b'THE MARATHON SALESPERSON|17attribute, but lets continue to examine the sub-ject of lying and its effects.As far as I can tell, no one has succeeded yet in expressing the correlation between trustwor-thiness and lying in a mathematical equation. Yet we know, based on historical observation, that both are inversely correlated (i.e., the value of apersonstrustworthinessdecreaseswiththe number of lies he or she tells. In this respect, trustworthinesscouldbethoughtofasaper-sonal bank account, and the lies would be with-drawals). But there is a caveat; for instance, the correlation cannot predict with certainty that ly-ing twice will cause others not to believe you in the future at all, or that perhaps you can always get away with just one lie, like the boy who cried wolf did in the story. Moreover, within a large group of peoplesay in a large citywhen is a person considered to be a liar by everyone? Therein lies the challenge faced by social sci-entists: the enormity of variables in human in-teractions makes it very difficult to establish that an action will always cause a certain reaction, at all times and by all people. This leads some to believe that lying may not have bad consequenc-es every time, or that it may even be profitable in some cases in the short term. This paradox'