Minutes of the Meeting [Week 36/2025] | Reading material for Week 37/2025

[Dammalapati Sai Krishna]

  September 7th: 10AM - 10:30AM
Attendees: @Karanam Santhoshini and @Dammalapati Sai Krishna

We discussed chapters 7 and 8: Linear models, Concavity and Convexity. 

Neil deGrasse Tyson has a couple of interesting illustrations on how we think linearly:

1. Why Human Brain Struggles to Understand Exponential Growth w/ Neil deGrasse Tyson
2. How does exponential progress feel?

In Concave models, the book discussed the Diminishing Returns model in which the slope reduced from 1 to 0.

 

But what about models in which slope reduces from 0 to -1? We have Kuznets curve (even the negative marginal returns part of the above curve) in which this happens. But we thought if there are any phenomena where the slope starts at 0 and reduces to -1.

An example I could think of is the boiling frog story. When a frog is slowly boiled, its life is initially ~constant with 0 slope as the temperature of the water increases. But then the life suddenly falls. 

One real example we wanted to check was to take government debt on the X axis and Economic Growth rate or Credit Rate on the Y Axis. The idea is that as debt initially increases, there would be little change in the Y variable, but as debt crosses a threshold, there would be a sudden fall. 

We also want to apply Coubb Doglas models and Solow Growth models to learn them better.

For the next week, we planned to read till the 9th chapter of Model Thinker. We are soon going to read graph models! It starts afresh, so readers can join now.

The call will be on September 14th, Sunday, at 10AM tentatively. Please RSVP to the GMeet invite when you receive it.
Please add anything I missed or misrepresented.

Best,
Krishna.