Book Blurbs

I’ve Moved This Blog…

utah_guy — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:33:49 +0000

To anybody who may read this blog or be subscribed to it: I have moved this blog to a different location. The new location is http://bestbookblurbs.blogspot.com. There’s a link at the bottom that will allow you to subscribe to it.

Introduction to Freakonomics

utah_guy — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:52:53 +0000

“This book, then, has been written from a very specific worldview, based on a few fundamental ideas:

“Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life...

“The conventional wisdom is often wrong…

“Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle, causes…

“‘Experts’–from criminologists to real-estate agents–use their information advantage to serve their own agenda…

“Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so….” (p. 13-14)

Why New Cars Lose Much Value When Driven Off Lot

utah_guy — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:47:10 +0000

“The day that a car is driven off the lot is the worst day in its life, for it instantly loses as much as a quarter of its value. This might seem absurd, but we know it to be true. A new car that was bought for $20,000 cannot be resold for more than perhaps $15,000. Why? Because the only person who might logically want to resell a brand-new car is someone who found the car to be a lemon. So even if the car isn’t a lemon, a potential buyer assumes that it is. He assumes that the seller has some information about the car that he, the buyer, does not have–and the sell is punished for this assumed information.”(p. 67)

Cancer-Causing Mutations Can Occur By Chance as Millions of Cells Divide

utah_guy — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:09:03 +0000

“When the DNA double helix was first revealed by Watson and Crick in 1953, its structure seemed perfect and robust, well-designed to resist most of the disruptive influences that might be present inside living cells. For example, the bases in the double helix are turned inward and thus are not very susceptible to direct attack by chemical mutagens. Moreover, the linkages between adjacent bases were found to be resistant to cleavage by alkaline ions that arise continually in the cell.

“But while the double helix itself is relatively resistant to chemical attack, the process of maintaining a cell’s genetic integrity has a weak link. The vulnerability derives from the need to replicate the cell’s genome each time the cell goes through the process of growth and division. The resulting duplicate copies of the genome enable the mother cell to endow each of its daughters with a genome precisely equivalent to the one that it carries itself.

“This process of DNA replication has flaws. On occasion, a cell will miscopy a sequence of its DNA prior to cell division, and as a consequence, one of its daughters will receive a slightly miscopied genome, in effect a mutated one. Even the best-functioning cells will occasionally miscopy one in a million (or ten million) bases during each cycle of DNA replication. Hence, cell growth and division create vulnerability mutation.

“This imperfection suggested another way cancer formation might be accelerated. Agents that promote cell growth will indirectly create mutations simply because they force cells to replicate their DNA. More DNA copying means more inadvertent copying mistakes, hence more mistakes.”

Testing DNA Function Through Gene Transfer

utah_guy — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:55:20 +0000

“By 1979, another strategy for searching for elusive tumor oncogenes came online. This new approach did not depend on the knowledge gained about retroviruses. It was an independent strategy made possible by the experimental technique of gene transfer. Simply put, gene transfer made it possible to extract DNA (and thus genes) from one cell and introduce these genes into a second cell. The genes introduced into the recipient cell might cause it to take on new traits or behaviors. Such a response would indicate that the information specifying the newly displayed trait was present in the donor cell (from which the DNA had been prepared) and that this information could be conveyed to a recipient cell by the transfer of DNA molecules.” (p. 38)

Cancer Growth Is Orchestrated at the Cell Level, Not By a Central Process

utah_guy — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:28:39 +0000

“How are human tissues put together from single cells? The description above might suggest the involvement of master builders who oversee crews of workers, directing them in the detailed construction of normal and malignant tissues. In reality, there are no overseers forcing throngs of cells to line up and assemble themselves into normal or cancerous tissues. Architectural complexity in living tissue comes from the bricks themselves, the individual cells. Control is exercised from the bottom up…The cells forming a tumor are all lineal descendants of a single progenitor, a distant ancestor that lived many years before the tumor mass became apparent.” (p. 1-2)

Paradox of Choice Versus The Long Tail

utah_guy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:39:55 +0000

“The conventional wisdom was right: More choice really is better. But now we know that variety alone is not enough; we also need information about that variety and what other consumers before us have done with the same choices. Google, with its seemingly omniscient ability to order the infinite chaos of the Web so that what we want comes out on top, shows the way. The paradox of choice turns out to be more about the poverty of help in making that choice than a rejection of plenty. Order it wrong and choice is oppressive; order it right and it’s liberating.”

The Long Tail Complements the 80/20 Rule

utah_guy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:32:41 +0000

“The 80/20 Rule is chronically misunderstood, for three reasons. First, it’s almost never exactly 80/20…

“The 80 and the 20 are percentages of different things and thus don’t need to equal 100…

“People use it to describe different phenomena. The classic definition is about products and revenues, but the Rule can just as equally be applied to products and profits.

“…I’ve described the Long Tail as the death of the 80/20 Rule, even though it’s actually nothing of the sort. The real 80/20 Rule is just the acknowledgement that a Pareto distribution is at work, and some things will sell a lot better than others, which is as true in Long Tail markets as it is in traditional markets.

