Decoding Trust- A Mathematical Approach

Whether naïve or experienced, young or old, we all in our lifetime have this one 5-letter word making us call out the usual 4-letter word that starts with letter “F”.

But why is ‘Trust’ as a word used more and understood less? Is it one of the necessities of leading a meaningful life? Is it too basic a word to break it further? What is it after all?

My attempt at approaching this ‘Trust’ thing started 2 hour ago when idling on bed to recover from a bad cold, I could not think of anything more meaningful. So interpret what I say below at your discretion. May be for me it’s a time pass…

TRUST = TRU + US + ST

In simple terms:

TRU= truthfulness; US= You and I ; ST = Statement (i.e. relating to communication, expression)

Basic Assumptions:

a. Unlike ‘Belief’ which is an individual attribute, ‘Trust’ is a dependent attribute impacting the intensity of TRUST

b. Truthfulness is a constant which is governed by habits, desires and passion. All of these attributes develop over the years and are a function of family background, culture, education, behaviors and past experience relating to ‘Trust’ as a whole.

c. The equality while presented as a simple function is not so. It’s a far more complex due to introduction of lag variable of ‘TRUST’. In other words, TRUST equation is a time-series function and hence past experiences impact the future outcomes. In econometric (time lag variable)- Trust(t) is impacted by Trust(t-1….)

d. ‘ST’ Statement here is assumed to be a function of ‘Art of Communication’ X (Tone + Language).

e. The equation differentiates between ‘Tone’ and ‘Language’ akin to the 4-letter work starting from letter ‘f’…explained by Osho as Verb, Noun, adjective, intransitive verb, anger, surprise etc. I hope my readers have heard that famous preaching of Osho. Link to the video is here – http://youtu.be/Lzu26Ur96mA

Once I was done with stating the Trust Equation, I ‘googled’ to avoid re-inventing the wheel and to my surprise Google had an answer:

Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy    DIVIDED BY    Self-orientation

EQUALS

Trust

Anyways the equation defined by me above is not very different from equation above. However, the relation between the variables in above equation is better expressed as given below:

Credibility + Trust (from past) + {(Reliability X Intimacy)    DIVIDED BY    Self-orientation}

EQUALS

Trust

Trust can have only two values -1 or +1 . I am deliberately avoiding the infinity notion here since we all have a defined life.

To simplify the interaction amongst the variables we assume that all the variables can either have a minus 1 or a plus 1.

All possible solutions to the equation are:

Note: Please read + 1 as YES and -1 as NO.

Hence the above illustration explains that we can either HAVE Trust or NOT HAVE Trust. No other possibility exists.