Throughout a long year, under pandemic conditions, the Ig Nobel Board of Governors kept a single-minded focus on our goals, persistently applying basic engineering principles. We managed to bring together all the people and all the things needed to produce the 31st annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. Well, this year, what year is this? 2021. Is it really 2021? The COVID-19 pandemic is still keeping many of us in our home. For the second year in a row, the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony is not in its traditional home, Sanders Theatre at Harvard University. So I will skip the usual theater safety announcement about identifying the nearest exit, silencing all phones and electronic devices, no smoking in the theater, etc.  Don't identify the nearest exit. Shout at your cell phone. Eat something. Now get your paper airplanes ready. I said get your paper airplanes ready. The 31st annual meeting of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony is about to begin. Welcome. I'm Robin Abrams and I am your airplane announcer for the evening. I also write the misconduct column in the Boston Globe about ethics, etiquette and engineering, everything that enables us to build bridges. There will be three airplane tosses tonight. Got your stash ready? I've got mine. But first, welcome to the 31st first annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. Airplane toss number one. In the name of ethics, straighten up and fly right in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Gentlemen, welcome to the 31st first annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. And now Professor Jean Bergo Gleason will deliver the traditional Ig Nobel Welcome, Welcome speech. We are on a journey. Welcome. Welcome. A journey to witness the awarding of this year's Ig Nobel Prizes. I am Karen Hopkins, creator of the Stud Muffins of Science calendar. Soon, we'll welcome our most special guest, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners. This year's winners come from six continents. Six.  May I introduce our master of ceremonies, the editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, Mark Abrams. Today we honor some remarkable individuals and groups. Each of them has done something that makes people laugh and then think. The Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony is produced by the magazine, the Annals of Improbable Research, and proudly cosponsored by the Harvard Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and the Harvard Radcliffe Society of Physics Students. This is year two of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's also the 31st year for the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. Because of the pandemic, instead of doing the ceremony with 1,100 gleeful spectators in Sanders Theater, doing it live, instead of that, we're doing it online, whatever that is. Let's refresh your memory or bring you up to speed with a 15-second video of the way we usually do it in non-pandemic times. Commence paper airplane throwing. There goes a paper airplane. That was pretty quick. The editors of the Annals of Improbable Research have chosen a theme for this year's ceremony. That theme is engineering. The theme may or may not apply to particular things in the ceremony. Tonight, 10 prizes will be given. The achievements speak for themselves, all too eloquently. The prizes will be physically presented to the winners by Nobel Laureates. Ladies and gentlemen and whoever, please welcome the Nobel Laureates. 1993 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, Rich Roberts. I'm new to you. You will help. Is that right? 2018 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Francis Arnold. Okay, but I have to get my chewing gum. 2008 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Marty Chalfee. Should we keep it as a surprise or should you want to hear what I've been thinking about? 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Eric Maskin. It's there every day, in fact. It's an everyday sword. How often do you use it? Only when necessary. 2001 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Barry Sharpless. Well, you can do that. I know you can. 2001 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Carl Wyman. Practice here. 2012 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Bob Lefkowitz. That's my honor indeed. 2001 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Eric Cornell. No way. Hey. How? 1990 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Jerome Friedman for 28 of the past 29 years was prevented from joining us. This year, he is again prevented from joining us. He appears now as per tradition in a prerecorded video. Please welcome Professor Friedman. Congratulations. I hope you are enjoying this as much as I am. Thank you, Professor Friedman. Tonight's webcast is happening in several languages, among them Japanese, Spanish, and probably English. There will also be a specially edited version of the ceremony on the day after Thanksgiving broadcast on public radio on the Science Friday with Ira Flato program. Now, let's get it over with the awarding of the 2021 Ig Nobel Prizes. We are giving out 10 prizes. The winners come from many nations. This year's winners have truly earned their prizes. Karen and Christopher, tell them what they've won. This year's winners each get an Ig Nobel Prize. Gosh. And a piece of paper saying they've won an Ig Nobel Prize. Gosh. This piece of paper has been signed by several Nobel Laureates. Gosh. And they also get money. Gosh. 10 trillion dollars. Gosh. 10 trillion dollars. A Zimbabwean 10 trillion dollar bill. Gosh. Well, you see, because of the pandemic, we don't trust the international postal services to deliver anything this valuable. So each year's winners will actually get a counterfeit Zimbabwean 10 trillion dollar bill. Wow. Gosh. Now, ladies and gentlemen, now I will show you the coveted Ig Nobel Prize. This year's prize is a PDF. It's a document that can be emailed and printed. And then assembled to make a gear with human teeth. Wow. A real gear? Yes. A real gear made of paper. With real human teeth? Well, no. It's just pictures of human teeth. You know, printed on the paper. Gosh. Gosh. A biology prize. Well, the biology prize. The winner is from Sweden. The prize is awarded to Suzanne Schütz for analyzing variations in purring, chirping, chattering, trilling, tweedling, murmuring, meowing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling, and other modes of cat human communication. The prize will be presented by Nobel laureate Eric Cornell. This gives me a great deal of pleasure to present this prize. Somehow we all believe that you would win in this cat glory. Indeed, the Royal Academy has made a superb choice. And in recognition of your accomplishments, so impressive, you will win this beautifully crafted object which has been designed to be disassembled and sent via its component out of the Internet. However, my Wi-Fi is a little slow today, so it may require some assistance. I'm going to try to, Suzanne, if you could, if you could help me. Here it comes. Thank you so much. Thank you. What an honor this is. Really, really. Thank you. And that's not all, as they say on television. Here's your $10 trillion bill. Thank you. Wow. Wow. I'm speechless. Suzanne, I wonder if we could impose on you to make as many of those sounds now as you possibly can. Oh, let me have a go. Start with purring, trilling, meowing, squeaking, moaning, trill meowing, which is a combination, purr meowing, howling or yowling, hissing, snarling, jumping and chattering. I feel inspired. I feel almost an obligation to suggest that we do a little musical collaboration between you and an eminent trombone player. Why not? Thank you. I'm so honored to receive this prize. As you may know, domestic cats have a large vocal repertoire, and they also vary their voices and their melodic patterns when they communicate using sounds. I became really interested in this variation, and I used the methods that I normally use to study human speech sounds, phonetic analysis, to describe the different cat call types and the variation within each type. However, I couldn't have done this without the help of my colleagues in my research project, Joost van de Veijer and Robert Eklund. All the wonderful people working in the Lund University Humanities Lab, and of course, I could never have done this without the help of these guys. So again, thank you so much. The Ecology Prize. The winners are from Spain and Iran. The Ecology Prize is awarded to Leila Satari, Alba Guillen, Angela Vidal Verdu and Manuel Porcar for using genetic analysis to identify the different species of bacteria that reside in wads of discarded chewing gum stuck on pavements in various countries. The prize will be presented by Nobel laureate Francis Arnold. I want to thank you for this very important contribution to mankind and to our deep knowledge of our built environment. Now that you have your prizes here is your $10 trillion bill. Thank you very much. Thank you. Winners, are you collecting samples of chewing gum from famous scientists? No. What do you mean, Mark? You have an opportunity to persuade a famous scientist to donate a sample of chewed chewing gum to you. We could do the same stuff through the right as well. Do you want to try? It's amazing. So the transportation of chewing gum. You publish a scientific paper on this. I hope you will share that with the world. Yes, we will. Thank you. The team will now present its acceptance speech, which was pre-recorded. Now, here's a musical treat. The world premiere of a new mini opera called A Bridge Between People. Tonight's opera is called A Bridge Between People. The plot is simple. The adults in this town, they're angry. Angry. The adults, they all hate each other. The kids in this town want to solve that problem. The kids are going to build bridges between people. Little tiny bridges. Each of these little tiny bridges is going to connect two angry adults. Stuck with each other. Stuck to each other. The angry adults will learn to live with each other. This crew drawing is going to show you the basic idea. Angry so angry, such shouting and pouting and spouting and moaning and groaning and groaning and groaning and groaning and groaning and groaning and groaning. Then some more groaning and then some more moaning and pouting and shouting. A star. To the two opposite ends, the two opposite ends of a nice tiny, nice tiny. Power so bitter, so carefully cooking up new kinds of kooky contempt to don't make the smallest attempt to be neighborly. Won't say hello. Won't say hi. Not to anyone. Anytime. Won't even look at each other. We want to fix that, so that's why we're going to live. And close enough even to hit or to spit. That is for, that is for it. That's a long time. Chemistry, pride. The winners represent these countries, Germany, the UK, New Zealand, Greece, Cyprus, and Austria. The chemistry prize is awarded to Jörg Wicker, Nicholas Krauter, Bettina Derstroff, Christoph Stahner, Efstradius Porzukidis, Achim Edbauer, Jochen Wolf, Thomas Kluepfel, Stefan Kramer, and Jonathan Williams for chemically analyzing the air inside movie theaters to test whether the odors produced by an audience reliably indicate the levels of violence, sex, antisocial behavior, drug use, and bad language in the movie the audience is watching. The prize will be presented by Nobel laureate Barry Sharpless. Gotten him, das ist fantastisch. Research on smell is undervalued, and it's very important. It either makes us dreadfully fearful or disgusted or happy there's food down the road. And that was true for little guys too, just bacteria. And so I think the, I really look forward to meeting you. I hope I can get to Germany or you get over here in San Diego. And I love to talk to you about things. Okay, and now the prize? Oh, the prize. Yeah, prize. Okay, this is the prize. Okay, you all have your prize. Great. And here is your $10 trillion bill. I'm very happy to be associated with this