Game Theory fascinates me even though I am not nearly a good enough mathematician to claim to be any good at the subject. Even so when I saw this book, Decision Making Using Game Theory, by Anthony Kelly, I decided to dive in and enjoy! While it is a bit technical at times, for the most part Dr. Kelly keeps the topic on a very practical level with all of his examples pulled from the business world. Even though the examples are simplified, they are not contrived. This is a great book for anyo
author: Matt | posted @ Saturday, January 30, 2010 10:38 AM | Feedback (0)
Ram Charan is an interesting character that intrigues me with his view of strategic management. I will confess that much of what I read in this realm is way above my head in terms of usefulness. I simply read his work as sort of a guilty pleasure because strategic management is fascinating to me. In Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty, Ram talks specifically about what companies need to do in light of the recent turmoil in the world's capital markets. The book dates itself but is
author: Matt | posted @ Saturday, January 16, 2010 8:24 PM | Feedback (0)
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability is the result of Steve Krug sharing his expertise in a very controversial field. If you count up all the web designers in the world, that number would come close to the number of opinions on the One Right Way to design a web site. Krug addresses how to resolve these "religious debates" as well as how to take a common sense approach to web usability. He also details a great way to do some usability testing which he insists is an abs
author: Matt | posted @ Monday, January 04, 2010 11:15 AM | Feedback (0)
In The Non-Designer's Design Book, Robin Williams presents a succinct primer on how to get started doing good design. The thoughts laid out in the book are simple enough for someone with little formal training to compehend and yet sophisticated enough to launch a novice down the path of excellence.
author: Matt | posted @ Sunday, January 03, 2010 2:56 PM | Feedback (0)
Edward Tufte lays out a very comprehensive study of how to effectively display information in a visual format. Charts and graphs are a huge part of today's corporate communication medium and yet they are often malformed and fail to convey information properly. This is a great book for laying down some principles that can apply across technologies and medium and help to formulate high quality information communication. Due to the nature of this book, my notes here will be a very brief summary
author: Matt | posted @ Saturday, January 02, 2010 1:46 PM | Feedback (0)
Dan Ariely tells a fascinating story of pain at the beginning of his book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. As a youth he was involved in an accident that left 70% of his body badly burned. During his recovery he explains that he began to view the ordinary and everyday experiences that he used to experience as though he were an outside observer. He began to analyze the "why" behind daily decision making. This led him to an interest in the field of behaviora
author: Matt | posted @ Saturday, January 02, 2010 1:24 PM | Feedback (0)
Alfie Kohn doesn't like B.F. Skinner. At least he spends the first 180 or so pages of his book, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes, ranting against the basic elements of Skinner's writings on behaviorism. He derisively calls refers to "pop-behaviorism" throughout his book as the "Do this and you'll get that" mentality of getting what you want out of people. If you are want to read a somewhat narcisstic and lopsided discussion of Koh
author: Matt | posted @ Sunday, November 15, 2009 2:11 PM | Feedback (0)
Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a delightful journey through the fascinating history of probability and statistics. On the way he manages to sneak in a very practical explanation of the basics of the field. Mingling stories of Pascal, Fermat, Bayes and others with the Law of Large Numbers, Bayesian Probability and confidence levels, Mlodinow makes The Drunkard's Walk a coherant and entertaining read. He tops the book off with a very practical application of what chance and probability can mean t
author: Matt | posted @ Saturday, September 19, 2009 1:15 PM | Feedback (0)
Gary Marcus provides an entertaining trip through some of the oddities and weirdnesses of the human mind. The title Kluge reveals Marcus' main premise: the brain is not a wonderfully architected organ but rather a system of subsystems that has been cobbled together by an imperfect process called evoltion to produce a workable but far from perfect solution. Within a few pages of starting the book, Marcus makes it plain that he is a highly educated professor used to spending time around those le
author: Matt | posted @ Thursday, September 03, 2009 6:54 PM | Feedback (0)
While true to part of its sub-title (it is definitely short) this book leaves somewhat to be desired if you are looking for an "Introduction". Binmore is an expert in using Game Theory so in his book by that title, he definitely gets into the meat of actually applying game theory to real life. He talks about biological evolution, public airwave auctions and election politics. Unfortunately he dives into game theory far too fast and too deep for this to be a good introduction. A more appropri
author: Matt | posted @ Saturday, August 29, 2009 1:15 PM | Feedback (0)
In The World is Curved, David Smick responds to Thomas Friedman's assertion that the world is now flat. Smick asserts that globalization has so changed the macroeconomic game that the world is more curved now than ever. Events that once had predictable outcomes now seem to have consequences just beyond the horizon of what we can see. Smick interprets the world through the dual lens of capital flow and the entrepreneurial spirit.