“What the Long Tail offers, however, is the encouragement to not be dominated by the Rule.” (p. 131)

Why Textbooks Cost So Much Money

utah_guy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:27:25 +0000

“It’s worth taking a moment here to understand the used-book market. For most of the past few decades it has actually been comprised of two very different markets. About two-thirds of it was the thriving and efficient textbook business that centered around college campuses…

“Used textbooks are a model of an efficient market–every year millions of students buy and then resell expensive volumes they need only for a single semester. The set of books with resale value is determined by the published curriculum of core classes; the price is set by what competition there is between campus bookstores; and the supply is replenished twice a year.

“Textbook publishers don’t mind this very much because it means they can actually charge more for new copies, since the buyers know they have a predictable resale value. Indeed, the economic model at work here is more like a rent than a purchase. Typically, stores buy books for 50 percent of the cover price and then resell them for 75 percent. Depending on whether the student is buying new or used, that ‘rental fee’ is between half and quarter of the list price of the book. This arrangement works so well that the used-textbook market in the United States is now a $1.7 billion enterprise, accounting for 16 percent of all college store sales.” (p. 86)

Why People Blog: Meaning of the Word Amateur

utah_guy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:12:50 +0000

“…We’re starting to shift from being passive consumers to active producers. And we’re doing it for the love of it (the word ‘amateur’ derives from the Latin amator, ‘lover,’ from amare, ‘to love’). You can see it all around you–the extent to which amateur blogs are sharing attention with mainstream media…” (p. 63)

Successful Marketing Is Achieved Through Focusing on the Customer’s Wants

utah_guy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:08:24 +0000

“Your Marketing Strategy starts, ends, lives, and dies with your customer.

“So in the development of your Marketing Strategy, it is absolutely imperative that you forget about your dreams, forget about your visions, forget about your interests, forget about what you want–forget about everything but your customer!

“When it comes to marketing, what you want is unimportant.

“It’s what the customer wants that matters.

“And what your customer wants is probably significantly different from what you think he wants.” (p. 218)

Turning Your Business Pla into a Game

utah_guy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:05:32 +0000

“…People do not simply want to work for exciting people. They want to work for people who have created a clearly defined structure for acting in the world. A structure through which they can test themselves and be tested. Such a structure is called a game.

“And there is nothing more exciting than a well-conceived game.

“That is what the very best businesses represent to the people who create them: a game to be played in which the rules symbolize the idea you, the owner, have about the world.” (p. 202)

Being Great Means Creating Our Lives Actively

utah_guy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:02:17 +0000

“Great people have a vision of their lives that they practice emulating each and every day. They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives. Their lives are spent living out the vision they have of their future, in the present. They compare what they’ve done with what they intended to do. And where there’s a disparity between the two, they don’t wait very long to make up the difference.

“They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives.

“I believe it’s true that the difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next.

“The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.

“Let me repeat once more that great quote by Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s A Separate Peace: ‘The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that the warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.’”

How to Measure Business Success

utah_guy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:57:51 +0000

“…On its own, Innovation leads nowhere. To be at all effective, all Innovations need to be quantified. Without Quantification, how would you know whether the Innovation worked?

“By Quantification, I’m talking about the numbers related to the impact an Innovation makes…

“The sad fact is that Quantification is not being done in most businesses. And it’s costing them a fortune! …

“Begin by quantifying everything related to how you do business. I mean everything.” (p. 127-8)

Innovation Focused on the Customer is Central to Business Success

utah_guy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:52:35 +0000

“Innovation is the heart of every exceptional business. Innovation continually poses the question: What is standing in the way of my customer getting what he wants from my business?

“For the Innovation to be meaningful it must always take the customer’s point of view. At the same time, Innovation simplifies your business to its critical essentials. It should make things easier for you and your people in the operation of your business; otherwise it’s not Innovation but complication.

“Innovation, then, is the mechanism through which your business identifies itself in the mind of your customer and establishes its individuality. It is the result of a scientifically generated and quantifiably verified profile of your customer’s perceived needs and unconscious expectations.

“It is the skill developed within your business and your people that is constantly asking, ‘What is the best way to do this?’ knowing, even as the question is asked, that we will never discover the best way, but by asking we will assuredly discover a way that’s better than the one we know now.” (p. 121)

How to Make More Sales in a Retail Store

utah_guy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:46:51 +0000

“Instead of asking, ‘Hi, may I help you?’ try ‘Hi, have you been in here before?’ The customer will respond with either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ In either case, you are then free to pursue the conversation.

“If the answer is yes, you can say, ‘Great. We’ve created a special new program for people who have shopped here before. Let me take just a minute to tell you about it.’

“If the answer is no, you can say, ‘Great, we’ve created a special new program for people who haven’t shopped here before. Let me take just a minute to tell you about it.’

“Of course, you’ll have to have created a special new program to talk about in either case. But that’s the easy part.

