Pareto Principle, the 80/20 Rule, and More Jumbotron Antics

 
Episode Milestone

• Hosts note that Episode 75 feels like a meaningful number (cool, but not as significant as 60 was for them). Next true milestone will be Episode 100, expected in ~25 weeks.

Word of the Episode: Pareto (Pareto Principle)

• Definition: The Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule: roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes.
• History:
  • Coined by Italian economist Wilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), originally observing that 20% of Italians owned 80% of land.
  • Later applied by Joseph Juran to quality control (20% of causes lead to 80% of defects).
• Other Names: “Vital few,” “principle of factor sparsity.”
• Applications:
  • Donations: 20% of donors often give 80% of funds.
  • Manufacturing/quality control: 20% of machines may cause 80% of defects.
  • Social contexts: often summarized as “20% of people do 80% of the work.”
• Fun Note: They joke about sounding “pontificatious” by using the fancy term principle of factor sparsity.

Main Topic: The Phillies Baseball Game Incident

• Event:
  • A man retrieved a foul/home-run ball several seats over, gave it to his son.
  • A woman in Phillies gear confronted him, demanded the ball, touched him aggressively, and allegedly cursed/gestured.
  • Man eventually gave her the ball.
• Father’s Behavior: Seen as loving and sincere—the ball was clearly for his son (hugged him, put it in his mitt).
• Debate:
  • Host 1: Believes ball retrieval is first-come, first-served. Since the woman didn’t catch it, it was fair game, and the dad did nothing wrong.
  • Host 2: Thinks as a grown man, he should’ve let fans in the immediate area retrieve it; still, the woman was completely out of line.
• Aftermath:
  • Marlins team stepped in, gave the family consolation gifts (goodie bag, signed gear, possibly even a PS5).
  • Rumors circulated that the woman may have lost her job (unconfirmed, possibly misinformation).
  • Observed that her partner’s body language looked exhausted and unsurprised by her behavior.
  • Discussion on Philly fan culture (“aggressive, confrontational, almost embraced as an identity”).
  • Hosts argue the dad’s choice to hand over the ball was the wiser path of de-escalation.
• Connection to 80/20: They joke that “20% of people like her cause 80% of altercations.”

Closing Teasers for Next Episode

• Future topics teased:
  • 3I Atlas
  • Avi Loeb (Harvard astrophysicist, head of the Institute for Theory & Computation, Center of Astrophysics)
  • The interstellar object ʻOumuamua

Overall Tone & Takeaways

• Language lesson: Pareto Principle = 80/20 rule, applicable far beyond economics.
• Life lesson: Ballpark drama shows how a few people cause outsized conflict—but grace (the dad’s decision) sets a better example.
• Style: Conversational, humorous, with teases and callbacks to ongoing themes (pontificate, big numbers milestones, “jumbotron incidents”).

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Any views expressed on this podcast are those solely of the hosts and is for entertainment purposes only. None of the content is medical advice or financial advice.

Special thanks to Tim Wright aka CoLD SToRAGE for his permission to use the song Operatique.