author: Matt | posted @ Tuesday, August 18, 2009 11:11 PM | Feedback (0)
I confess that it's been 2 months since I read this book so these notes are stale so I apologize. Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes, is a very fascinating read, although if you have read The User Illusion you will notice a great similarity between the books. In my opinion, Decoding was an easier read, albeit perhaps not as thorough as Illusion.
author: Matt | posted @ Tuesday, August 18, 2009 10:51 PM | Feedback (0)
The underlying principles of Luke Hohmann's Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play are rock solid. Either Hohmann has a solid grasp of marketing principles, project management and cognitive psychology, or he is pretty good at buzz-word bingo. This is an intensely practical book without much meat so if you are looking for a "how-to" manual on getting good ideas from your customers, this book is for you. If you are looking for insight into why these kinds of
author: Matt | posted @ Thursday, June 11, 2009 12:58 AM | Feedback (0)
Ben Sherwood has experienced some of the toughest survival training in the world. As part of the research for his book, he went through the Aviation Survival Training program in Miramar, CA. There he learned what it's like to be drug across the ocean by a parachute, how it feels to be pulled up a cable in the rotor blast of a helicopter and what a helicopter crew goes through if their chopper crashes in the water. For Sherwood though, survival is about more than just military training and acc
author: Matt | posted @ Sunday, June 07, 2009 3:23 PM | Feedback (0)
In Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Fatih of America's Founding Fathers, Gary Kowalski explores the spiritual background of a number of our founding fathers, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison. Kowalski has a rather plain bias, labeling our founding fathers at one point as "progressives". He painfully tries to make the argument that our founding fathers, contrary to popular belief, were not really all that religious.
author: Matt | posted @ Sunday, May 24, 2009 2:23 PM | Feedback (0)
I confess that I did not gain nearly as much from reading this book as I anticipated. My hope was to learn something useful about symbolism and the study of semiotics but instead I learned a lot of the psychology of dreams. If you are into that sort of thing then Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols is a must read. If, like me, you are quite skeptical of that sort of thing then you will be as disappointed as I was with this book. The illustrations in the hard cover book are fantastic, every page
author: Matt | posted @ Sunday, May 24, 2009 1:34 PM | Feedback (0)
With my tongue in my cheek, I want the express my appreciation to the authors of Appreciative Inquiry for making this book so short! It is intended as an introduction to the "hottest new change management approach" but it reads more like a laundry list of management buzz words.
author: Matt | posted @ Saturday, April 11, 2009 3:03 PM | Feedback (0)
In The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Barry Schwartz takes us on an interesting journey through the psychology of choice. Decision theory is an interesting field with many spurs and side-tracks, a number of which Schwartz takes us down. The book covers a lot of ground but manages to stay on theme, namely: too much opportunity for choice is not necessarily a good thing.
author: Matt | posted @ Tuesday, April 07, 2009 7:17 PM | Feedback (0)
R. Keith Sawyer brings a sense of workmanship to the study of creativity in his book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. Rather than treat creativity as a mytical quality that only certain humans are embued with, Sawyer points out that creativity is within reach of mere mortals. He begins by debunking the common myths surrounding creative genius (insane people are more creative, creative geniuses work alone etc) and ends by giving some very practical advice on how to become
author: Matt | posted @ Thursday, April 02, 2009 6:35 PM | Feedback (0)
Don Tapscott tackled an interesting topic in the late 90's, "how are children being affected by growing up in a digital world?" Unfortunately when you write on a topic that borders on pop-culture, your writing tends to have a pretty short shelf-life. Most of the material in this 1998 book would have been outdated by 2001 when I began work on my degree in Computer Information Systems. Even so, there is some interesting material in the book.
author: Matt | posted @ Wednesday, March 25, 2009 10:06 PM | Feedback (0)