prize for you guys. I campaigned the chemist because of smell because I memorized 3,000 compounds at least in stock rooms. I just go into stock rooms and spend two hours sniffing everything. We're not allowed to do that anymore. Hey, and once at my college start, I went into the stock room and I smell a bottle that was in the hood and it was ethyl chloroformic. I passed it knocked me out. I didn't smell anything. It hit me in the back. I dropped to the floor and I put the bottle down before I fell. And it was at three in the morning that I was doing this. I moved faster than anybody because I knew what things were coming out of a reaction. I could smell them and it was like a gift from heaven. But I lost my smell because it is 30 years ago. So I paid the price, but I don't regret it at all. Okay, so I got some popcorn. Yeah, what do you want me to throw it all? Okay, well, this is popcorn. This is about the famous prize and I just want to show how happy I am. Oh my God, we're in the water. Mostly in our solar powered fountain. And now the winners will present their acceptance speech by pre-recorded video. The instruments that you can see and hear behind me are normally used to investigate the chemistry going on over the Amazon rainforest. But for this project, we took these instruments to a local movie theater. And here in the movie theater, if you measure the air composition continuously, you'll see that some chemicals vary in sync with scenes in the film. And what that means is, is that the audience is broadcasting out chemicals as they respond emotionally to the contents. We developed algorithms that were able to tell which scene the audience was watching and what age classification movie had, only based on the breath profile in the air in the movie theater. Our algorithms were looking for patterns and profiles that are specific to certain movies, scene types and film categories. Now get set for the 24 seven lectures. We've invited several of the world's top thinkers to tell us very briefly what they're thinking about. Each 24 seven lecturer will explain their subject twice. First a complete technical description of the subject in 24 seconds. And then after a brief pause, a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. 24 second time limit will be enforced by musicians. This 24 seven lecture will be delivered by Francoise Brouchard, who is a professor of theoretical soft matter at the Curie Institute in Paris, France. Her topic, soft matter. First, a complete technical description in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go. So material knowledge was introduced in the comics Babar sur la planète Moll and invented by Nobel Prize laureate Pierre Gilles Dogen for describing complex form of matters like liquid crystals, polymer or adhesion. Plus a move, plus a call, said Babar when he lost his sticky shoe. Soft matter is a science of everyday life. And now a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go. The next 24 seven lecture will be delivered by Dr. Guignet Massacoumé. Dr. Massacoumé is a cancer epidemiologist at the WHO, the World Health Organization. Please welcome Dr. Guignet Massacoumé, Massacoumé, his topic, coffee drinking. First, a complete technical description of this subject in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go. The structures which permit deglutational coffee arise from the endoderm, mesoderm, ectoderm, and urochrist, colonic metabolites following coffee consumption like hemocomaric and dihydroferylic acid exhibit a high antioxidant activity. No surprise that a multinational prospective longitudinal course study only reduced risk for death of various causes in coffee drinkers. Although it's 65 degrees Celsius, 150 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, probable evidence of casino genicity exists for it's over just three months ago. And now a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go. Coffee drinking, good, good for you. Maybe. This 24-7 lecture will be delivered by Patricia Yang, assistant professor of power, mechanical engineering at National Tsinghua University, Taiwan. Please note that Professor Yang has been awarded two Ig Nobel Prizes. Her first Ig Nobel Prize in the year 2015 was for testing the biological principle that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds, plus or minus 13 seconds. Her second Ig Nobel Prize in the year 2019 was for studying how and why wombats make cube-shaped poo, of which this is a sample. Please welcome Patricia Yang. First, a complete technical description of the subject in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go. Memo is free species with thin layer of follicle mucus inside the wall of the intestine, the large intestine. It lubricates the process of the excretion. When mammals push to excrete, they are pushing the mucus. The mucus makes the world slippery and it helps the species move toward the outer world. While mammals have a cylindrical species, the speed of excretion depends on the new thickness of mucus layer. For large mammals, they have, oh, can I do it again? Sorry. And now, now, now, now, now, now, a clear description that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go. Pushing out feces requires some lubricating fluids. Okay, here we go. The economics prize. The winner represents these countries, France, Switzerland, Australia, Austria, the Czech Republic and the UK. The economics prize is awarded to Pablo Blavatsky for discovering that the obesity of a country's politicians may be a good indicator of that country's corruption. The prize will be presented by Nobel laureate Rich Roberts. Well, many congratulations. This is really a great honor, as I'm sure you realize. And I'm wondering if this works for politicians in Western countries, as well as it does in the post-Soviet countries. So anyway, congratulations. Well, thank you. And now, here is your $10 trillion bill. Thanks. Rich, do you have any questions? Well, I'm wondering, you know, did you, all of the work that was reported was done on politicians in the post-Soviet countries? Did you look at politicians in other countries? No. No. It's great fun receiving this award. Let me just steal 55 seconds of your attention to tell you what this award is all about. So I downloaded pictures of politicians from Internet, and I ran them through an artificial neural network. This neural network was trained not only to recognize human faces, but also to estimate the body mass index. I found that countries that are perceived as relatively corrupt have relatively high estimated body mass index of a median cabinet minister, whereas countries that are perceived as less corrupt have slimmer politicians. In a follow-up work, I also found that there is intertemporal correlation between obesity of politicians and perceived corruption. So grand political corruption is literally visible from the faces of politicians. The Medicine Prize. The Medicine Prize is awarded to a team that represents the countries of Germany, Turkey, and the UK. The Medicine Prize is awarded to Jam Bullitt, Darae Oledakhan, Burkhard Lippert, and Ralph Hohenberger for demonstrating that sexual orgasms can be as effective as decongestant medicines at improving nasal breathing. The prize will be presented by Nobel Laureate Robert Lepkowitz.  I know how hard you've all worked on this project, and certainly this award is a fitting climax for all the work that you've done. As the famous soliloquy by Hamlet, I would quote those words, a consummation devoutly to be wished. And so, again, my heartiest congratulations as I present this Ig Nobel Prize to your team. And here is your $10 trillion bill. On behalf of my entire team, I would like to thank you for this prize. We are very honored. Instead of preparing a long acceptance speech, we actually made a little video to explain our research and findings in a fun way. We hope you enjoy it. Thank you again. This is Zichmann Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and one of his best buddies, Wilhelm Fliess, a German physician. In 1897, they theorized on a connection between the nose and genitals, postulating genital spots located inside the nose. Fliess even performed surgery on Freud to prove this link. In the century since, their theory has been all but forgotten. In 2020, these guys, Chairman Ralf, picked up the idea. They found out that sexual intercourse with orgasm can improve nasal breathing to the same degree as the congestive nasal spray. So, if you're your partner suffer from a block nose, there might be a natural solution with positive side effects. Give it a try. You're welcome. It's time for act two of the mini opera, A Bridge Between People. The adults in this town, they're diligent. Yeah, they like diligently spending their time being mad at each other, am I right?  Well, now the adults are angry at the kids too. Yeah, you know, but that doesn't bother the kids. No, sir, these kids, they're very confident. Yeah, you know, these kids are diligent, good engineers, and they plan to keep things simple. Kids are going to build a bridge, build a bridge, build a bridge. Say they're going to do it.  Nobody can build a bridge, build a bridge, build a bridge. Not without a billion dollars, not in just a day.  We are going to build a bridge, build a bridge, build a bridge. We are going to build a bridge later today. If you're going to build a bridge, any bridge, every bridge, you must engineer it in the legalistic way. Simplest way to build a bridge, build a bridge, build a bridge. Simply keep it simple and let no one you dismay. They don't know that it takes go, lots of go, they don't know that it goes slow so very, very slow. Tell me every part we need, part we need, part we need, tell me every part we need, and then we will proceed. Towers that are high enough gotta be strong and tough, towers that are made of steel or maybe other stuff. Good on cables that extend from the start to the end, good and sturdy even when they have to sway and bend. Anchors that are permanent, maybe glue or cement. If the anchors anchor right, cables stay tight. Little cables that descend, so the road will suspend. Little cables hold the road, hold by a load. Gotta have a stable deck, stable deck, stable deck, cause without a stable deck we're gonna have a wreck. Gotta have a stable base so the bridge stays in place. Gotta have a good foundation to this first way, no way. We are gonna build it in a very simple way. Get ready for the public real clock today. Now please enjoy this brief intermission and we will be back right after this. We hope you enjoy this brief intermission. Peace prize. Wait, wait, wait, hold on. We're getting the peace prize, the ignoble peace prize. Yeah, it's the most prestigious of them all. I assumed it was gonna be in biology or anthropology. It could be in any of those, but this is perfect for the peace prize. Okay, wonderful. The winners are from the USA. The ignoble peace prize is awarded to Ethan Becerris, Stephen Nailway, and David Carrier for testing the hypothesis that humans evolved beards to protect themselves from punches to the face. The prize will be presented by Nobel Laureate Eric Maskin. This is it. You richly deserve it and let me give it to you. Thank you. And here is your 10 trillion dollar bill. How in the world did you come to this research topic? So actually this work came out of an argument I had with a colleague a decade or so ago. We were arguing about sperm whales at a meeting in the hall and the conversation sort of got out of hand. And at one point he waved his fist in my face and he said, I can hit you with this, but that's not why it evolved. And while I was doing that I was thinking, well, wait, maybe, maybe, maybe there is something to that. I didn't say anything to him because he was so upset, but we looked at the role that this posture may play in hand anatomy. Then from there we went to the face and the face led us to beards. Well, that's science for you. Any of you ever received a punch to the face? So I've never given a punch to the face, but I got one many years ago. There was a movement called the United Farm Workers and I was helping out with their grape boycotts. I was on the picket line and not all the shoppers appreciated the picket line and one showed his displeasure quite forcefully. Do you wish you'd had a beard to cushion the blow in retrospect? We are pleased we're honored to receive the ignoble peace prize. Our question came from the observations that humans are unique among the great apes in having facial hair in males, but not in females, and that male beards cover some parts of the face that are most vulnerable when one is punched. We ultimately decided against testing our hypothesis by punching each other both with and without beards. Instead we used a sheet fleece model to model the hair and an epoxy composite sheet to model the facial bones. We then used a device that drops a known weight to test the samples and measure the energy required to fracture them both with and without a fleece coating. We found that the total energy absorbed by the samples was 37% greater when the sample was covered with the fleece. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that humans are anatomically specialized for fighting with fists. There is no doubt that humans are the most empathetic and cooperative species on the planet, but given that reducing violence in the future is a goal that we all share, it is important to keep in mind that our anatomy reminds us that in certain circumstances we can and sometimes do respond with aggression. It's time now for round two of the 24-7 Lectures. This 24-7 lecture will be delivered by Chouki Abdallah, the executive vice president for research at Georgia Institute of Technology. His topic, feedback control. First, a complete technical summary of the subject in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go. Birds and bees do it to find their way home, and people give it freely but receive it poorly. When bats use it, it's audio-vocal, but when machines do it, they're intelligent. Schools of fish practice it to avoid predators, and the blue angels use it to delight spectators. It is feedback that keeps our gut bacteria calibrated, and by monitoring the present, it helps us control the future. And now a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go.  This 24-7 lecture will be delivered by Iman Farabakh, associate professor of metallurgy, engineering, and manufacturing at Iran University of Science and Technology. He's also winner of the 2019 Ig Nobel engineering prize for inventing a diaper-changing machine for use on human infants. He is now founded a company called Baby Washer Incorporated. His topic is baby washing technology. First, a complete technical description of the subject in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go. Baby Washer is a new automatic device, a gentle robot. It changes dirty diapers. It washes the bottoms of babies and also the bottoms of elderly. Baby Washer removes a soil diaper by super soft jobs, washes the bottom with warm water, then drys it with warm air. And now a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go. Henderly changing baby diapers washing elderly bottoms. Please fasten your seat belts. Airplane toss number two for etiquette. Straighten up and fly polite in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. I want to speak briefly about the past and the future. Back in the year 2014, the Ig Nobel biology prize was awarded to a team from the Czech Republic, Germany and Zambia for carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, the dogs prefer to align their body axis with Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines. Now, today in the year 2021, my colleague here, who is a dog, aligns herself without defecation. Her name is Wednesday. As you can see, Wednesday hopes that you will help us fund the Ig Nobel prizes. In the years before the pandemic, funding was a struggle for us. Now, thanks to the pandemic, it's a struggle and an adventure. You can help us keep the Ig Nobel prizes alive and well for next year. And on into a time that Wednesday calls the future. Do that at our website, improbable.com. Wednesday, thanks you. And so do I. Excuse me. Sorry. Watch out. Excuse me. There it is. The physics prize. The winners represent these countries, the Netherlands, Italy, Taiwan and the USA. The physics prize is awarded to Alessandro Corbetta, Jasper Mejusen, Chung Min Lee, Roberto Benzi and Federico Toschi for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do not constantly collide with other pedestrians. The prize will be presented by Nobel laureate Marty Chalfi. It's a real pleasure to present you with this year's Ig Nobel prize in physics. Congratulations to all of you. I only have one real question though. Was this study done with or without cell phones? Marty just asked you a question. Depends. Where's the cell phone? You had the cell phone, but depends. There were people with and without cell phones. We have five millions. So I assume, yeah, many. I just wondered if the people that were looking at their cell phones collided more with other people. Oh, that's a very good question. I mean, this is something we need to look into, but we don't have resolution to this thing, which people with cell phones without for the moment at the moment. So this is something we cannot yet do. But yeah, this is a very good point. Good. Did I present you with your $10 trillion bill? Let's do that now. Here's your $10 trillion bill. Winners, now that you're wealthy, do you have any questions that you would like to ask Marty Chalfi? How do we get the Nobel Prize ourselves? I think this is a very good start. Work on something no one else has ever worked on. Greetings from the Netherlands, from California and from Italy. First of all, we wish to thank the committee for the award of this ignoble prize. We are flattered that people laugh and then thought because of our work. So thanks. Thank you so much. Now to the matter. Do you still think that physics can only be used to explain how people move? Actually, you can use physics to explain the hydrogen atom. Physics can even be used to describe gases of interacting molecules, which resemble human crowds. In our work, we started a million of pedestrian trajectories and we assured that we can explain the dynamics in a robust way, of course, from a statistical point of view. Gas molecules in a crowd can also kiss each other or run. Van Anba, even if you think you can choose your destination, and regardless, you are a person in a crowd. Or a gas molecule. Physics can predict your statistics. The Kinetics Prize. The winners are from Japan, Switzerland, and Italy. The Kinetics Prize is awarded to Hisashi Murakami, Claudio Feliciano, Yuta Nishiyama, and Katsuhiro Nishinari for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do sometimes collide with other pedestrians. The prize will be presented by Nobel Laureate Carl Wyman. And Professor Wyman reminds us that we can all help the environment by recycling old manufactured objects, making those objects into new manufactured objects. Professor Wyman is going to personally recycle one of last year's Ig Nobel prizes, transforming it during its journey through the internet into a recycled new 2021 Ig Nobel Prize. Here is Professor Wyman making the presentation. It's an honor for me to present this prize for such an important physics discovery. And here is your 10 trillion dollar bill. Beautiful. Winners, do you have any questions for Professor Wyman? How do we remove Ig from this prize? With a lot of hard work. Yeah, I know. Maybe. Congratulations on your achievement. We are super happy to accept the Ig Nobel Prize. We discovered mutual anticipation between pedestrians facilitates the order of movements in human crowds. In our experiment about the rational flow, we visually distracted only some of the pedestrians to disturb their anticipatory abilities. Then we observed the distraction clearly delayed the collecting by the formation. Surprisingly, not only distracted pedestrians, but also non-distracted ones had trouble avoiding collision in advance while navigating. So we can see that anticipation is mutual. To distract pedestrians, we got participants to use this. That is, mobile use while walking. However, we hope you are not just distracted by the risk of mobile use, but interested in the remarkable human interaction ability, where mobiles are not used. We consider mutual anticipation is important to understand the barrier of self-organizing systems. It's time for Act 3 of the mini opera A Bridge Between People.  And you're gonna design a bridge. Yeah, like that. What kind of bridge you're gonna design? There are so many different kinds. Are you gonna make a truss bridge? A cable say bridge? Oh, you can make an arch bridge. Yeah. Well, you know the best kind of bridge. If you love suspension bridges, is a suspension bridge. A suspension bridge. Best kind of bridge you can get around these parts. Bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge. Always animated in suspension, always attracting lots of attention It has got to be the best invention, it's a big suspension bridge Everywhere the air is all that matters, we're here with flies over there Everywhere you're just too scared to try to leap from here to there Where there is a distance that's too distant, can't you think that they're here persisting? Engineering won't be just a suspension bridge to build a life-size suspension bridge Build the bridge from Africa to India from Africa Build a bridge from Africa to India from Africa That's how you get from Africa Do India from Africa You build a bridge from Africa to India from Africa Then you travel to Australia, build a bridge from India How you travel to Australia, build a bridge from India From India to reach Australia, India to reach Australia Build a bridge to reach Australia, build a bridge from India Bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge We're gonna travel from way down under From down under, to Ecuador From Ecuador take a nice little walk Take a little walk, bridge, bridge, bridge I'm gonna get some way down under How we go from way down under The little bridge to Ecuador And then walk, walk, walk, walk to York Bridge, bridge, bridge Then build a bridge from the state of New York From the state of New York To Reykjavik Then spend a nice night in Reykjavik Cause the nice and the nicest nights are there Iceland is pretty isolated In fact, that is often overstated Pretty good, there's lots of transportation Airplane toads, not just a bridge But time travel to Mozambique From Reykjavik to West Technique Things are very fast and sweet To go from Iceland to Mozambique If you have to ride in Mozambique And cannot delay until the weekend If you're going to dock the best You'll get these bridge and cattle Airplane toads number three For engineering Straighten up and fly tight In ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five Four, three, two, one The entomology prize The winners are from the USA The entomology prize is awarded to John Mulrenan Jr. Roger Grathaus Charles Hammond And Jay Lambden For their research study A new method of cockroach control On submarines The prize will be presented By Nobel Laureate Francis Arnold I'm thrilled to be able to award you This prize for your contributions To an age-old battle Of man versus cockroach A battle we have not yet won But your contributions were important Thank you Now the presentation of the prize And here is your ten trillion-dollar bill I've been out of the Navy Retired in 1979 from the Navy It's been a long time Back in those days we were limited On what we could do The procedure that had been used for years Was to fumigate the submarines With carboxid gas Carboxid gas is a combination Of carbon dioxide and ethylene oxide And the reason we had to do what we did Was because up in New London We had an incident where A submarine was fumigated with carboxid In the wintertime And after they aerated the submarine And the crew went back aboard The ethylene oxide had