper that although this option was the most rational one, I did not want it.

When I got my homework assignment back, my Teacher’s Assistant wrote a comment to my conclusion. I vaguely remember what it was and haven’t been able to locate that paper.