Matt's Book Reviews

Looking for Spinoza - Antonio Damasio

Matt — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:32:11 GMT

Copyright: 2003

Publisher: Harcourt

ISBN: 0-15-100557-5

Recently I read an article from the Journal of Information Architecture by Brigitte Kaltenbacher regarding the role of emotions in Human Computer Interaction research. She referenced Damasio's book, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorry and the Feeling Brain and the idea intrigued me. Kaltenbacher's premise is that the human decision making process is highly influenced by emotion and therefore emotions and feelings cannot be ignored by the interaction designer. Antonio Damasio explores the connection between emotions and cognitive processes from a number of angles. He explores the physiology of emotion and feelings, the sociological ramifications of emotions and feelings and the philosophy of emotions and feelings. It is the last of these perspectives that gives rise to the book's title for it is the philosophy of Spinoza that Damasio relies on for this exploration.

Emotions and Feelings

Most of us use these terms interchangeably yet Damasio is insistent that they are fundamentally different. He explains that emotions are actions or movements that are visible to others, they play out in the theater of the body. Feelings on the other hand are hidden and unseen by others, they play out in the theater of the mind.

In driving home this distinction, Damasio delves quite deep into the physiology of exactly how emotions are useful to and used by the body. By deconstructing the human body's reaction to various stimuli, he creates a roots up view of the body. At the bottom level of course we have metabolic regulation, basic reflexes and immune responses. These are reactions to stimuli that we not only don't control but rarely even pay attention to.

The next level up is pain and pleasure along with behaviors. These are typically reponses to large aggregates of stimuli at the lower levels. For instance, if your immune responses are operating full-tilt at the cellular level, you are likely to experience a whole body feeling of pain or discomfort.

Next up in the tree comes drives and motivations. Here we find hunger, thirst, curiosity etc. These are not just behaviors but behavioral states of the entire organism. As the lower stimuli of metabolic regulation reports lowering levels of glucose, the next level will report the discomfort. This discomfort will become the motivation of hunger that will drive the organism as a whole towards behaviors consistent with self-preservation.

Finally we come to the level of emotions. Joy, sorrow, fear, pride and sympathy live here. These are overall states of the body that encompass all the lower levels. Damasio maintains that emotions at this level however are still a physical state and are only mental in that they affect the brain in a physical fashion.

Only after emotions have come into play do we have feelings. Feelings are a state of mind. Damasio spends quite a bit of time in his book exploring the philosophical side of such questions as "can the mind exist without the brain and can the brain exist without the mind?" From a practical standpoint however it is important to note that feelings are a mental state whereas emotions are a physical state.

A quick example that might help explain Damasio's distinction between feelings and emotions is the difference between an appetite and a desire. He points out (as does Spinoza in a much earlier work) that appetite describes a "behavioral state of an organism engaged by a particular drive." Desire on the other hand is the "conscious feeling of having an appetite and the eventual consummation or thwarting of the appetite."

Three Types of Emotions

Damasio explores three different types of emotions:

Background emotions: i.e. "I feel good today!"
Primary emotions: i.e. anger and fear
Social emotions: i.e. compassion and sympathy

In chapter 4 of the book, Damasio explores the role of social emotions in helping humans create and embrace cooperative strategies for surviving and thriving. The chapter is somewhat tedious for someone like me, primarily interested in the cognitive behavior of the individual, however anyone interested in sociological phenomena should definitely enjoy this chapter!

The Two Paths

At the heart of the book lies the interaction between emotions and decision making. While at times Damasio tends to get in way over my head with the biology of the brain, he does a phenomenal job of explaining this interaction.

"Normal decision-making uses two complementary paths. Confronted with a situation that requires a response, path A prompts images related to the situation, the options for action, and the anticipation of future outcomes. Reasoning strategies can operate on that knowledge to produce a decision. Path B operates in parallel and prompts activation of prior emotional experiences in comparable situations. In turn, the recall of the emotionally related material, be it covert or overt, influences the decision-making process by forcing attention on the representation of future outcomes or interfering with reasoning strategies. On occassion, path B can lead to a decision directly, as when a gut feeling impels an immediate response. The degree to which each path is used alone or in combination depends on a person's individual development, the nature of the situation, and the circumstances."

Some very intriguing material acccompanies this section of the book as Damasio details the experiences of patients who have had the emotional context (Path B) removed due to some level of brain damage. These people are fully capable of reasoning out a good decision in a laboratory session however when faced with the same decision in real-life they are often incapable of finding a good solution. The usefulness of the emotions in decision making, particularly in day-to-day life should not be underestimated.

Quote of the Book

"Happiness is the power to be free of the tyranny of negative emotions. Happines is not a reward for virtue: it is virtue itself."

Conclusion

This book served the purpose of expanding my understanding of the role of emotions in decision making. My curiosity has been aroused and I will likely continue to look for useful information in this field, particularly as it relates to human computer interaction. Beyond that, the book would be a good read for anyone with a general interest in psychology, particularly if you have a bent for philosophy. A great portion of the book deals with the philosophy of Spinoza, a fascinating character in and of himself.

Decision Making Using Game Theory - Anthony Kelly

Matt — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:38:03 GMT

Copyright: 2003

Publisher: Cambridge

ISBN: 0-521-81462-6

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 anyone with even a cursory understanding of game theory who wants to apply their knowledge to the business world.