Transcript

I Hate Talking: 0:30

Welcome to episode 75 of I Hate Talking. Hi everyone. Now, at some point, like episode 60 was like important to you instead of 50. Does episode 75 elicit any particular response? Yeah, I think so. Uh, last week I almost was like, hey, we're almost at 75. So yeah, I guess so. Not as much as 60, but 75 is a cool one. What about you? More so than 60, but I think my next particular milestone would be triple digits. Yeah, I think 100 is cool. When will that be? Like January? I have no idea. OK, 25 weeks from now, I guess. Yeah, so. Well, our word or phrase has to do with numbers in percentages, and those percentages adding up to 100%. So it would probably be more fitting to do this for our 100th episode or perhaps our 80th episode or way back at our 20th episode, but nonetheless, we are doing it here for episode 75, and that is the word Pado. Oh, OK, I don't know that word. Do you remember it being discussed briefly in our last episode? No, I don't. So, to remind you and perhaps our listeners that have forgotten or maybe haven't listened to that particular episode. That was describing perhaps how to divide categories of people based on if they do things intrinsically based on their own motivation to get things done quickly and completely versus doing things to please other people or just waiting until the very last minute. OK. So originally I said perhaps that follows the law of thirds, which law of thirds is not actually even really a categorical way of dividing things because law of thirds typically actually has to do with artwork, particularly photography, and then I also mentioned that perhaps the categories would be better defined by Paredo. Hm, OK, so explain what Paredo is. So Paredo is not actually a word. It is a name of the gentleman that coined this particular mathematical concept, maybe even a law, I guess we'll find out when we look up the official history and definition, but essentially this gentleman saw that within a variety of mathematical systems and categories and I think mainly more around systems than necessarily like nature, but he'd found that things broke into the 80/20 rule. So essentially 20% of the population is responsible for 80% of the production or 20% of the variables are responsible for 80% of the particular outcome in a set of numbers. So this is known as Pareto analysis, basically stacked ranking of -- occurrences in a way that typically comes out to that 80/20 -- rule. OK, so I didn't know what Paredo was. I definitely hear the 80/20 because it's said a lot and a lot of volunteer and nonprofit organizations or in churches and that sort of thing. Well, they'll say 20% of the people do 80% of the work. And so that was coined by Predo. I think so. This is all going off of memory and this is how I generally use these terms. So we'll do our official research now and see if we're using these things right or if we'll find ourselves learning something new like we did last time with pontificate. OK. So, basically, Paredo, as defined by the Oxford Language Dictionary, says that it denotes or involves the theories and methods of the Italian economist and sociologist Wilfrid Pareo, who lived from 1848 to 1923, especially a formula used to express the income distribution of a society. So, as we look at Wikipedia of all things, we see a little bit more of this overlap with the 80/20 rule. So that does align, so using that correctly, that the Pareto principle is also known as the 80/20 rule and states that, quote, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes, end quote. This is also known as the vital few or the principle of factor sparsity, which I don't think I've ever run into those terms. I've always heard it Pareto or 80/20, but apparently this is some other references that describe the same thing. OK, huh. Obviously, this is used, I think a lot within financial systems and I'll run into it with various things that I'll do in life where some sort of mathematical distribution is being encountered a lot of times with money, but also just processes in general where basically there might be like the rule states, 20% of X is actually causing 80% of the problem. Yeah, like division of labor and that sort of thing. Yeah, division of labor, exception management. The example here in Wikipedia is about donations. The example given here is 20% of the donors contribute 80% of the grand total of money. So that is some examples of the 80/20 rule, OK. So, the history of this particular term was from the gentleman, Mr. Peredo, and that original work indicated that approximately 80% of Italy's land was owned by 20% of the population. And then this later was used by a gentleman named Joseph Geron, who applied the same concept to quality issues where 80% of an issue was caused by 20% of whatever the root cause was that drove that particular quality issue, and this gentleman, Geron also was the one that coined the phrase the vital few. And the useful many. So I definitely can resonate with that part, but I'm having a hard time understanding what you said maybe 2 or 3 sentences ago about the outcome or the cause. Does that just mean like, we said 20% of the people do 80% of the work, or 20% donate 80%? Is that what he means by cause? Or what are some other examples? So, like within a manufacturing line, because I think that is how Geron used this particular