When I met Michael at twenty-four, he was funny, ambitious, attentive, and poor enough that we used to split one dinner entrée because ordering two felt irresponsible.
I was a graduate student studying applied mathematics.
Michael had just finished his MBA.
I studied predictive learning systems—the mathematics behind identifying patterns in how students solved problems.
This was before educational technology became the enormous industry it is now.
My doctoral research focused on a model that could identify
how
a student misunderstood something rather than merely whether an answer was correct.
I called it the
Triad Model
because it measured three interacting variables: confidence, error pattern, and recovery speed.
Nobody thought it was particularly glamorous.
Except Michael.
He loved it.
“You realize schools would pay for this, right?”
“It’s research.”
“Everything profitable starts as research.”
I laughed.
He didn’t.
Michael saw possibilities everywhere.
That was one of the things I loved about him.