condensed Into a liquid form And when they heated the submarine Back up, the ethylene oxide Went back into a gaseous state And we had an incident Where one of the crew members Was affected by the gas And that was one of the problems They had and in fact There was a fatality In one of those incidents We had to find some other way To do it that was safer And that's what we did It was safer It was more economical And it was just as effective Or more effective than the gas So it worked out That was our mission And I think we accomplished our mission And the Navy was happy at the time I don't know what they're doing now To be honest with you Here's the rhino ready The transportation prize The winners represent these countries Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Brazil The UK and the USA The transportation prize is awarded To Robin Radcliffe, Mark Jago Peter Markle, Estelle Markle Pierre Dupriere, Pete Betel Birgit Cotting, Baker Manuel John Hendrick Dupriere, Michelle Miller Julia Philippe, Stephen Parry And Robin Gleed for determining By experiment whether it is safer To transport an airborne rhinoceros Upside down The prize will be presented By Nobel laureate Rich Roberts Here's the prize And I have to say When I have to be transported To a safer place I hope not to be doing it Upside down But many congratulations Winners, if you could hold up your prize And display it Great And now here is your Ten trillion dollar bill You got the red You got the original article And we've got the one Oh, very nice Rich, you've had a glimpse At what all of these people did To win their prize I felt sorry for the rhinoceros I must say Well, should he feel sorry for the rhinoceros? No Because they're They're being moved to a safe area Where they're protected That I know it was just the manner of transportation That I was concerned about Well, that's why we did a research The rhinos in the experiments Were only two inches off the ground Maybe six inches, Dr. Gleed Did you run any tests Before you had a large rhinoceros Using any of yourselves? Actually, we first tested a lot of other animals Before we got to the rhino And of course, including a few human beings So, yep, we didn't start with rhino That's for sure I hope they were volunteers Any of you test subjects? I think Dr. Morgan We've all been tested We've all been hung at some stage The beauty of it is It's really changed Rhino-translocation And actually on the back of it It's even more so elephant-translocation It's become Picking these big animals up by their feet It's accepted Of course, the next thing we've got to do Is do some research on some of the other species Like elephant, buffalo, hippo Maybe even giraffe Which should be picked up by their feet But it's totally changed Rhino and elephant-translocation Richard, now that you have the perspective Of a number of years Since you won your real Nobel Prize What do you say was the most Impact from your discovery? Well, you know, if you look at The COVID mRNA vaccines They would not have been possible Without my discovery Oh, very cool But the first real Clinical application came about Three years ago When an ex-postdoc of mine Someone who'd been a postdoc with me Found a cure For spinal muscular atrophy Not so much a cure as a treatment That would allow kids to develop properly And that was the very first clinical application Just 40 years after we made the discovery So, you know, basic research Doesn't necessarily give results immediately But over time it gives terrific results Wow, thank you Congratulations Fantastic, awesome But you know, it was luck If you ask anybody Who was won a Nobel Prize They'll tell you almost always It was luck Because they were working on something It didn't quite work out The way they had predicted it should And they went the extra step To see why it failed And they discovered something That no one had been expecting Sometimes it's a big discovery Sometimes it's small And if it's big, then luck Will eventually give you the Nobel Prize So Winners will now Give their pre-recorded acceptance speech People are puzzled Why are we hanging rhinos upside down? Mark and Pete We were asked to rob in for conservation purposes To move a significant number of rhino From a core breeding area To other very remote regions Capture release was going to be In really difficult places to get to So we looked at the options And we found that rhinos Would probably be the safest Most effective and animal-friendly way Of doing it Pete So we came up with a plan Of lifting them up by their feet Having them upside down We then lifted a rhino with a crane It managed that okay And we were good to go Good to lift a rhino with a helicopter The thing I love about wildlife veterinarians Is you guys have to really think About how to move a rhino Upside down is a good example You have to be ingenious and creative And sometimes even a little bit Crazy to move rhinos this way The new Ig Nobel Prize winners Will give free public lectures To explain if they can What they did and why they did it In a more normal year With no pandemic we do that at MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology But in this pandemic year We're doing it online You can see that at our website Improbable.com In the coming months And now it's time for the thrilling conclusion To tonight's new mini opera A bridge between people The kids are doing it The kids They're building lots of little suspension Bridges And they are gluing angry adults To these little tiny bridges You know each pair of angry adults Permanently Those angry adults Oi They're going to have to find a way to get along So let's all enjoy this Happy and I warn you Multiply Angry Angry Angry Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish Childish The other adults in town are angry too. You know they see their future.  They hate bridges. They hate engineering. You know what they really hate? Each other. Danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, . . illnesses. And the bridge-building plans by any kid in our little town will be quickly forbidden. Children Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, lady, shirt, buddy too. Stay away! Stay away!  I know all kinds of modern martial arts.  There's a lot of ways to cause pain. Hey! I can make you go insane! The kids are proud of what they've done. Really proud? You know, kind of obnoxiously proud. All these adults so bitter, Blind ways to make life bitter, They are stuck together in pairs. Fasting together, forever. At opposite ends, of a little tiny bridge, It's finding its own, To get along, together, forever. At easing all the tensions, and all is so crazy. Press all the anger, justice rich. They need a good suspension bridge. And thank people, they have edges good. At easing all the tensions, and all is so crazy. Press all the anger, justice rich. They need a good suspension bridge. The opera performers, The engineering instrumentation orchestra On piano, Julia Yoon. On cello, Dr. Julie Ryman. On accordion, Dr. Thomas Michelle. The narrators, Karen Hopkins and Christopher Hopkins. The soloist, Dr. Abby Schiff. Ted Sharp. Dr. Fred Tsai. Lisa Ferretti. Michael Skuhersky. David Kessler. Cinda Lavely. David Perasso. And singer and our opera director, Maria Farante. Okay, that's that. Now, Professor Jean Berco Gleason Will deliver the traditional Ig Nobel Goodbye, goodbye speech. Ich bin so böse. Goodbye. Normally, at this point in the ceremony, We ask everybody in the ceremony To gather together at the front of the stage For a pointless photo opportunity. But with the pandemic, we can't do that. So here's a 10 second long look back At the ceremony. We engineered this year's ceremony With help from a lot of very good people And a cat and a dog. Take a look at what they did. Here's a 5 second look back at the ceremony. If you'd like to help the Ig Nobel prizes Continue for another 31 years or so, Please donate a little money. And if you'd like to discover some more things That are just as surprising as the things You discovered here tonight, Subscribe to the magazine, The Annals of Improbable Research. You can do both of those things at our website Improbable.com Now, we hate to say Goodbye, goodbye. So just before we finish, Here's a 1 second long look back At the ceremony. We hope, we hope that the pandemic Will be tamed and that next year We can do the 32nd first annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony back in our Traditional home at Sanders Theatre. Now, on behalf of the Harvard Radcliffe Society of Physics Students and the Harvard Radcliffe Science Fiction Association And especially from all of us at Improbable Research. Please remember this final thought. If you didn't win an Ig Nobel prize this year. And especially if you did, Better luck next year Danger, danger, danger-da, da-da,と思います pourquoi? Danger, danger, danger-da, 2021 Da-dda, da-dda, da-da, da-dam, dan-da-dam Da-dda, da-dda, da-dda, da-dam Dun-da-dum-damn, dun-da-dum, lil-dem Dun-da-d담, dun-da-dum-damn Dun-da-dum-damn, dun-da-damm Dun-da-dur-rule, digo-rum, dun-da-dum Dun-da-drum-damn, dun-die-dim Dun-dam-information, dun-dam- włail monde Dun-dam- afteroo-sem Dun-dam- widespread information Dun-dam- Minor weight up to smash Dun-dam-up approximately 18 plug We'll be playing plans by Andy kid And our little town will be for Bim Children irritatingly persistent, They are the reason we get pissed Tim Di-dim-dim, Tim Di-dim-dim, Tim Di-dim-dim, Tim Di-dim-dim, Tim Di-dim-dim, Tim Di-dim-dim, Tim Di-dim-dim, Tim Di-dim-dim, Tim Di-dim-dim, Much-much-much-much-much-much Get away, stay away!  I know all kinds of modern martial arts Get a rip by your tongues and a rip by your heart Go and sing! I just want you to know that we spent 50 bucks driving the engineer to do that at just the right time. That train runs down this track only often enough to keep this line from being officially legally derelict. That happens like once every six or seven months or whatever the time is. This is not true. And you got to see it. You get to see it. Thank you.


Hello and welcome. I am Dean Perine, Executive Vice President at JSA and I'll be the event host and Moderator. I just have one question for you. Are you ready for fourth and goal? Because today's topic is scoring through innovation, a financially focused and forward-thinking discussion that intersects the finance industry and Football and in a way that you've never seen before. So this is going to be fun Today we welcome Mr. Mike Persico, my longtime friend and CEO and founder at ANOVA Financial Networks. We'll talk to Mike about ANOVA's technology evolution and how innovation isn't just one play to a touchdown, but a constant path of progression. And I'm going to try not to be super fan now, but on the other side of the field we have Mr. Gary Fensik. Gary is a former Chicago Bears player, Super Bowl 20 winner and captain of the most feared defenses in in NFL history. Gary played 12 seasons with the Bears and was their all-time leader in interceptions and tackles. We'll talk with Gary about his professional football career, the move into the finance industry and the impact he's seen on innovation in business and in sport. Mike and Mr. Fensik, welcome to the event. Thank you. You got it. So before we get started, I'd like to remind our audience to feel free to participate with questions and comments in the chat and we'll get to as many of those questions as we can in the allotted time. All you got to do is put that question right there in the chat and I will try to get to those as we move through the the discussion. All right, gentlemen, let's go ahead and get started. Mike, the first question is for you. For those who might not be familiar with ANOVA, can you give us a little bit of a history, a little bit of an introduction to ANOVA? Sure. Thanks Dean and welcome all attendees and welcome Gary. So, you know, when you look at ANOVA you look at our services, you look at where we connect, we look like a carrier and that's not untrue.  