“Just think. A few simple words. Nothing fancy. But the result is guaranteed to put money in your pocket. How much? That depends on how enthusiastically you do it.” (p. 119)

How Entrepreneurs Think: The Entrepreneurial Personality

utah_guy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:41:24 +0000

“So the work of an Entrepreneur is to wonder…to imagine and to dream. To see with as much of herself as she can muster the possibilities that waft about in midair someplace there above her head and within her heart. Not in the past but in the future. That’s the work the entrepreneurial personality does at the outset of her business and at each and every stage along the way. I wonder. I wonder. I wonder. Just as every inventor must. Just as every composer must. Just as every artist, or every craftperson, or every physicist must. Just as every baker of pies must. I call it Future Work. ‘I wonder’ is the true work of the entrepreneurial personality.” (p. 33)

How Entrepreneurs Versus Technicians See the World

utah_guy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:37:08 +0000

“To The Technician, the customer is always the problem. Because the customer never seems to want what The Technician has to offer at the price at which he offers it.

“To The Entrepreneur, however, the customer is always an opportunity. Because The Entrepreneur knows that within the customer is a continuing parade of changing wants begging to be satisfied. All The Entrepreneur has to do is find out what those wants are and what they will be in the future.

“As a result, the world is a continuing surprise, a treasure hunt to The Entrepreneur.”

“To The Technician, however, the world is a place that never seems to let him do what he wants to do; it rarely applauds his efforts; it rarely appreciates his work; it rarely, if ever, appreciates him. To The Technician, the world always wants something he knows know how to give it.” (p. 74-5)

Making Money by Sharing Common Knowledge

utah_guy — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:12:01 +0000

“Remember that what you take for granted, because it is common knowledge to you, is a revelation, a secret of immense value to someone who does not know or understand it.” (p. 196)

This could be done easily through blogs, for example.

Translate a Business Idea in One Field to Another

utah_guy — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:09:50 +0000

“I am a huge believer in creative theft. When I work as a consultant with one kind of business, I identify some principle of success, some strategy that is working for them, then take it and apply it to a second client’s business in a different field, where the strategy is new. And while I’m doing that, I can find something that the second client’s industry is doing and “steal” it to apply in an entirely different industry. You can certainly do the same thing for yourself…you might do as I do–find an idea you can transplant from one type of business to another.” (p. 178-9)

How to Come Up with Great Business Ideas

utah_guy — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:05:31 +0000

“Earl Nightingale once observed, “If, instead of working on making more money, the average businessperson would spend an hour each and every day in quiet contemplation of how to be of greater and more creative service to his clientele, he and they would be the richer for it.” (p. 70)

You Can Make Money By Saving People Time

utah_guy — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:59:28 +0000

“The most precious commodity…is not money, gold, silver, or diamonds–it’s time. That’s what we have the least of; that’s what we’ll cheerfully pay to preserve. With both husband and wife working outside the home; kids to raise; homes to keep up; a new interest in health and fitness motivating use of gyms, walking, jogging; an endless variety of leisure activities; and a remarkably large percentage of people between the ages of twenty-five and fifty involved with spare-time, home-based businesses, there’s just not a minute to spare. So people will spend money for convenience. If you can give people time, you can make a fortune.” (p. 64)

Being the Lead Dog in Business

utah_guy — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:54:01 +0000

“One of the principles espoused by advertising gurus Al Ries and Jack Trout, authors of Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, is: If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category that you can be first in.” (p.50)

Why Most Small Businesses Fail

utah_guy — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:12:42 +0000

“[A] Fatal Assumption is: if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work. And the reason it’s fatal is that it just isn’t true. In fact, it’s the root cause of most small business failures! The technical work of a business and a business that does that technical work are two totally different things!” (p.13)

Belief in Yourself Is Empowering

utah_guy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:35:18 +0000

“When you believe something is impossible, your mind goes to work for you to prove why. But, when you believe, really believe, something can be done, your mind goes to work for you and helps you to find the ways to do it.” (p. 85)

How To Make A Great Speech

utah_guy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:33:21 +0000

“Most folks are lousy public speakers. Why? The reason is simple. Most people concentrate on the small, trivial things of speaking at the expense of the big, important things…The real test of a speaker is not did he stand straight or did he make any mistakes in grammar, but rather did the audience get the points he wanted to put across. Most of our top speakers have petty defects…yet all these successful public speakers have one thing in common. They have something to say and they feel a burning desire for other people to hear it.” (p. 77)

What To Do If You Don’t Feel In Love

utah_guy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:29:16 +0000

“The great psychologist, Dr. George W. Crane, said in his famous book, Applied Psychology (Chicago: Hopkins Syndicate, Inc., 1950) ‘Remember, motions are the precursors of emotions. You can’t control the latter directly but only through your choice of motions or actions… To avoid this all too common tragedy (marital difficulties and misunderstandings) become aware of the true psychological facts. Go through the proper motions each day and you’ll soon begin to feel the corresponding emotions! Just be sure you and your mate go through those motions of dates and kisses, the phrasing of sincere daily compliments, plus the many other little courtesies, and you need not worry about the emotion of love. You can’t act devoted for very long without feeling devoted.’” (p. 60)

How to Deal with Mean People

utah_guy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:24:57 +0000

“People who want figuratively to bite you, growl at you, pick on you and otherwise chop you down are not rare. If you’re not prepared for people like that, they can punch big holes in your confidence and make you feel completely defeated. You need a defense against an adult bully…[the best defense is to remember that] ‘underneath he’s probably a very nice guy. Most folks are.’ Remember those two short sentences next time someone declares war on you. Hold your fire. The way to win in situations like this is to let the other fellow blow his stack, and then forget it.” (p. 57)

