Spending 20% resources (time, effort, money etc.) may obtain 80% of results or returns. The remaining 20% of results or returns may require 80% of resources.
That means that the ‘rate of return’ of spending additional resources on an undertaking may be so low that it may not be worth it (this is also known as 'the principle of dimishing returns'). The additional resources may be better spent on other undertakings with better ‘rates of return’.
Thus, we need to balance how much resource we ‘invest’ in an undertaking againt the ‘return’ we get from spending more resources on it.
Caution: this rule is applies ONLY if the person spends the other 80% of time or resources on other MORE productive undertakings and not waste it on activities that have no benefit.
Application to School Learning
Assuming a student has 10 hours every day to study.
Pareto Principle says that by spending 2 hours studying, a student may be able to attain an 80% score but to score the remaining 20% (to make total of 100%) the student may have to spend all the remaining 8 hours. The ‘rate of return’ of the additional 8 hours is therefore not as good as the first 2 hours. In that case, the other 8 hours may be better spent learning other things e.g. learning things outside school or spending time on hobbies and other personal interests.
In addition, the knowledge taught in schools is only 1 or 2% of total knowledge of the world. That means that a student who spends 100% of time to try score 100% in school exams will at best learn or master only 2% of all world knowledge (see Notes at bottom).
Comparison of amount of knowledge potentially gained by a student following Pareto Principle vs one who does not:
• Student A spends all 10 hours a day (100% of time) studying only what is taught in school. Even though A may master completely everything taught in school, A’s total world knowledge will at most be 2% (because what is taught in schools is only 2% of all knowledge).
• Student B who follows Pareto Principle spends 2 hours a day (20% of time) on school work and the other 8 hours a day learning or doing other things outside school, say on learning about another 10% of world knowledge that is not taught by school. Although B may only master 80% of what is taught in school (or 1.6% of all world knowledge), B may gain an additional 8% (= 80% of 10%) of world knowledge. B’s total world knowledge may be 9.6% (= 1.6% from school and 8% from outside school), or 6 times more than A!
Given that, spending all of one’s time on learning only what is taught in school may not be such a good idea after all. Scoring 80% in school exams may be better (of course, scoring 90% with 20% effort is better still) if one learns much more by spending some time learning and doing other things.
For the same reason, getting high scores may not mean that a student is intelligent. It may be because that student spent disproportionately high amount of time and effort on it. A student that spends 20% of time but scores only 80% may be much smarter than you think (that is assuming that student spends time studying other useful things outside school and not waste it on something worthless).
That is why extra-curricular activities and pursuing interests and hobbies outside what is ‘given’ by the schools is so important in a child’s overall development. That is also why many of the most successful people in the world do not have high educational qualifications or were school dropouts.
Caution:
Pareto Principle is only one of many helpful guides on decision making and should not be taken as gospel. It applies only when one has more than 1 good alternatives and need to decide on how much of one's resource to spend on all of them to maximise returns from those multiple good alternatives. It does not apply when there is only 1 good alternative available.
E.g. A person who knows only how to fish and farm may want to spend 80% of time fishing and 20% farming. But one who only knows how to fish and has no farm should spend all his time fishing! Or a person spends 20% of time working/learning but waste the other 80% on worthless activities like just loitering in shopping complexes.
Pareto Principle also does not apply to a lot of undertakings that require high precision or expertise like medical, scientific and technological undertakings where even a fraction of a percent of inaccuracy or error can lead to great negative consequences.
E.g. to send a space probe to Mars which is 200 million km away, one must be able to predict (by maths calculations etc.) the exact location of Mars at any point in time and be able to control/navigate the probe to rendezvous with the planet. One cannot say 'let's get Mars location 80% accurate and hope for the best'. That may mean that the probe will miss Mars by 40 million km!
Notes on knowledge taught by schools:
• The knowledge taught in schools is only a tiny fraction of all the knowledge known to humanity.
• In addition, they are highly simplified versions (presumably so that all students, including the not so smart ones, can understand) and are mostly hundreds if not thousands of years old.
• For example, Algebra is 1,000 years old, and Newtonian mechanics and Calculus taught in secondary schools are almost 400 years old. Even then, most students do not fully understand or appreciate them.
• Most university students like me never get to learn nor heard of (not to say capable of understanding) Riemannian Geometry which is 100 years old! Riemannian Geometry is ‘the master maths’ of multi-dimensional geometry. In comparison, the more than 2,000 years old Euclidian geometry taught in secondary schools is 2-dimensional geometry.
• My view is what is taught in schools is probably only 2% of all world knowledge.
Notes on tuitions:
• For above reason, do NOT go for tuitions unnecessarily. By going for tuitions, one may be wasting valuable time trying to gain a little bit more score.
• Also, if a student finds that his/her understanding does no improve even with help of tuition, stop tuition. Remember, the smartest people in the world do not become tuition teachers. No point trying to learn from a dumb. Discussing with fellow (and preferably smarter) students and learning from each other may be much better.
• That's why 'good' schools tend to have more high scoring students. It is not only because of the teachers. Healthy competition with and learning together is part of the reason.
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