And in that vein, we're not that much different from an AT&T or a Verizon, you know, but then if you peel back the layers a little bit, you know, we started out as an engineering company and so our background, our MO, was always innovation. It was always coming up with the latest and greatest, not actually to disrupt the marketplace, mind you, but it was to disrupt ourselves because we knew that if we weren't ANOVA 2.0 or ANOVA 3.0, someone else would be. And so, you know, we would spend, you know, an inordinate amount of money on R&D time and focus and more so than other firms because that's what we believed in. And so that's why we've seen this evolution in our product set, going from fiber to wireless, traditional wireless to laser. And now I find it incredibly interesting that there's been a comeback to the original with hollow core fiber and you're seeing that product 12 years later come back to the forefront. And so it's been a lot of evolution to get back to a very similar place. So, but a financial industry carrier, we connect NASDAQ to NAISI, CME to ICE, Japan, JSX to the Hong Kong exchange. Excellent. Thanks, Mike and Gary. This next question is for you. It would absolutely be an understatement to say that you know your way around the football field. But why don't you give our attendees a brief breakdown on your career playing with the Chicago Bears and then ultimately stepping off the field into the finance industry? Well, thanks a lot and I appreciate being invited, Dean. You know, first of all, I went to Yale University. So there aren't any Yalees who have going there the thought of even trying to get into the National Football League. And I was very fortunate that, you know, I played 12 years. I'm from the Chicago area. I had one starting half back the entire time I played for the Chicago Bears. And that was Walter Payton, very, very unique. And I was very fortunate to be on a team that over time progressed and got better. And as you got better players and better systems and better coaches, I went through three different coaches, head coaches that is, before we had a chance to play under Mike Ditka. And while Mike has a very unique character, I think he really, as a former player, understood how to manage a collection of athletes from a variety of different economic circumstances around the country and eventually lead us to the Super Bowl. Excellent. Gary, you mentioned characters. And obviously there's character and there are characters. But you were the captain of those characters in a lot of ways. Captain of the defense there. Can you tell us what it was like to be the leader, to be the leader of those characters? Well, you know, we were talking to Mike earlier and I think you'd agree that it isn't just a leadership, but leaders pick good people. And I think when you really have a successful organization, and certainly the 85 Bears is a paradigm for that, it wasn't just having great coaches, but really them picking and the scouts and the general manager picking people of character. And so we didn't really need the coaches to tell us what to do. We knew what we had to do. And we knew that we had people who were capable of excelling and really making a difference and that you could trust them. I mean, trust is really important. And we used to have automatic front end coverages and blitz coverage based on the formations. And in any NFL game, you'll see people moving around before the snap of the ball. That would change our defense blitz or not. And it was just fun to be part of an intellectual and then a superior physical team. Very good. And I think carrying on with that theme of kind of innovation in strategy. Mike, this question is for you. ANOVA has long been a leader in innovation. But that doesn't come without a significant amount of strategy and maintaining that leadership position within innovation. So maybe talk to us a little bit about your innovation path and what that progression has been like for ANOVA. Yeah, it's a prerequisite though to think about it in the industry that we're in. And like I said earlier, if you don't do it yourself, a competitor will or the customers will, they have very bright people and they are willing to make investments in their technology and their infrastructure as much as you are. And so sometimes people say to me, they're like, isn't it exhausting that you have to rebuild your networks every 18 months? Wouldn't it just be nice to make a capital investment every decade?  Well, it would accept that's not possible in this space. But so when I don't view it as exhausting, I view it as exhilarating. I mean, we bring products to market that are so ahead of their time, no other industry would use them. And I'm talking about not just ANOVA but the fintech exchange to exchange connectivity in general. And so I think that we take these things sometimes out of the military, sometimes they're science faction, and we're making them a reality collectively and we're refining them. And then we find that they get used in other industries because they've matured under us. And when I mentioned Halifor fiber earlier, that's exactly what will happen. There's been an adoption and an implementation by firms like myself and some of the other individual trading companies. But no one else is using it right now. But fast forward three to five years and you'll see it be quite pervasive in its use by traditional carriers, other industries that need low latency, high capacity fiber. And so you have to be committed to it and you really need to enjoy it. You can't have it be a burden, right? And we do, I think that's what makes our job so interesting. In working with these technologies, bringing them to market. And you know what, sometimes failing with them a few times before you get them to work. Mike, you mentioned the word committed. And just to kick this with that word in mind to kick the next question over to Gary. So Gary, you're playing on the iconic Chicago Bears defense known for one of the most innovative schemes, the four six. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience moving to the four six defense and what it meant to the Bears and ultimately your ability to dominate in the league? I gotta believe there was a commitment to that scheme to get the job done. Well, I mean, I think innovators have an early advantage, but there are a lot of copycats that follow. But you still need people who can execute. I mean, it's great to have a technology, but you gotta have people can really execute in that. And for us, the first time we ever played the 46 defense, it was Neil Armstrong's last year before Mike Ditka became head coach. We played the San Diego Chargers with Dan Fouts. And we beat the heck out of those guys with this defense that really confused a lot of people, made quarterbacks, made quick decisions. And but it was only one element of that overall defense. And over time, there were a lot of copycats and then offenses changed too. And I would say today would be very difficult to run the 46, because people run three or four wide receivers and they start to isolate you. So things change, but as Mike was saying, you have to constantly innovate, otherwise you will fall behind. And I'm very fortunate that for the last 20 years, I've been a partner in a private equity firm based out of Chicago, but we have 10 offices worldwide. So we're always looking for either disruptive companies or we have a fund to funds product and we're with, I would say, the best venture managers in the US, Europe, and particularly in China today. And it's amazing.  So it's always product, market fit, and that's always changing. Gary, was everybody committed day one to the 46 or were there people that went over unwillingly?  Are we really going to do this and you ended up blitzing a little bit more? But it also any type of unique offense or defense, it starts with a great scheme. But it also, you want to be consistent and you have to have, you're really great to be a great player. So I mean, we all watched the Super Bowl. Hey, Tom Brady is a pretty phenomenal player, but they had a lot of great players. And all of a sudden you're saying, wow, there's a lot of guys on this defensive Tampa Bay that seem to be pretty good, right? We don't really tell who they are, but I think it's a combination of both. Yeah, and it's commitment, yes, but it's also vision. You can't have innovation without vision, and I think that's a little bit of what you were talking about Dean with your earlier question. And when you're going to do something that's novel or innovative, the vision is going to be questioned. And I'll give you an analog to that. We were going to deploy millimeter wave technology, which is now the de facto standard for metro wireless networks, except we were going to do it in a way where instead of going three miles, we would go 15. And so the hops would be longer, so we wouldn't have five millions of availability, but we'd have 95%. But there were people that said everything from it'll never work, including people within my own company, by the way. There were contractors that refused to build the network because they said, you know what, we're going to save you from even having to spend this money. What you're doing is not feasible. And so, but you have to fight through that. You have to say, no, I believe in the vision and I'll be the one, I'll raise my hand if it doesn't work, but I think it will. So there's vision and then there's the commitment to it. And I think Buddy had a vision too, and he was committed to it. But look at today technology.  It's in all of these areas that you never really thought about in your plan. But the applicability of that is much wider than you realize. I mean, we just look at the millennials that changing food habits. And I just look at all the different applications that we see entrepreneurs and venture funds present to us, it's amazing. It's really exciting to be able to see just how dramatic that impact is having on a population globally. Yeah, there's no shortage of ideas and no shortage of innovation. Yeah, particularly in the US though, right? You can sign off now, Dean. Yeah, if I'm not needed, I can just leave. Now, you guys are really providing all of the great segues that I could ever ask for. But just to keep us on target. So, Gary, you were talking about copycats. We're talking about commitment and copycats and innovation.  