Saturday, February 15, 2020

Negotiation Post 1 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Negotiation Post 1 - Essay Example This meant that these applications had to be keenly scrutinized so as to ensure that credit facilities were only offered to those individuals with the capability of repaying the loan offered to them. During the course of my duties as a bank sales executive, I quickly learnt that the majority of our customers borrowed long term loans due to the prevailing financial downturn. Therefore, given the bigger size of long term loans compared to short term loans, I had to be extra careful as to which customers to extend the credit and who no to. This entailed observing the credit worthiness of the customers against their information in the credit bureaus as well as ensuring that they had the ability to repay the loans, given their current state of finances. The most difficult part of it all was to negotiate the terms of the loans with the customers and also attaching an asset that would act as security over the duration of the loan. Due to the economic meltdown, most financial institutions ha d increased the lending interest rates due to the increased demand for credit in the market. Consequently, with the increase in the total cost of borrowing, borrowers found the interest rates to be too high such that most negotiations conducted stalled. In order to not lose business for the bank, I had to find innovative ways of negotiating with the customers in such a way that the bank did not lose on interest but at the same time the customers felt that they had agreed on a good deal. Therefore, during negotiations I often offered customers longer periods of paying back the loans but on the other hand maintaining the interest levels as much as possible. During the economic meltdown period, banks were being faced with huge default rate levels since most borrowers were unable to pay back their loans. Therefore it was made essential to me that all the customers seeking credit had to be vetted and adequate security obtained on the loans they borrowed. I issued credit to only those cus tomers who had assets that were correctly valued to mirror the value of their loans. Although a daunting task at first since customers found ways of putting up undervalued assets, I later found it imperative to ensure that all assets had to be valued by a professional valuer at first before credit was extended to the customer. By so doing, the customers came to me only with certified copies of the valuer’s report showing the correct value of the asset vis-a-vis the loaned amount. This experience of negotiating with bank customers came to my mind while reading Stuart Diamond’s Getting More in relation to what he terms as â€Å"getting to know what you are getting into†. Negotiation Post 2 Stuart Diamond reiterates the importance of valuing the other party as well as developing trust in Getting More. This got me thinking of an incidence that happened over five years ago when I was volunteering in an orphanage in my hometown. This orphanage gave orphaned, abandoned and other underprivileged children a place to call home. It had touched my heart since I first set foot and had vowed that I will do my best to contribute to its endeavors in any little way that I could. At the orphanage, there was a young man called Andrew who always came during the weekends to volunteer. I later came to know that he was once in the orphanage when he was 5 years old when his single mother could not afford his upkeep and gave him away to the orphanage. After a few

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Pascal and the Probability Theory Research Paper

Pascal and the Probability Theory - Research Paper Example His father introduced him to Mathematics when he was 15 years old. Despite this fact, he had started making discoveries in geometry as early as 12 years. Come 1939, his family moved to Rouen after his father was appointed a tax collector. His creativity was exhibited at this point, whereby; he was able to invent a calculator so as to make his father’s work easier during his day to day endeavors. Later in 1647, Pascal conducted and wrote about experiments concerning vacuums, but many scientists disregarded the existence of vacuums. For instance, the great French philosopher Rene Descartes visited Pascal for 2 days and disagreed with him concerning the vacuum. In a letter Descartes wrote to Huygens after this encounter, he asserts that â€Å"Pascal had too much vacuum in his head†1. This did not deter him from pursuing mathematics and science; in 1653, he published a treatise on the equilibrium of Liquids. Pascal later invented â€Å"Pascal’s Triangle†, a tr iangular array of numbers which solves mathematical problems. He would later become interested in probability after a gambling question was projected to him. In correspondence with another great scientist Fermat, they were able to solve the problem of points; how to divide stakes in a game of dice if the game is incomplete. Pascal almost lost his life in 1654, and this affected him psychologically to the point of being a staunch Christian. Even after setting the ground for the theory of probability, Pascal quit Mathematics to pursue a quieter Christain life in a monastery in Paris. He never married. He succumbed in 1662 to malignant stomach ulcers. Introduction Even from an early age, Pascal was curious about natural occurrences, and he formulated experiments to study these occurrences. Pascal studied fluids, pure and applied sciences, pressure and machines, among other scientific principles. While still a teenager in 1642, Pascal had begun ground-breaking work on calculating machin es. At first, his attempts failed, but he finally managed to invent the mechanical calculator three years later2. This simply shows that Pascal was able to invent scientific principles from an earlier age. However, one of Pascal’s greatest invention is in the field of Mathematics is the â€Å"Theory of Probability†, a theory that is centered on estimating and calculating the chance of doing something. For example, if 6 men are playing dice, what is the chance that each of them can win the game? And if at all two are eliminated, what is the chance that each of the remaining four will win the game? Probability centers on such occurrences. The theory of probability was advanced so as to prove the fact that chance can be mathematically calculated accurately. Various facets in the modern world apply probability. This is not just in mathematics courses, but it is also applicable in the practical courses like genetics, quantum mechanics, kinetic theory of gases, industrial qu ality control and insurance.This paper dwells on the history of the probability theory, and how Pascal contributed to this theory, and how his findings were shaped by other great scientists who were also researching on the theory. Pascal’s involvement with probability dates back to 1654 when another scientist, Chevalier challenged him to solve a puzzle which at that time was known as â€Å"the problem of points†. This problem had been posed in the late 1400s and no one had managed to solve it for a period of 200 years. The problem was that; how the stakes of a chance game should be divided