Is it Better to be Lucky Than Good?

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Is it Better to be Lucky Than Good?

            Many, many years ago, in a former career that I had (as a Senior Director of IT for a Fortune 50 company), a colleague remarked to my boss how it was better to be lucky than to be good.  To be clear, she was talking about work.  I remember my boss telling me about this conversation and needing to be calmed down.  That boss, who is still a good friend of mine to this day, is a person I consider to be one of the very best at what he does.  The notion that someone would rather be less skilled but lucky drove him nuts.  Quite frankly, it didn't do much for me either.

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Dumb "Luck"

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Dumb "Luck"

           This past week, a friend sent me an e-mail along with a link to an article about a woman who has been seemingly making a habit of winning large prizes in scratch off lotteries.  I tend to be very skeptical of these types of articles.   The internet isn't always the best place to find credible information.  Some of you might recall a column I wrote several months ago about how one writer noted that a disproportionate number of winning multi-state lottery tickets were being sold in one state.  This 'analysis' didn't take into account the total number of tickets sold.  It shouldn't be much of a surprise if more winning tickets were sold in Pennsylvania vs. Rhode Island given that many more tickets are presumably sold in Pennsylvania.

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