Confidence Is Acquired Through Effort Not Nature

utah_guy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:20:08 +0000

“…Condition yourself with this fact: all confidence is acquired, developed. No one is born with confidence. Those people you know who radiate confidence, who have conquered worry, who are at east everywhere and all the time, acquired their confidence, every bit of it.” (p. 47)

Support Vector Machines versus Neural Networks

utah_guy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:14:46 +0000

“Interest in neural networks appears to have declined since the arrival of support vector machines, perhaps because the latter generally require fewer parameters to be tuned to achieve the same (or greater) accuracy. However, multilayer perceptrons have the advantage that they can learn to ignore irrelevant attributes, and RBF networks trained using k-means can be viewed as a quick-and-dirty method for finding a nonlinear classifier.” (p. 235)

Alternative Medicine and Statistical Validation

utah_guy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:09:55 +0000

“The resistance to statistical evidence is even more pronounced with regard to ‘alternative medicine,’ a vast field that encompasses everything from herbal supplements to energy therapy to yoga…Many adherents and advocates of alternative medicine reject not only Western treatments but the Westernized notion of statistical testing. They sometimes claim that their practices are too ‘individual’ or ‘holistic’ to study scientifically and instead rely on anecdotes and case studies without adequate controls or control groups for comparison. I’m agnostic about whether alternative medicine is effective. But it verges on idiocy to claim that the effectiveness cannot be tested. If it really is important, as alternative medicine advocates claim, to take into account a larger set of information about the patient…then providers who do so should produce better results…When it comes to the back-end inquiry of finding out which treatments are effective, there is no East and West. I throw my lot with two past editors-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, Marcia Angell and Jerome Kassirer: ‘It is time for the scientific community to stop giving alternative medicine a free ride. There cannot be two kinds of medicine–conventional and alternative. There is only one medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work.” (p. 229)

Statistics Go Beyond the Numbers

utah_guy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:02:17 +0000

“One can crunch numbers and still have a passionate and caring soul. You can still be creative. You just have to be willing to put your creativity and your passions to the test to see if they really work.” (p. 215)

Using Statistics to Predict a Baby’s Due Date Beats Traditional Method

utah_guy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:59:06 +0000

“Most doctors don’t even give the most accurate prediction of the due date. They still often calculate the due date based on the quasi-mystical formula of Franz Naegele, who believed in 1812 that ‘pregnancy lasted ten lunar months from the last menstrual period.’ It wasn’t until the 1980s that Robert Mittendorf and his coauthors crunched numbers on thousands of births to let the numbers produce a formula for the twentieth century. Turns out that pregnancy for the average woman is eight days longer than the Naegele rule, but it’s possible to make even more refined predictions. First-time mothers deliver about five days later than mothers who have already given birth. Whites tend to deliver later than nonwhites. The age of the mother, her weight, and her nutrition all help predict her due date. Physicians using the crude Naegele rule cruelly set up first-time mothers for disappointment.” (p. 209)

Statistical Thinking Versus Intuition

utah_guy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:52:14 +0000

“The rise of statistical thinking does not mean the end of intuition or expertise…Increasingly, decision makers will switch back and forth between their intuitions and data-based decision making. Their intuitions will guide them to ask new questions of the data that non-intuitive number crunchers would miss. And databases will increasingly allow decision makers to test their intuitions–not just once, but on an ongoing basis.” (pp. 195-196)

Direct Instruction Teaching Method Invalidly Challenged By Michigan Study

utah_guy — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:59:19 +0000

“…Critics try to discredit [Direct Instruction] by arguing that DI causes antisocial behavior. At public meetings, whenever the possibility of switching to DI is mentioned, someone is sure to bring up a Michigan study claiming that students who are taught with DI are more likely to be arrested in their adolescent years. Here’s evidence, they say, that DI is dangerous. The problem is that this randomized study was based on the experience of just sixty-eight students. And the students in the DI and the control groups were not similar. In the end, the Michigan study is just window dressing. The education establishment is wedded to its pet theories regardless of what the evidence says.” (p. 164-165)

Data Mining Techniques May Threaten Traditional Jobs

utah_guy — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:58:16 +0000

“The rise of Super Crunching threatens the status and respectability of many traditional jobs…Following some other guy’s script or algorithm may not make for the most interesting job, but time and time again it leads to a more effective business model. We are living in an age where dispersed discretion is on the wane. This is not the end of discretion; it’s the shift of discretion from line employees to the much more centralized staff os Super Crunching higher-ups…Marx was wrong about a lot of things, but through a Super Crunching lens, eh looks downright prescient when he said that the development of capitalism would increasingly alienate workers from their work-product.” (p. 166-167)

Getting People to Accept Statistical / Data Mining Approaches

utah_guy — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:13:34 +0000

“There’s almost an iron-clad law that it’s easier for people to warm up to applications of Super Crunching outside of their own area of expertise. It’s devilishly hard for traditional, non-empirical evaluators to even consider the possibility that quantified predictions might do a better job than they can on their own home turf. I don’t think this is primarily because of blatant self-interest in trying to keep our jobs. We humans just overestimate our ability to make good decisions and we’re skeptical that a formula that necessarily ignores innumerable pieces of information could do a better job than we could.” (p. 150)

