The full story on whether $1 million is still meaningful wealth, and why the absolute value might matter more than relative wealth:

https://ofdollarsanddata.com/is-1-million-still-a-lot-of-money/

Real Estate Reality:

Consider Los Angeles real estate:
2000: $231,141 (median home)
2022: $878,396

That's nearly a 4x increase in just 22 years.

Historical Context:

Before the Civil War, America had fewer than 12 millionaires.

By 1892: 4,047 millionaires
By 2023: 7.4 million millionaires

The millionaire club has grown, but what does membership really mean?

Key insight: Creation is pattern recognition.

Whether you're:
• Writing a novel
• Training an AI
• Building a product

You're discovering signal in noise.

This is exactly how modern AI works:

• Processes vast combinations of text
• Recognizes meaningful patterns
• Finds the "right" sequence of letters
• Discovers rather than invents

Take a simple example:
"The cat sat"
"The rat sat"
"The bat sat"

Each variation exists simultaneously. Now scale this to 410 pages.

Every story that could be told exists somewhere in these combinations.

It starts with 26 letters. Every English book ever written is just a specific arrangement of these letters.

The Library contains every possible 410-page combination of these letters.

Most are gibberish. But some are Harry Potter. Others are books yet to be "written."

When stakeholders resist change, follow Nightingale's method:

collect the data,
make it visual,
let the numbers make your case.

Results: The impact was clear: hospital death rates dropped from 42% to 2%.

This wasn't just about better charts—it was about using data to change minds and drive action.

Approach: Nightingale's solution: turn numbers into clear visuals.

She created diagrams showing preventable deaths, making patterns obvious to everyone.

Her approach: make data impossible to ignore.

Context & Problem: Military hospitals during the Crimean War (1855) had a 42% death rate.

Hospital administration dismissed concerns about conditions.

A common problem: decision makers often prefer stories over statistics.

Modern lesson: Our mental models often blind us to new possibilities. True innovation requires:
• Systematic investigation of anomalies
• Willingness to question established "facts"
• Persistence when data challenges conventional wisdom

Key insight: By staying curious and challenging assumptions, Soper discovered the first documented "healthy carrier" - revolutionizing our understanding of disease spread. The discovery came from persistence in the face of "impossible" data.

Through meticulous investigation, Soper traced the outbreaks to a cook, Mary Mallon, who had worked in 8 houses where 53 people fell ill. The twist? She was perfectly healthy. This defied everything known about disease transmission.

Dr. George Soper faced a puzzle: typhoid outbreaks in NYC households. The conventional wisdom? You had to be sick to spread disease. But something didn't add up. Despite typhoid being common, these cases showed an unusual pattern.

Market leadership isn't about being first—it's about being better. Your competitors' existence proves market validity. Their stagnation is your opportunity.

Nabisco's playbook:
• Made the product more accessible (lower price point)
• Invested in brand storytelling over product claims
• Used market feedback to drive continuous improvement
• Scaled distribution while maintaining quality