So, Mike, back over to you, with knowing that, knowing that there are copycats out there, how do you go about making that turn before the copycat does? How do you continuously stay in your lane of differentiation to make sure that no one's coming after your lunch? Yeah, people talk about first mover advantage. And that exists in innovation as well. Because if you can bring a product to market that's novel and first of its kind and get adoption, well, look, that won't exist in a vacuum. There will be other people that will reverse engineer that, that will figure out how it's done and that will offer a similar service. But if you are constantly innovating, they'll be busy deploying your technology or your innovation from two years ago. So you're already well on your way to the next item. And so if you stop, then that's when the problem happens. So the best way to deal with a copycat is to always move forward. And if you've had the first mover advantage, you keep that. And so there's this concept of kind of perpetual motion, perpetual innovation, that you have to engage in. And people talk about the race to zero in our industry, right? And that ends when you have transactions, networks that are occurring at the speed of light. And I kind of question that. I say it ends when we lose the ability to measure time, right? But that's a glib answer. In reality, the race to zero isn't just NASDAQ to NISI. There's a global economic fabric that can be optimized from Shanghai to the CME. And it's not just networks, it's FPGA, it's risk management, it's algorithms, it's all of this execution stack that's wound together. And so there's, as I said earlier, there's no shortage of ideas or innovations. And you have to, yes, you stay in your lane, but you also have to understand when you need to pivot. And some of our vast innovations have been products that I'll call to be adjunct to our core service, like self-healing, where a wireless network is going to have some loss on a cell phone network. We lose a bar, half a bar. It doesn't matter. On a financial network, you're losing trades. You're losing market data. That's critical. Those are gaps, right? And so we developed a product that if you drop the packet, a single packet, over wireless, the entire wireless feeds causes and it's backfilled by the fiber network. So nobody loses a trade. Nobody loses a single price, and that was an innovation at its time. And now it's part of the fundamental products that we offer. Mike, is that part of the process of scaling? That as you scale, you start to see these either additional opportunities or things that will make you more competitive in an iterative way? You know, it's a little bit of scale because you kind of have the breath, the personnel and the experience to identify opportunities. But it's also about the evolution of the product set. When people were trading and getting market data over fiber, you didn't need a product like this. But as things evolve to the primary method of connecting to the exchanges, being over wireless, then a product had to be developed to account for the data losses. And so there's no perfect technology. So as you implement one thing, perhaps on the basis of latency, you then need a product to pair with that to address availability, right? And we're working on the perfect product, it's not there yet. Just as a segue to our next question, I feel like there's some themes that are obviously boiling out of the conversation that we have right now, innovation and commitment and teamwork and moving parts and strategy and things like that. But all of those things combine, sometimes don't equal the same number at the end. So Gary, this question really is for you. The 4-6 scheme, you perfected it in a way that made others that were running it still not as good as the Bears. Why is that? Was it talent? Was it commitment? Was it? I think it's, one, the level of trust. You'd be surprised in football, most defensive coordinators say run this play. Doesn't matter what offense you're facing. Doesn't matter if you have four wide receivers or they switch or they're predictable in doing something. And Buddy Ryan would trust his players and so we could audible. And as I was mentioned before, a lot of times we didn't know what the defensive front or coverage was until they finally got into the formation. They'd have a guy go in motion, we might change. And so we felt that we were smarter than the offensive schemes that we face because we had that flexibility. But that meant that not only did you have to be physically good, you had to be mentally good. Buddy, more than anything else, hated mental errors. So if you didn't have the brains to make those adjustments, you're probably going to watch the game from the sidelines. So to me, it isn't just being good as one would think, oh yeah, he's bigger, faster, stronger, whatever. It was that combination. And then once you feel that, you know it as a player and as a unit, that you're kind of a step, you're just doing something different. And you can see on film that people are trying to mimic you, but you'd almost laugh, oh, they're not exactly. They have the framework, but they really don't know what they're doing. And that's when it became really fun. And of course, for me, I played free safety during the great teams. And so I would have the total view of before the snap of the ball going, you know what, they are not going to be able to stop Richard Dent or work blitzing and they're not going to be able to protect it. And it was kind of a joy to watch. I mean, I didn't play the entire fourth quarter of the Super Bowl because we were so far ahead. You know, I want to go stay on the football tangent for a quick second here. So you brought up the concept of defensive audibles. You know, everybody's incredibly familiar with pink manning changing a player, Tom Brady changing a play at the line, and the better quarterbacks have that latitude, but how prevalent is a defensive audible? How many defensive coordinators allow it to me? This is almost the first time I've ever heard of it, and I've been a football fan my whole life. You'd be surprised, not a lot. They don't trust their players. And that was why Buddy, who was a corporal in the army in Korea, he was tough, but once you earned his respect and you were mentally and physically good, then he trusted you. And I would go after every TV time out, and there are a lot of them.  But he wouldn't listen. And I think that that's why everybody loved playing for him. They probably loved playing for his sons. But most defensive coordinators do not, because there's a lot going on. And they, in their own mind, have already kind of played this out, like a war game. And the input from the players, they just don't seem to think it's critical, as I think Buddy did. Who did Buddy trust to make some of those defensive audibles? And my thought was always that it was Mike Singletary. Well, those audibles, they weren't necessarily audibles. I mean, they were automatic.  Everybody knew, but the people who would communicate that, because you got 80,000 people screaming and yelling. So you'd have to use a lot of times, even hand signals, because you couldn't hear, would be me in the secondary, because I'm in the middle of field, Singletary. And then it would probably be Hampton and McMichael. So, and again, you think that all physical errors, those are really apparent, and you can see those. But boy, if you make a mental error, it would be brutal the next day of the film. Because you're getting, it's either you're good enough or you're not. But instead of just looking at your physical capabilities, it's your mental ones. I think this is why I think AI today, it is imbued in baseball, but it's not yet there in football, but it's getting there. I listen to moneyball and work and business on serious. I just love when they get into all this stuff that you don't really think about, but it is applicable if you get enough points to really be able to say, these are trends.  So pretty fascinating stuff. But anyway, to get us back on target really quickly here, guys, because maybe we should have booked four hours for this one today, I think. But Mike, the next question is for you. You know, what do you want ANOVA to be known for as far as being a step ahead of the rest? Is it, is it, is being a step ahead of the rest enough, or is there something more there? You know, I don't think about it as much in those terms, right, you know, something to be known for. It's, it's having a strategy, having a vision, executing on it, being committed to that, and I think the rest kind of takes care of itself, right? You know, I do think that there are, there are kind of tiers of companies where, you know, some are very traditional carriers and they stay in a, in a classic lane. And then there's a small select group of people who will build cutting-edge networks, who will take chances and, and, and, and we're in that group and we're comfortable with that, right? You know, it's, it's, it's been 12 years, right? And, and, you know, sometimes we, we go through a pattern of design, deploy, sell, right? You know, and so you, you're not always designing, right? Cause there's a cycle to that, to, to design and then deploy and then sell. Those are, that's a three to five year period, right? So it's cyclical in, in that regard. So every three to five years is when we're actually, you know, bringing something new to market, but we're not full-time innovating because you do need to block and tackle to use the football analogy, you know, and do the operational things of deploying and selling. Design, design in a vacuum isn't good enough. You know, we're not an R&D facility at a university. Very good, Mike. I think, I think now is probably a good time to maybe take a couple of audience questions. We do have one from Mr. Tim Braun. Thank you for your question, Tim. First he says, thanks for joining us, Gary. I echo that. Thank you very much, Gary. By the mid-80s, you were established, you were an established top level NFL player. What made you have the foresight and desire to continue your education at Northwestern in the middle of your football career? Great question. Yeah, sure is. And, you know, I was very fortunate to have not one but two mentors, you know, in my 20s and 30s. And one of them had been a Harvard Business School grad, a Fortune 500 CEO. And he said, you know, you could go to Cal Lager, you go to Booth or University of Chicago at the time, part-time. And I go, yeah, yeah, I'll do that when I get done with football. And so, unfortunately, one year I went into the season knowing that I had to, my ankle had some problems. And they said, you know, you probably tore them and we're gonna have to wait till after the season, but you can get through the season. Then opening day against the Green Bay Packers, I broke my arm on the artificial turf field and missed two games. And then we made the playoffs against the Philadelphia Eagles and on a failed safety blitz, I tore a ligament on my knee all on the left side. And that's when I worked out, you know, seven days a week for six months, made all pro. And then I started Kellogg two nights a week during the football season and then full time. So it was purely based on, I thought I was gonna get back out of football onto the traditional path of a Yalee. And it was one of the best things I ever did. I really enjoyed it. I was single, so it wasn't like I had to worry about kids or a wife or anything. But I was also an English history major. And so to take stats and accounting and finance at first was pretty difficult, but, you know, it really worked out well. And my last class was in the fall of 1985. 85 just keeps on coming back for me. So we're talking a little bit about some adversity, you know, and things like that. But let's move away from that. Why don't you tell us what you're in this? I feel like this is a question that you can go on about all afternoon. But what was your favorite NFL moment? You know, again, I had mentioned earlier, I'm from Chicago. So no one had won anything in Chicago for so long. And the most memorable has to be the Super Bowl without question, it changes your life. But really the best memory is the NFC championship game against the Rams at Soldier Field. At the end of the game, Wilbur Marshall picked up a fumble and ran about 50 yards. I knew as I was chasing him down the field, first of all, it started to snow. And then we knew as he ran into the end zone, we were going to the Super Bowl. It was not just a great moment for us as players, but the whole crowd. You knew there was no way that we weren't going to the Super Bowl. It was a wonderful, wonderful time. You know that is ingrained in every Bearsman memory. Yeah, we know the play that you're talking about, you know, and it broke through.  