Humans Are Bad At Making Predictions

utah_guy — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:08:12 +0000

“The human mind tends to suffer from a number of well-documented cognitive failings and biases that distort our ability to predict accurately. We tend to give too much weight to unusual events that seem salient…Once we form a mistaken belief about something, we tend to cling to it. As new evidence arrives, we’re likely to discount disconfirming evidence and focus instead on evidence that supports our preexisting beliefs.” (p. 112)

Evidence Based Medicine and the Aristotelian Approach

utah_guy — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:03:38 +0000

“…How do medical myths persist among practicing physicians? Part of the persistence comes from the idea that new studies aren’t really needed. There’s that old Aristotelian pull. The whole idea of empirical testing goes against the Aristotelian approach that has been a guiding principle of research. Under this approach, researchers should first try to understand the nature of the disease. Once you understand the problem, a solution will become self-evident…Instead of focusing on the front-end knowledge about the true nature of disease, [evidence-based medicine] shows the power of asking the back-end question of whether specific treatments work…The Aristotelian approach can go seriously wrong if doctors embrace a mistaken conception or model for how an ailment operates.” (p. 88-89)

Research Says Physical Exams Are Unnecessary, Yet Physicians Persist in Doing Them

utah_guy — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:08:58 +0000

“Even when statistical studies exist, doctors are often blissfully unaware of–or, worse yet, deliberately ignore–statistically prescribed treatments just because that’s not the way they were taught to treat. Dozens of studies dating back to 1989 found little support for many of the tests commonly included in a typical annual physical for symptom-less people. Routine pelvic, rectal, and testicular exams for those with no symptoms of illness haven’t made any difference in overall survival rates. The annual physical exam is largely obsolete. Yet physicians insist on doing them, and in very large numbers.”

Doctors Don’t Wash Hands Enough Because They Don’t Trust Statistics

utah_guy — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:02:08 +0000

“Doctors today of course know the importance of cleanliness. Medical dramas show them meticulously scrubbing in for operations. But the Semmelweis story remains relevant. Doctors still don’t wash their hands enough. Even today, physicians’ resistance to hand-washing is a deadly problem. But most importantly, it’s still a conflict that is centrally about whether doctors are willing to change their modus operandi because a statistical study says so.” (p. 83)

New Ideas Can Be Hard to Accept If Your Livelihood Depends on Status Quo

utah_guy — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:04:49 +0000

Quoting Upton Sinclair, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

80/20 Approach to Time Management

utah_guy — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:15:25 +0000

“There is…no point in seeking marginal improvements in how we spend our time. We need to go back to the drawing board and overturn all our assumptions about time…There is no shortage of time. In fact, we are positively awash with it…And for the most talented individuals, it is often tiny amounts of time that make all the difference…The 80/20 Principle treats time as a friend, not an enemy…It is not shortage of time that should worry us, but the tendency for the majority of time to be spent in low-quality ways. Speeding up or being more ‘efficient’ with our use of time will not help us; indeed, such ways of thinking are more the problem than the solution.” (p. 149)

10 Golden Rules for Career Success with the 80/20 Principle

utah_guy — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:14:32 +0000

“Specialize in a very small niche; develop a core skill
“Choose a niche that you enjoy, where you can excel and stand a chance of becoming an acknowledged learner
“Realize that knowledge is power
“Identify your market and your core customers and serve them best
“Identify where 20 percent of effort gives 80 percent of returns
“Learn from the best
“Become self-employed early in your career
“Employ as many net value creators as possible
“Use outside contractors for everything but your core skill
“Use capital leverage” (p. 194)

Intelligent Laziness

utah_guy — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:13:13 +0000

Quoting General Von Manstein on the German Officer Corp, “There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm…Second, there are the hard-working intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard-working stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office.” (p. 187)

Specializing in Your Career Brings Productivity

utah_guy — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:10:03 +0000

“…It is better to know a few things well, or preferably one thing exceptionally well, than it is to know many things superficially.

“Specialization is intrinsic to the 80/20 Principle. The reason that it operates….is that the productive fifth is much more specialized and suited to the task at hand than are the unproductive four-fifths.” (p. 195)

Success Lies on the Near Side of Failure

utah_guy — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:09:10 +0000

“The inspirationalists quote such worthies as T.J. Watson, who said that ‘success lies on the far side of failure.” My view is that normally failure lies on the far side of failure. Also, success lies on the near side of failure. You are already very successful at some things, and it matters not a whit if those things are very few in number.” (p. 174)

The Top 10 Highest-Value Uses of Time According to the 80/20 Principle

utah_guy — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:59:27 +0000

“Things that advance your overall purpose in life
“Things that you have always wanted to do
“Things already in the 20/80 relationship of time to results
“Innovative ways of doing things that promise to slash the time required and/or multiply the quality of results
“Things other people tell you can’t be done
“Things other people have done successfully in a different arena
“Things that use your own creativity
“Things that you can get other people to do for you with relatively little effort on your part
“Anything with high-quality collaborators who have already transcended the 80/20 rule of time, who use time eccentrically and effectively
“Things for which it is now or never.” (pp. 161-162)