concept for quality analysis. So if you have a set of 10 machines that are manufacturing parts and there's certain defects that are found. Is that 20% of the machines are producing 80% of the defects because perhaps two of those machines or just 20% are doing something with a faulty setting or have something broken or whatever the case may be, so those machines are producing a higher preponderance of defects because of that particular concept. So, if you fix 20% of the machines, then you'll actually eliminate 80% of the defects. OK, I'm just playing that in my head. So 20% of the machines cause 80% of the problems. So 80% of the machines are problem-free? No, they are not completely problem-free, but they are nearly problem-free because those other 80% of the machines are only producing 20% of the defects because of the inverse relationship there. OK. So, all that to say that I think what we discussed last time does not necessarily follow the rule of thirds because I don't even think the rule of thirds really applies to mathematical distributions per se. But that the 80/20 rule or the Pareto principle or the vital few is going to play more part in terms of how people are motivated and what they produce and it really aligns with some of the particular concepts with land ownership or donations or quality production that you're going to have 80% of good outcomes produced by only 20% of the input. So I've definitely heard the 80/20 rule. It's just thrown out there, said like that, or a way like that, but I don't ever hear like the Pareto principle or vital few. So when I hear it thrown out there 80/20, I can pontificate and correct them by saying, you mean the paraal principle? Pareto principle. Yes, Pareto principle. Yes, P A R E T O Pareto. And that's how I've always heard it pronounced. It might have a particular Italian flair that you're supposed to say it with like something parareto using my white lotus and the paper inflection there from that particular actress. -- So -- thanks for that. I guess. Oh, is it the same girl? It is. I thought I saw her before. I find her very annoying in both shows. Yeah, I'm not a fan. So yes, every time that I've watched the paper, which has only been -- 2 -- times, I don't even plan on continuing. I watch all I can think of when she shows up is her as like a hotel manager in Italy. Well, she's a manager of a paper company in somewhere in the US, right? I don't even know. I'm, I'm not really. -- I don't like -- the Toledo, Ohio. I was gonna say Ohio. I couldn't think of the town, so. In, OK, yeah, I did not make the connection. She's the same person. Yes, -- she -- is. Indeed. So, now you know that the 80/20 rule is the same as the Pareto analysis or principle and even have some other terms applied to it, the vital few. Or what was the other one? The other one I actually liked the most. I don't know. The principle of factor sparsity can sound really smart and I can't think of how you would say pontificatious. Is that a word? I don't know. It can sound very pontificatious if you use the term principle of factor sparsity. That does sound like it'd fit that category. So, all that to say that I guess my use of Pareto and 80/20 rule was in line with some of these particular concepts and likewise, I think this is going to be more applicable to the scenarios that we were describing last time and who does the work and what work is done. Mhm. Cool. Well, one thing we haven't talked about yet is the Phillies game. Yes, I suppose the Phillies game was in the news recently, and I guess we'll continue our theme of just talking about things that are caught on -- Jumbotron -- cameras. We've, we've covered Coldplay. Now we can cover the Phillies. Yes, the Coldplay people are sighing with relief now because their internet's on to somebody else. That's true. So I've seen definitely the video. I've even seen some cell phone camera footage from other angles. So for those that don't know or haven't seen this, basically there was a Phillies game and there was a ball hit into the stands. I assume it was probably a home run based on where they were sitting, and there was a gentleman that was there with his family and young son. And he retrieved the ball from 14 to 16 seats over same aisle. Uh, one aisle different, I believe. I think so. The ball did bounce, so it like bounced into his aisle, but originally I think hit like one aisle up, one row up rather. And then a woman in a Philly shirt comes over and I think touches him, right? And he his shoulder. Looks actually sort of frightened and sort of shakes and then she's like demanding the ball because it should have been hers because she almost caught it and it landed in her area and the guy was just trying to retrieve it for his son, so it wasn't even necessarily for his personal collection, but trying to gift that to his son that was at this game and in the end he gave her the ball. So my initial takeaways first are obviously the father had no idea what was gonna come. He went and got the ball. We could talk about whether he should have done that in a few minutes, but I was struck with how endearing he was to his family. He went and got it, put it in his son's mitt, gave his son a hug, like it was not for show. He didn't know he was on the jumbotron or anything like that, you know, or maybe he wasn't even on a jumbotron at that moment. I don't