Well, in that NFL films, you know, Memorial Island, well, you know, I forget the name of that announcer. He was so... You have to send that. Yes. He was the best. Yeah. Okay, we have one last of our regularly scheduled questions, and then we're going to jump into some more audience attendee questions. Mike, this is for you. 2021 is off to a really fast start. After 2020, thank the Lord, right? Off to a very, very fast start for you. What can our viewers expect to see from ANOVA in 2021? Yeah, you know, we're, as most people know, we have our own wireless platform. So we've made the investments to own our own technology. And, you know, we think that being kind of subservient to off the shelf products or third party products, what that ends up not allowing you to do is respond to the marketplace quickly or have custom features built in, you know, because it may not be in the best interest to the third party to do what you or your constituents need in terms of to stay competitive. And so we realized that a long time ago. And so we're a little bit atypical versus a standard carrier in as much as that we make investments in owning our own technology, our own assets, our own platforms, right? And over the past three years, we've been developing a 10 gigabit per second wireless backbone. And so we're about to roll that out across the entire New Jersey metropolitan area. It's called the equity triangle. It connects bats to NISI to NASDAQ. And so, you know, we're really excited about it because it gives extra capacity. It's very low latency and it's the next evolution in who we are. And, you know, we think that the sky's the limit from there. But again, you know, we're out of the design stage. We've designed it. Now we're deploying it and in short order, it'll sort of be ready to be marketed. And so this year, 2021 is the year of the 10 gig network. Very good. Congratulations, Mike. We will definitely be monitoring your progress over 2021. I can't thank you enough for bringing this all together today, but now let's really kick the fun up a notch, shall we? Okay, I do have questions from the audience. Gary, how has the game changed since you retired? Well, clearly the biggest change is that nobody could touch the quarterback anymore. Boy, I would hate to be a defensive player today, but you know, I think just in terms of, you know, the passing games, the critical part now, unfortunately, the Bears never seem to get that puzzle of getting the quarterback who can really excel in the NFL. But, you know, when I was playing more of a balance between running pass and you'd have two wide receivers and a tight end until maybe third down. Today, really, I think the normal offense is three, if not four wide receivers. And so that really changes the composition of the defense as well. You have more, probably a nickel defense, five defensive backs or more. They call it a dime to six. And so that has made a significant change in terms of the skill set and really the body types that you see in the NFL. I have a question for you. So given kind of the overall pandemic environment and what it kind of meant for getting to games and things like that, do you think that that's gonna have a lasting effect on football fandom or do you think it's just a blip? Well, I'm a seasoned ticket holder. So I sure as heck hope that I'm gonna be able to watch the Bears in the stadium next year. But I do think that, you know, whether it's Zoom technology or just how people are watching the game of football and the analytics, now you're getting, you know, more and more gambling involved that you can do from your TV. I think that the challenge for the NFL is whether people value going to a live experience or do you stay home and not pay $10 for a beer, $50 for parking, $200 for tickets, is it worth it? And that's, you know, that's gonna be a bit of a challenge. But in terms of football itself, I know that, you know, they're doing everything they can to prevent concussions but concussions with as big and as fast as people are, it's gonna be really hard to, you know, just stop that. But I, you know, I think that for me, the football experience has changed and analytics even on TV are getting more and more involved in that. So that there are, I think, different ways to appreciate the game of football.  In the pros, everybody's good and no one is protecting, I'm not trying to protect the guy because he's not as good next to me. If I do that, I won't be in the NFL very long. And you just see some phenomenal physical talent.  It's a magic. You know, the league wanted this trend. They wanted more points on the board. They wanted the star quarterbacks to not get hurt in the L3 12 games out of a 16 game season. And so they put in the tighter pass interference. They put in, you can't hit the quarterback. And so the game has changed over time, you know, and they changed because the NFL wanted a different product. And so to that end, and perhaps your bias, which products do you prefer, Gary?  Or do you like seeing 42 to 30 games, you know? And I kind of have my own opinion, but I'd like to hear what you have to say. You know, I think that it's more of a chess game today than it even was back when I was playing.     I had Earl Campbell. Well, I had a 33 inch waist and Earl Campbell had a 34 inch thigh. So it didn't take very long to figure out, you know, and he wasn't really looking to make moves. He was just going to run right over you. So I think that, you know, the game's changed but the game's changed in baseball. And you know, all of these games, I mean basketball they didn't even have when Michael Jordan was around. You're like, can you imagine if he his whole career at a three point shooting? And I think it is, as you said, it's to get more action, more points. And you know, in football where you have a salary cap although it's going down this year, but it was 200 million and you're now paying one player 30 to 40 million a year. You better make sure that that guy is going to be around. So I understand the protection. You know, the one thing as a defensive player each set of referees kind of call a game slightly different. And you know within 10 plays how they're going to call, are they going to call holding or are you going to be able to get away with a little bit more in the secondary? Everybody screams and yells at the refs the entire game.  But you know, it's just those adjustments. But I do think that, you know, in any sport you do want to be able to accentuate great athletic ability and skill sets for the benefit of the viewers, the fans. Mike, I debated asking this question at all because I feel like there can only really be one answer on this during this discussion. But do you have a favorite football team? Come on. I think it's evident.  I mean, he tried to indoctrinate me and bring me to Lambeau Field and make me sit. I'm one of the, you know, basically the coldest place in earth, you know, is Lambeau Field because the wind rips right through that barn and it was the old Lambeau, not the new one, right? So we were sitting on bench seats and it was, I had to get up and leave the game. I mean, I was 10, right? You know, and it was so cold, but I managed to resist that, you know, and came out of it on the right side. So they're paying to this day. But Mike, they still have those bench seats. You know, the Green Bay Lambeau is the only stadium in the NFL that doesn't have seats on the back. It's like you went to a high school game and I asked Mark Murphy, who was a friend of mine, who's the president of the Packers played for Washington Redskins, said, you ever think about getting rid of those seats? And he goes, no, no, you'd have to, if you put normal seats in like every other stadium has, you'd lose about 30, 30 of your seats. He goes, I'm not that dumb. That's never going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, they don't seem to mind, right? You're like, I don't, I can go cold up there. You're, you're huddling up with everybody, right? It is better for body warm. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I'm not snuggling with it.  You know, I can't say that I hated to play, although, you know, early in the 70s, when they used to be able to throw real beer cans onto the field and you would hear it.  It would happen in Detroit.  So I would say that, you know, we played, again, talk about transitions. Well, when I first started, there weren't heaters on the sideline. Most people don't realize the white benches that all the teams have, have jet heaters being blown underneath there. So it's so warm, you can barely stand there. And, you know, I played early in my career, we're up in Minnesota, we were outside and both teams are on the same sideline. And we were like, oh, it's a really cold game. We're like, oh, at least we'll have heaters. Well, another new rule I wasn't aware of, if the home team doesn't use the heaters, you don't get them either. And I think they just psyched teams out. Can you imagine being the Miami Dolphins coming up to, you know, Green Bay or to Minnesota, like, what, no heat? I mean, it just psychs you out. And as much as people think that, oh, it's brutal.  It is equally brutal to go, you know, from Chicago to play Miami in December when you're just not used to that heat and you melt. I mean, you better hope that you don't have long drives against you because you'll see guys literally kneeling in the huddle because it just snaps you. You know. Is it more difficult to play in the heat than it is in the bitter cold? I think so.   It was just, hey, I mean, it was so cold in Green Bay one year. I was talking to somebody. I had my arm, I was trying to heat it up. And next to a heater and I looked, I burned all the hair off my arm. I didn't even realize it. I was like this scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. I'm on fire, but at least I was getting warm. So, Gary, let's talk a little bit about the camaraderie of those 85 bears. Did you have a circle, you know, the buddies with the defense and the offense? Did you have friends on the team? Do you keep in touch with that? Yeah, I knew some of the offensive guys. I'm just kidding. I think a lot of it, the big difference between being in the pros and being in college or high school is that there's only a two-year gap, three-year gap, most between a freshman and a senior. But, you know, when I played in the Super Bowl, Walter and I were the two oldest guys on the team, starters. And so we were 31. Well, you know, think about that. I'm 10 years older than a guy coming out of college. You know, Kevin Butler who was a rookie. And so you have this gap.  You know, and you don't see that. So that then also, I was one of the few guys who lived downtown Chicago.  But, you know, I think that you kind of segregate teams, you know, a little bit by age, but also are they married, unmarried? But, you know, to this day, you're foolish if you play for the Chicago Bears and you had a good career to not live in Chicago. Wow. It's been great. And I, you know, today it's gone, it's full time. You don't have any off season. We would work off season jobs. You had the ability to do that. And I tell guys, and most of them actually don't listen to me, but for the few guys that they do advise, I'll say, you know, if you work as hard as you did to become an NFL player with humility and you just sacrifice everything and you use that same attitude in any business that you want to do in Chicago, people will want to help you, you know, but there are a lot of them who had a great career. Maybe they're 30 years old. They've never had an off season. They don't know what they want to do.  And they're like, you didn't graduate. I mean, maybe you didn't even graduate from college. So, you know, it's unfortunate, but, you know, some people are coddled for a real long time and, you know, they came from not much, but they've kind of lost a little bit of that. Mike, what are you agreeing? I'm assuming that there's something analogous kind of in the world that you operate into, huh? Well, no, I was, I was actually thinking of the ESPN 30 on 30 special where they showed the letter that you guys wrote to save your buddy's job and you wrote it to Mr. Hallis. And he wrote me a letter back. And I got to tell you, like people, when they were interviewing people from the defense, they were like crying. I was watching it, you know, and I was getting misty. Like that was the most amazing thing. Can you talk about that a little bit? Frompton, you guys should do it. Who's idea was it? And I can't believe it was successful. You know what I mean? Like normally management is like, yeah, that's great. You know, but you work here. We're making a decision. Thanks for your input. Yeah, yeah. That's what I thought before I wrote the letter too. But, well, really I give Alan Page. He, you know, he was a hall of fame player. He spent his last couple of years with Minnesota. So he knew buddy Ryan, when he was a defensive line coach at Minnesota.  