Summary

When Vivek Ranadivé became the coach for Redwood City, his daughter’s basketball team, he decided it was best to try to keep the other team from getting to their goal. None of his girls were particularly skilled but Ranadivé’s winning strategy using the full court press and his natural instinct to never lose won the day and a slot in the national championships for the team.

Research conducted by political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft proved that when a large country fought a small country it would lose if its force was at 71.5 percent of their military power even though its military was ten times the size of the smaller army. Arreguín-Toft took it a step further and asked what happened when the weak side didn’t agree to fight in the conventional way the stronger side expected to...