know. But I was like, oh, what a nice dad. Like he physically is like hugging his son, he's so proud and happy, you know, and so it's not fake or anything. I think he's sincerely like a very loving, doting dad. Yeah, I think so, and I'm sure I had the best of intentions when trying to retrieve the baseball and again, did not have any selfish ambition per se, but was doing that for his son and family in general. Yeah. So do you want to talk about whether he should have gotten the ball or who should have first? Sure, because you think he should have had the ball and kept the ball and there was no issue about it. Yeah, I mean, I've been to a whole bunch of baseball games, it's definitely how my family spent our time growing up, and you see this all the time, and it's first come, first served to it. And I think he had just as much right or more because again, he didn't have to cross lanes. This lady was above it and her arms are not long enough to reach down an aisle or two to the ground. Yeah, because you missed it upon the first attempt and it bounced. Yeah, I think it's different if you catch the ball or I have a friend who got hit by a ball. And they didn't get to keep it. So I feel like those are different, right? It's like this friend who got hit, I think the cool thing would have been whoever got it, to give it to them, cause like, hey, that's a bummer, you got injured, here's the ball at least, or if you catch it, do not take it out of someone's hand or anything like that. But if it's not in your possession, I feel like it's fair game to get. Yes, within certain parameters. So there was not very many people in the stands. So that was a factor because it allowed this gentleman to actually get to that particular area. And I'm of the opinion that I could go either way, but I would say that the woman was not in the right at all to request it. But I don't think the guy was in the right either because he was going far out of his way to go retrieve the ball. Now, if I was a kid, I would have more empathy towards them because they're going to be excited and go run after it. But as a grown man, I feel like he should have stayed where he was and let the people in the immediate seating area retrieve the ball. OK, I mean, that's fair enough, but he was getting it for his kid too. Yeah, the kids should have went and got it. Also, this is Philadelphia. Well, I don't think it was, it was at, uh, away game, I think. OK, well, it was still composed of Phillies fans. I think he's at the Marlins. OK, -- well then that changes things a little bit because maybe he was a Marlins fan -- and he had the Phillies uniform on. Oh, -- he had a Phillies uniform -- and so did she. She did. I mean, you can look it up. The reason I think it was an away game was because the Marlins team is who first initially gave him like a goodie bag as a consolation prize. According to what I'm finding here is that this was a game at Philly Stadium. OK, so then the Marlins just were the first to intervene. Yes, and the man, according to this particular post here that is filled with a billion ads, but it looks like some sort of tweet from somebody says that he was wearing an Eagles jersey or shirt. OK, I don't know. I didn't deep dive this, and I've seen several headlines that are wrong, but from what I actually see, I've seen him in an Eagles shirt at a press conference. His brother supposedly plays for the Eagles. I see. That's a headline I saw. I can't confirm that, but I did see him in an Eagles shirt also, and I saw a headline that said his brother who plays for the Eagles spoke out about the incident. I see. So, anyway, my point about it being Philadelphia still stands, whether it was in Philadelphia or not, that these were Philadelphia fans, and for sure the woman was. And I've been to many different places in many different times of my life, and Philadelphia would be one particular area that I would like not want to be involved in any sort of altercation. Like I'm going to go out of my way not to interact with people in Philadelphia. Yeah, I mean, you didn't live far from there for a while, so you can say that, right? I don't know. That sounds mean. No, I don't think it is because I think Philadelphia people will even sort of claim that as a way that they behave and that's sort of, it's sort of similar to New York, right? And you have sort of the New York off-standishness type of thing, and I think Philadelphia is going to actually Adopt that and sort of be proud of that. Like the Prince of Bel-Air, his whole song about being from Philadelphia. Precisely. It will be interesting to see if it's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. We'll do this as part of a joke in their next season. Maybe that'd be interesting. It would be interesting. And then that's not the only thing that happened on a jumbotron. Have you heard of the billionaire that stole a hat from a kid at a tennis match? That was before this happened, right? -- It -- was, but it was only within a couple of days, I think. I've seen, I didn't hear much about that one, a little bit, and then I've seen memes that are like, he's all relieved because the Phillies incident overrode his. That's true, yes. But I don't really know who that was, but apparently it was some very rich person that essentially took this hat out of the kid's hands, pretty much. That's crazy. I suppose