Epicurus, Multiple Explanations, Data Mining Implications

utah_guy — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:20:24 +0000

The Greek philosopher Epicurus…expressed almost the opposite sentiment [to Occam's razor]. His principle of multiple explanations advises “if more than one theory is consistent with the data, keep them all” on the basis that if several explanations are equally in agreement, it may be possible to achieve a higher degree of precision by using them together–and anyway, it would be unscientific to discard some arbitrarily. This brings to mind instance-based learning, in which all the evidence is retained to provide robust predictions, and resonates stronly with decision combination methods such as bagging and boosting that actually do gain predictive power using multiple explanations together.” (p.183)

Agency or Personal Choice and Genetics

utah_guy — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:26:23 +0000

“There is an inescapable component of heritability to many human behavioral traits. For virtually none of them is heredity ever close to predictive. Environment, particularly childhood experiences, and the prominent role of individual free will choices have a profound effect on us. Scientists will discover an increasing level of molecular detail about the inherited factors that undergird our personalities, but that should not lead us to overestimate their quantitative contribution. Yes, we have all been dealt a particular set of cards, and the cards will eventually be revealed. But how we play the hand is up to us.” (p. 263)

DNA Can Predispose But Not Predetermine Homosexuality

utah_guy — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:23:02 +0000

“An area of particularly strong public interest is the genetic basis of homosexuality. Evidence from twin studies does in fact support the conclusion that heritable factors play a role in male homosexuality. However, the likelihood that the identical twin of a homosexual male will also be gay is about 20 percent (compared with 2-4 percent of males in the general population), indicating that sexual orientation is genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA, and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations.” (p. 260)

Intelligence and Success

utah_guy — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:28:55 +0000

“Intelligence excusitis or “I lack brains” is common. In fact, it’s so common that perhaps as many as 95 percent of people around us have it in varying degrees. Unlike most other types of excusitis, people suffering from this particular type of the malady suffer in silence. Not many people will admit openly that they think they lack adequate intelligence. Rather, they feel it deep down inside.” (p. 34)

Setting Group Goals

utah_guy — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:36:50 +0000

To achieve true consensus on group goals, there is no better method than having the group set the goals itself.

Soft Spoken Leadership

utah_guy — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:36:03 +0000

It is easier to exert leadership over programmers by being a soft-spoken programming wizard than by being the world’s fastest-talking salesman.

Leadership Requires Reluctance

utah_guy — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 15:17:45 +0000

One of the paradoxes of leadership is simply this: only the leader who is ready to step down has a real chance of success.

Small Methods / Functions Are Better

utah_guy — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:59:20 +0000

There is tiny overhead for having lots of small methods versus having longer methods.

Keep Method Signatures Simple

utah_guy — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:12:41 +0000

With objects you don’t pass in everything the method needs; instead you pass enough so the method can get to everything it needs.

Accommodating Code Changes

utah_guy — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:09:09 +0000

A fundamental rule of thumb is to put things together that change together, but there are exceptions.

Add Unit Test When Bug Is Found

utah_guy — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:53:41 +0000

When a bug is found, you should always add a unit test that exposes the bug.

How to Name Methods / Functions

utah_guy — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:52:32 +0000

Name them after the intention of the method–what it does, not how it does it.

Science Is Not Threatened By God

utah_guy — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:40:32 +0000

“It is time to call a truce in the escalating war between science and spirit. The war was never really necessary. Like so many earthly wars, this one has been initiated and intensified by extremists on both sides, sounding alarms that predict imminent ruin unless the other side is vanquished. Science is not threatened by God; it is enhanced. God is most certainly not threatened by science; He made it all possible. So let us together seek to reclaim the solid ground of an intellectually and spiritually satisfying synthesis of all great truths.” (pp. 233-234)

Balance Between Science and Religion

utah_guy — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:21:34 +0000

“Science is the only legitimate way to investigate the natural world…the nature of science is self-correcting. No major fallacy can long persist in the face of a progressive increase in knowledge. Nevertheless, science alone is not enough to answer all the important questions. Even Albert Einstein saw the poverty of a purely naturalistic worldview. Choosing his words carefully, he wrote, ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.’ The meaning of human existence, the reality of God, the possibility of an afterlife, and many other spiritual questions lie outside of the reach of the scientific method…Science is not the only way of knowing. The spiritual worldview provides another way of finding truth. Scientists who deny this would be well advised to consider the limits of their own tools, as nicely represented in a parable told by the astronomer Arthur Eddington. He described a man who set about to study deep-sea life using a net that had a mesh size of three inches. After catching many wild and wonderful creatures from the depths, the man concluded that there are no deep-sea fish that are smaller than three inches in length!” (pp. 228-229)

Christian Tolerance

utah_guy — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:15:16 +0000

“Far too much has been said by Christians about the exclusive club they inhabit. Tolerance is a virtue; intolerance is a vice. I find it deeply disturbing when believers in one faith tradition dismiss the spiritual experiences of others. Regrettably, Christians seem particularly prone to do this. Personally, I have found much to learn from and admire in other spiritual traditions, though I have found special revelation of God’s nature in Jesus Christ to be an essential component of my own faith.” (p. 225)

