DDR
“The trick,” he said, clearly spinning up one of his long-winded, self-aggrandizing soliloquies, “is hard to wrap your head around.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you care to… elaborate?” I asked.
“Imagine a bakery,” he said. I groaned. He paid no mind and continued.
“You need a certain amount of flour and sugar and eggs to bake everything you want, but you don’t know exactly how much finished product you’ll sell. You have your historical data, sure, but it’s volatile,” he said.
“This sounds like your bitcoin pitch,” I said.
“Bitcoin is the future of commerce,” he said. “Anyway, back to the bakery.”
He gestured dramatically, his hands sweeping outward like an olympic sprinter crossing the finish line.
“You open for the day, with what you think is the right amount of goods prepared. Let’s say your croissants sell quickly, so you can start baking more before you run out. But you only have so many ovens, and if multiple things run out, you might not have enough.”
He looked at me, expecting input.
“Croissants. Ovens. Yes,” I said. That seemed to satisfy him. He continued.
“But if you make too much, you’ll have waste at the end of the day, which cuts into your profit,” he said.
“Can’t you just give that away?” I said.
He paused, brow furrowed and a slight frown forming in his face.
“It’s not a perfect analogy, mind you,” he said.
“So to be good at DDR, I need to not bake too much?”
“Exactly,” he said. “And never dance for charity.”
“That seems… weird.”
“I told you it would be hard to wrap your head around.”