so. And then, have you heard what happened to the Phillies woman? -- The lady that stole the got the ball that -- got the ball, yes. I've heard people trying to dox her and then it's not the right person or yada yada. Tell me what you know. Well, I don't know this for sure, so perhaps we are feeding the false narrative, but I heard that she was some sort of teacher within the Philadelphia school system and is no longer employed there. Yeah, I've seen that. I've also seen some places be like, this is not the right person, but whoever it was supposedly has changed her Facebook to like say that it's not her. She's not the right person. I don't know. It's very possible. So, but it's sad. So first, just the audacity to go over and start screaming at someone. In my head, I'm, I just feel bad for her because how sad can her life be? I mean, I feel like I understand the like frustration, like, oh, I almost got it, or it should have been mine, but to actually physically go over there and put your hands on someone. In front of his family and start screaming at him and cussing at him. Like that's a whole different level of hatred. She was using profanities, so I'd never listened to any of the audio. -- I think -- so, yeah, I mean, I didn't. Interesting. And then she was like, yeah, flipped them off later and stuff. Interesting. Well, I think we can apply the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule that probably there are 20% of people like her in the world, and they cause 80% of altercations and conflicts. Right, because that's, again, I've been to so many, you've never seen that before. But I'm just really glad that the family was taken care of, and that I think the dad did the right thing. Because what kind of example would it be if he fought the woman, which it looked like maybe she would. And that ball, I just feel like the ball would always be tainted, you know, like, the kid is not gonna take this home and be proud of it any longer, if his dad got into a fight. Yeah, I suppose so. I think that was the best path of de-escalation. I've seen a lot of people say that he should have stood up for that, but I think it was the right thing to do, to just turn it over, especially given the high level of intensity from the particular person that was. Precipitating this particular engagement. The thing I haven't seen that I'm most curious about is what did she do the rest of the game. Because we know the Marlins team came over and gave him a goodie bag, and then they also got to stay after and meet the Phillies players and get like a signed ball and bat and all that. So they actually walked away with a lot more stuff. Yeah, did he get a PS5 or something like that? -- I don't -- know. I don't know. I might be confusing the tennis player because one of the people got a PS5. So it might have been the kid that had the hat stolen or it might have been this Phillies incident, but somebody got a PS5 out of one of those incidents. I saw somebody tweet that they were gonna buy this family World Series tickets. I don't know if that will pan out, but I saw that. So yeah, but what did she do? Did she just sit there the whole time or did they leave? Cause I know she started to get into other altercations with other fans. They're booing her and all that. That was she escorted off? Did she leave on her own? She sit it out and wait? I have no idea. I think people like that probably would have just sat it out and waited and enjoyed the rest of the game. Man, did you see her husband next to her or the guy next to her? No, he looked just so, I would not even like horrified, more just like. I think that she's done this before, kind of thing, like, almost like a, I'm gonna pretend like this is not happening, and everything's good, I'm watching the game. But I would be horrified if you acted that way or anything like that. That's true. So, I don't know what happened, and perhaps we will never know. Similar to, we don't know what happened to the Coldplay people, maybe they're living happily ever after, maybe not. Maybe it was all just one big distraction from whatever else is going on in the world. Because do you even know what 3I Atlas is? Yeah. Well, there you go. So maybe that will be our topic next time so that you, our listener, can remain informed and not distracted by the Jumbotron narrative. OK, so as long as no one else gets stalked or humiliated on a jumbotron, next time we'll talk about the three-eyed atlas. Three-eye Atlas. All right. And perhaps some papers that were co-authored by Avi Loeb. Huh, I don't know who that is. Well, perhaps you should. Is he on a jumbotron? Because that's kind of where my amount of knowledge is right now. He is not on a jumbotron. Let's quickly see where he works because I think it's somewhere relatively prestigious. Professor of science at Harvard University. I hear that's prestigious. Yes, I think so. He is also the director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Center of Astrophysics. Oh, yeah, that's impressive. The other thing that he talks about is fun to say, but I gotta find out how to pronounce it. A muamua -- Auamua mua -- is that English? I don't know. We'll have to find out next time. Lots of teasers. 3 eye atlas. Avi Loeb and Amammua. All right, I look forward to it. All right, so from your friends at I Hate Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.