Prayer Is Seeking Fellowship with God

utah_guy — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:11:28 +0000

“Prayer is not, as some seem to suggest, an opportunity to manipulate God into doing what you want Him to. Prayer is instead our way of seeking fellowship with God, learning about Him, and attempting to perceive His perspective on the many issues around us that cause us puzzlement, wonder, or distress.” (p. 220)

80/20 Time Heresy

utah_guy — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:21:09 +0000

“The 80/20 Principle overturns conventional wisdom about time. The implications of 80/20 time analysis are quite different and, to those suffering from the conventional view of time, startlingly liberating…We need to go back to the drawing board and overturn all our assumptions about time. There is no shortage of time. In fact, we are positively awash with it. We only make good use of 20 percent of our time. And for the most talented individuals, it is often tiny amounts of time that make all the difference…The 80/20 Principle treats time as a friend, not an enemy…The 80/20 Principle says that we should act less. Action drives out thought. It is because we have so much time that we squander it. The most productive time on a project is usually the last 20 percent, simply because the work has to be completed before a deadline. Productivity on most projects could be doubled simply by halving the amount of time for their completion.” (pp. 148-149)

How to Develop the Power of Believing in Yourself

utah_guy — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:19:51 +0000

“Think success, don’t think failure. At work, in your home, substitute success thinking for failure thinking. When you face a difficult situation, think, ‘I’ll win,’ not ‘I’ll probably lose.’
Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are. Successful people are not supermen. Success does not require super-intellect. Nor is there anything mystical about success. And success isn’t based on luck. Successful people are just ordinary folks who have developed believe in themselves and what they do. Never–yes, never–sell yourself short.
Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success. Remember this, too! Big ideas and big plans are often easier–certainly no more difficult–than small ideas and small plans.” (pp. 25-26)

Disbelief Is Negative Power

utah_guy — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:14:35 +0000

“When the mind disbelieves or doubts, the mind attracts ‘reasons’ to support the disbelief. Doubts, disbelief, the subconscious will to fail, the not really wanting to succeed, is responsible for most failures…A person is a product of his own thoughts. Believe Big. Adjust your thermostat forward. Launch your success offensive with honest, sincere belief that you can succeed.” (p. 20,21)

Finding Peace Between God and Science

utah_guy — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:16:44 +0000

“Will we turn our backs on science because it is perceived as a threat to God, abandoning all of the promise of advancing our understanding of nature and applying that to the alleviation of suffering and the betterment of humankind? Alternatively, will we turn our backs on faith, concluding that science has rendered the spiritual life no longer necessary, and that traditional religious symbols can now be replaced by engravings of the double helix on our altars?

“Both of these choices are profoundly dangerous. Both deny truth. Both will diminish the nobility of humankind. Both will be devastating to our future. And both are unnecessary. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshiped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful–and it cannot be at war with itself. Only we imperfect humans can start such battles. And only we can end them.”

Time Management with 80/20 Principle

utah_guy — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:23:49 +0000

“We have been conditioned to think that high ambition must go with thrusting hyperactivity, long hours, ruthlessness, the sacrifice both of self and others to the cause, and extreme busyness…The combination is neither desirable nor necessary. A much more attractive, and at least equally attainable, combination is that of extreme ambition with confidence, relaxation, and a civilized manner…Most great achievements are made through a combination of steady application and sudden insight…Most of what any of us achieve in life, of any serious degree of value to ourselves and others, occurs in a very small proportion of our working lives…We have more than enough time. We demean ourselves, both by lack of ambition and by assuming that ambition is served by bustle and busyness. Achievement is driven by insight and selective action.” (p. 141)

80/20 Thinking is Nonlinear

utah_guy — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:19:36 +0000

“Traditional thinking is encased within a powerful but sometimes inaccurate and destructive mental model. It is linear. It believes that x leads to y, that y causes z, and that b is the inevitable consequence of a…Linear thinking is attractive because it is simple, cut and dried. The trouble is that it is a poor description of the world and an even worse preparation for changing it.” (p. 140)

Project Management with the 80/20 Principle

utah_guy — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:16:19 +0000

“The shorter the time allowed for a project, the greater proportion of time that should be allowed for its detailed planning and thinking through. When I was a partner at management consultants Bain & Company, we proved conclusively that the best-managed projects we undertook–those that had the highest client and consultant satisfaction, the least wasted time, and the highest margins–were those where there was the greatest ratio of planning time to execution time.” (p. 122)

Five Rules for Decision Making with the 80/20 Principle

utah_guy — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:12:37 +0000

“Not many decisions are very important…Do not agonize over the unimportant decisions and above all don’t conduct expensive and time-consuming analysis…If you can’t, decide which decision has a probability of 51 percent of being correct. If you can’t decide that quickly, toss a coin.”
“The most important decisions are often those made only by default.”
“Gather 80 percent of the data and perform 80 percent of the relevant analyses in the first 20 percent of the time available, then make a decision 100 percent of the time and act decisively as if you were 100 percent confident that the decision is right.”
“If what you have decided isn’t working, change your mind early rather than late.”
“When something is working well, double and redouble your bets.”