And he said, you know, you've got to do something. I was an all pro safety. So you're safe a little bit because you're at least a good player. I go, what do you mean? He goes, well, you could write a letter. And I go to who? He goes to the owner.   So I wrote the letter and covered my button at all the starter, all the defense sign it. Sure, exactly. You had sent it to George Hallis. And lo and behold, we didn't have a really good, we didn't have an indoor facility. So we would sometimes practice at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, which has cement floors.  And George Hallis showed up and he had never been to a practice.   And you're like, are you kidding me? It's the letter. And he told our coaches, I'll never forget this, Mike, to take a hike. Take a hike. Sure. And he said, I got your letter. I had never gotten a letter like this.  So the offensive guys are going, what was that all about that George Hallis was here? And it looks like we got, you know, we think our coaches are going to be safe.  George Hallis hires Buddy Ryan or re-hires him. And then Ditka inherits Buddy Ryan. So it leads at, you know, great dynamic tension. But you know what?  And I was like, I did my garage a couple of years ago. And I had to get all the boxes out because they were going to put, you know, that acrylic floor down. Yeah. What's in this box? You know, there's some tax stuff. And I see this folder that says the Bears. And I look and I forgot, George Hallis wrote me a letter back. Wow. Because I've never gotten a letter like this. You know, I can assure you that. He didn't say our coaches would be back, but he came and physically did that. He didn't have to do that. But he did. You know, that's like the stand up guy he was. So now the Bears collect everything. So I, you know, I scan and send this to him because they go, I don't know if you ever got your grandfather's letter to me. Wow. And Pat McCasky was kind of the historian. He goes, oh, hey, thanks a lot. You know, we didn't have that letter. He goes, by the way, your letter you typed in 1981, your letter had a typo on it. This spelled morale.  So I wrote back to him. He said, oh, thanks a lot for the letter. By the way, Microsoft didn't go public until 85. They didn't have a laptop until what, 83, 82. And I wasn't able to use spell check. Right. But thanks for bringing out the error. Last time I'm sending you a letter from your grandfather. Right, right.  Well, you know, and that's interesting because that wasn't in the 30 on 30. Hell, his response wasn't, it wasn't in. Oh, let me tell you. So I was a pallbearer for buddy. I was very close to him. Hampton and I, Dan Hampton and I saw a buddy, you know, a couple of weeks before he passed away. So they, nobody wanted to do that 30-30 because they thought it was gonna be a, oh, everybody's, you know, it's a downer. And they go, no, no, no, it's, we really, you guys are iconic. And so we do it. And at the end of that, you mentioned, Mike, I was crying, everybody's crying. They called me up and said, they'd already done the interview.  Would you mind coming to Ditka's restaurant because Buddy wrote back a letter to you guys. I was like, you did? And so I go over there and, you know, they said, hey, just take a read of this and, you know, when you're ready, well, this letter was so emotional. And his last words to us, I was the only guy that he told that he was taking the Philadelphia job before the Super Bowl because he knew as an older player, I could, you know, I wasn't gonna tell anybody. And his last words to us, that night before the Super Bowl, after, you know, we were about to have milk and cookies or something like that. He goes, we're gonna win this game. But you know, no matter what, you guys always be my heroes, he gets emotionally walks out and everybody's, whoa, what's going on? And I was like, well, I knew what he was leaving. Right, right.   Yeah, I'm gonna need to move on from this, you guys. We do have a couple of more questions. We really, guys, I do, I really feel like we could talk forever, but we've only got five minutes left. So I'm gonna go ahead and jump into a couple more questions from the attendees, and then we will kind of wrap things up and get on with things. So next question, who was more intimidating, Reggie White or LT? Ooh, you know, I kind of think LT, and he was, you know, they both were clearly Hall of Fame, but LT had a mean streak to him that, and he was a phenomenal athlete. Yeah. New Soldier Field versus Old Soldier Field, what do you like that you designed? You know, I'm not crazy about the new one, but I, you know, the old one was really, you know, it was built in the 1920s. Matter of fact, my first year, the last game against Green Bay, we weren't, they weren't going anywhere, either were we, we go into the bathroom, oh, bad news. We're there for about five or six hours. Three of the five toilets that froze, found out after the game, all the toilets that froze for the Green Bay Packers. You go, this is the NFL. Yes. Okay, best running back you played with against that wasn't named Peyton. Yeah. You know, I'd have to say I respect Earl Campbell. I mean, I knew who the hammer and who the nail was, but you know, there were really a lot of good ones. Billy Sims with Detroit, he had a short career, Graylin, Tony Dorsett, you know, then you get into quarterbacks. I mean, Montana, Elway, Marino, God, I mean phenomenal talent. Was Barry Sanders in the league before? No, thank God he wasn't, Mike. Yeah. He actually, he came in the year after, and the Bears played on a Thursday night, Thanksgiving, and right before half, about eight tackles, missed tackles, including Mike Singletary, who I think might have missed them twice. I called up Mike after the game and I said, hey, are you okay? Yeah, congratulations to guys who won the game. He okay, and he goes, what do you mean? I go, well, I wasn't sure if you broke your ankles on the first miss tackle or the sack. Whoa, very funny, very funny. But Barry Sanders could just make you look, oh God, ridiculously bad. So speaking of making someone look ridiculously bad, who was the most difficult guy to tackle? Well, hmm, that's kind of a tough one. You know, I think more in terms of the pleasure it was tackling something like, I actually tackled OJ Simpson. It was at the end of his career, and I know it's a bad, you know, oh my God. But a lot of times it was just kind of an honor. I mean Calvin Hill went to Yale and I hit him on a short little third down pass against Cleveland and it was shook my, I introduced myself, shook his hand, and my defensive teammates are going, whoa, is that all about?  But you know, you look at different styles, like Tony Dorsett was not a really big running back, but he was phenomenal at breaking off tackle. I mean, just an incredible speed and movement. But you know, my rookie year, I was drafted by Miami Dolphins and ruptured my lung. I was playing with Mercury Morris.  Well, I'm lucky to have been given the opportunity to moderate this discussion. Mike, thank you very much for having me, Gary. Thank you very much for joining us. Whether you are on the field or off the field innovation is all around us. But we also have a raffle winner to announce that winner is Ronan Belkine. Congratulations, Ronan. You are the winner of the Jersey Raffle. So thanks to our viewers and for tuning in and for participating in this discussion. I was, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I'm sure that Mike and Gary did as well. You can check out Nova Financial Networks at anovannetworks.com. And you can check them out on social media. And you can check Mr. Fensic out just about anywhere. The internet is served. And so guys, that's it. That's all the time that we have. Thanks again for letting me moderate the discussion. And thank you to ANOVA for making it all happen today. And Gary. Mike, thank you so much. Best of luck to everybody and thank you. It was great. I had a blast. Yeah. All right. Thanks everyone. Great. Thank you. Bye-bye.


In this segment, we are going to talk about the financial returns interest rate and we are going to also learn what is the technical difference between a financial return and interest rate. So, sometimes people think as if the return is the same as the interest rate but there is a technical difference between the two and they are two distinct concepts, they are two different concepts. When we say a return, it is basically a financial return which person can get if he is holding, if he is making an investment or holding a certain financial instrument for a certain time and whatever loss or gain he will get over that investment over a certain period of time is called the financial return. Whereas the interest rate is the fixed amount of money which is promised by a financial institution that will be given to the person who has invested the money with the financial institution. So, again that is also a function of time, we decide or determine the values of interest rate based upon the time period but the financial return is technically different from the concept of interest rates. So, interest rates are more or less fixed by the central bank of a country like in Pakistan, it is the state bank of Pakistan that fixes the interest rates and then accordingly all the financial instruments that are traded in the business that are offered in the business sector or in the corporate sector, for them the interest rate is decided by the financial institutions according to the interest rates that are decided by the based upon the interest rates that are decided by the central bank. So, when we talk about the rate of return, we are going to take an example in order to understand the concept of how the rate of return can be calculated. So, for example, we are having a coupon bond and we have already discussed the concept of a coupon bond. So, its face value is Rs. 1000 and it is stated that the coupon rate is 10% which means that after every year the person who owns the coupon bond will get 10% of the face value which is assumed to be Rs. 1000 in this example. So, for example, after a year has passed and because of the demand and supply interaction in the bonds market, in the coupon bond market, the price of that coupon bond increased from Rs. 1000 to Rs. 1200 that means Rs. 1200. So, if the person who owns that coupon bond sells the bond in the market, he will get two types of payments, one will be the coupon rate which is assumed to be 10% so he will get 10% of the money which he has invested and then at the top of it he's going to get the difference of the prices, the price at which he has purchased the coupon bond and the price at which he is going to sell the coupon bond, fine. So, in our example, the purchase price was Rs. 1000 and the sale price is Rs. 1200 so there would be a difference of Rs. 200 so when we take into account all this information, we can find out the rate of return and that will be calculated by considering the 10% of Rs. 1000 as the interest which are the coupon rate and then there is a difference of Rs. 200 on the price of the coupon, the sale price and the purchase price. So, we aggregate these two and then divided by the initial price of the coupon bond which is assumed to be Rs. 1000 in this example so as a result we will get Rs. 300 divided by Rs. 1000 and if we convert it into percentage form or if we simplify it, we get that the rate of return for this particular coupon bond in this example turns out to be 30% or 0.3 so in percentage form we can put it as 30% so we can say that although the interest rate or the coupon rate in this example was given to be 10% but when we calculated the rate of return it turned out to be 30% so from here we can understand that the two concepts are different, interest rate is should not be assumed to be the same as the rate of return we need to use the formula which I have just used to find out the values of the rate of return whereas the interest rates are usually given in the scenario or given by the financial institutions or given by the central bank of a country.