(pp. 116-117)

Plea to Evangelical Christians About Creationism

utah_guy — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:00:17 +0000

“Let me conclude this brief chapter, therefore, with a loving entreaty to the evangelical Christian church, a body that I consider myself a part of, and that has done so much good in so many other ways to spread the good news of God’s love and grace. As believers, you are right to hold fast to the concept of God as Creator; you are right to hold fast to the truths of the Bible; you are right to hold fast to the conclusion that science offers no answers to the most pressing questions of human existence; and you are right to hold fast to the certainty that the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted. But those battles cannot be won by attaching your position to a flawed foundation. To continue to do so offers the opportunity for the opponents of faith (and there are many) to win a long series of easy victories.” (page 178)

Agnostics and Evidence

utah_guy — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:55:08 +0000

“To be well defended, agnosticism should be arrived at only after a full consideration of all of the evidence for and against the existence of God. It is a rare agnostic who has made the effort to do so. (Some who have, and a rather distinguished list it is, have unexpectedly converted themselves to belief in God.) Furthermore, while agnosticism is a comfortable default it conveys a certain tinniness. Would we admire someone who insisted the age of the universe was unknowable, and hadn’t taken time to look at the evidence?” (pp. 168-169)

Dawkins Claims Cannot Be Proven

utah_guy — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:51:27 +0000

“The major and inescapable flaw of [Richard] Dawkins’s claim that science demands atheism is that it goes beyond the evidence. If God is outside of nature, then science can neither prove nor disprove His existence. Atheism itself must therefore be considered a form of blind faith, in that it adopts a belief system that cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason.” (page 165)

God of the Gaps and Intelligent Design

utah_guy — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:41:59 +0000

“Intelligent design portrays the Almighty as a clumsy Creator, having to intervene at regular intervals to fix the inadequacies of His own initial plan for generating the complexity of life. For a believer who stands in awe of the almost unimaginable intelligence and creative genius of God, this is a very unsatisfactory image…The perceived gaps in evolution that ID intended to fill with God are instead being filled by advances in science. By forcing this limited, narrow view of God’s role, Intelligent Design is ironically on a path toward doing considerable damage to faith.” (pp. 193-195)

Cognitive Dissonance in Computer Programming

utah_guy — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:45:23 +0000

Cognitive dissonance is a psychology theory that says a programmer who truly sees a program as an extension of his/her own ego is not going to be trying to find all the errors in it (???).

Selective Vision

utah_guy — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:39:14 +0000

The human eye has an almost infinite capacity for not seeing what it does not want to see.

Reading Computer Programming Code

utah_guy — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:38:23 +0000

It’s important to read programs to learn to write programs. A novelist who writes well also reads the novels of others extensively.

How to Start Programming

utah_guy — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:36:35 +0000

In most cases, we do not know what we want to do until we have taken a flying leap at programming it.

God’s Role in Evolution and Natural Selection

utah_guy — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:28:54 +0000

“If humans evolved strictly by mutation and natural selection, who needs God to explain us? To this, I reply: I do. The comparison of chimp and human sequences, interesting as it is, does not tell us what it means to be human. In my view, DNA sequence alone, even if accompanied by a vast trove of data on biological function, will never explain certain special human attributes, such as the of the Moral Law and the universal search for God. Freeing God from the burden of special acts of creation does not remove Him as the source of the things that make humanity special, and of the universe itself. It merely shows us something of how He operates.” (pp. 140-141)

God of the Gaps, Miracles, and Science

utah_guy — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:34:22 +0000

“A word of caution is needed when inserting specific divine action by God in [areas] where scientific understanding is currently lacking. From solar eclipses in olden times to the movement of the planets in the Middle Ages, to the origins of life today, this ‘God of the gaps’ approach has all too often done a disservice to religion (and by implication, to God, if that’s possible). Faith that places God in the gaps of current understanding about the natural world may be headed for crisis if advances in science subsequently fill those gaps. Faced with the incomplete understanding of the natural world, believers should be cautious about invoking the divine in areas of current mystery, lest they build an unnecessary theological argument that is doomed to later destruction. There are good reasons to believe in God, including the existence of mathematical principles and order in creation. They are positive reasons, based on knowledge, rather than default assumptions based on (a temporary) lack of knowledge.” (page 93)

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

utah_guy — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:42:02 +0000

“Why is our life more a vale of tears than a garden of delight? … Much has been written about this apparent paradox, and the conclusion is not an easy one: if God is loving and wishes the best for us, then perhaps His plan is not the same as our plan…Have you learned more about yourself when things were going well, or when you were faced with challenges, frustrations, and suffering? … As much as we would like to avoid those experiences, without them would we not be shallow, self-centered creatures who would ultimately lose all sense of nobility or striving for betterment of others?” (pp. 45-46)

Code Inspection

utah_guy — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:48:58 +0000

Superior developers tend to find value with walkthrough and inspection processes while the merely clever do not. So, as always, the good get better and the bad get worse.

Programming Requirements

utah_guy — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:53:56 +0000

Looking honestly, we are never looking for the best program, seldom looking for a good one, but always looking for one that meets the requirements.

Faith and Doubt in Science

utah_guy — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:13:42 +0000

“Doubt is an unavoidable part of belief. In the words of Paul Tillich, ‘Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.’ If the case in favor of belief in God were utterly airtight, then the world would be full of confident practitioners of a single faith.’ But imagine such a world, where to opportunity to make a free choice about belief was taken away by the certainty of the evidence.” (pp. 33-34)