Definitions

Kelly uses very clear terminology and explains what each term means in context. Here are a few definitions that helped me understand game theory better.

Perfect / Imperfect information. Describes the knowledge of the other players moves. If you have incomplete information you don't know what moves the other player has made.
Complete / Incomplete information. Describes the knowledge of probabilities and payoffs in outcomes.
Games of Chance with Risk: You know the probabilities and associated payoffs.
Games of Chance with Uncertainty: You don't know what the probabilities or payoffs are.
Utility value: Relationship between your preference for an outcome and a lottery of alternative outcomes.
Maximax: Choose the greatest payoff
Maximin: Avoid the worst possible payoff
Minimax: Avoid the strategy of greatest regret. (What is the difference between a given choice and the greatest payoff)
- Find the Minimax by looking for the minimum row & the maximum column

Random Musings

I won't attempt to give a comprehensive overview of everything covered in this book. The book itself is fairly short and a quick read. These are just some thoughts that jumped out at me as I read.

Bernoulli thought that the relationship between money and utility was probably logarithmic rather than linear.
Von Neumann - Morgensten point out that players will always try to maximize their utility value rather than their expected value
John Kenneth Galbraith - "A wrong decision isn't forever, it can always be reversed. But the losses from a delayed decision can never be retrieved." (A Life in Our Times)
Minimal social situations are covered by a "win-stay, lose-change" strategy.
- I want to explore the possibility that UI design is a minimal social situations game.
Mixed Nash lead to cooperation with regard to information, which is the opposite of zero sum games.
Exploitation games can explain why terrorism is a "rational" choice. (Rational is distinct from moral here)
In Duopoly models, Nash equilibriums aren't usually pareto efficient.

What is Rationality?

In the final section of the book, Kelly covers a number of criticisms of Game Theory. One such criticism surrounds the differing definitions of rational behavior. As mentioned in the previous section, terrorism can be considered rational if not moral. Kant might argue otherwise!

Instrumental rationality: All humans act in their own self interest
Kantian: If not all players can select a strategy, it is irrational. (Unselfishness)
Bounded: We have limited computational resources so we use simple rules to govern rational behavior

Conclusion

This book is thought provoking at times but mostly it is an intensely practical application of game theory to business management and leadership. I would recommend this book for any business manager who wants a better understanding of how to quantify decision making.

Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty - Ram Charan

Matt — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 03:24:22 GMT

Copyright: 2009

Publisher: McGraw Hill

ISBN: 978-0-07-162616-3

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 a great primer on how to manage in crisis mode.

Leaderhip Traits

Ram lists six essential leadership traits for managing in times of crisis. I found these interesting because they aren't necessarily what you would list as essential traits in general, although they aren't a bad starting point.

Honesty and Credibility
Ability to Inspire
Real time connection with reality
Realism tempered with optimism
Managing with intensity
Boldness in building for the future

Numbers 1 and 2 seem pretty standard fare for leadership traits as does number 6. In the book Ram points out some specific details about these traits that explain why he finds them essential for this time of turmoil and change.

Random Thoughts

In normal times, sales focuses on helping customers cut costs. In these times, sales needs to focus on helping customers gain market share, improve margins and help with general customer satisfaction
It doesn't cost anything to brain storm with people in side your company
Operational goals in a downturn
- Lower operating costs
- Efficient use of resources
- Lower working capital
- Conservation of cash

Conclusion

As I mentioned, my primary motivation for reading this book was pleasure. I wrote down a few nuggets that I gained as I read but many of the notes I took were actually for emails that I wanted to share with my co-workers immediately. That is a sign of an immensely practical book which exactly describes this book.

Don't Make Me Think - Steve Krug

Matt — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:15:57 GMT

Copyright: 2000

Publisher: Macmillan

ISBN: 0789723107

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 absolute must if you are going to design a great site.

Question Marks

Krug asks us to imagine a user perusing our site for the first time. Imagine thought clouds or bubbles popping up over the user's head as he or she pokes around the site. Those thought clouds could include things like "Ah, that button allows me to search" or "There is the main menu" or "If I wanted to see the privacy policy I could click there." These are good thought clouds but what if they thought clouds were "Where would I click if I wanted to see the purchase options?" or "I wonder if that button will search just this site of the entire internet?" In these cases, the thought clouds are bad because they end in question marks. Steve Krug wants us to design sites by eliminating the question marks from the users mind.

Some sources of question marks are:

Ambiguous or odd names
Is something clickable or not
Navigation issues

This principle can help us resolve one of the big issues in web design: How deep should my site be? We have all heard the idea that "nothing important should be more than [insert arbitrary number] of clicks away from the home page. In reality the number of clicks is far less important than the number of clicks with question marks. When you have to think for a second before clicking on a link, that click is far more costly than the one where you click without thinking.

One reason this idea is better than "X number of clicks away" is that a good number of your site users are not going to start on the home page anyway. Clear navigation from anywhere, to anywhere is more important than how quickly a user can find his or her way from the home page to some arbitrary location on your site.

How do Real People use the web?

A friend of mine often says "people are strange... I am glad I am not one of THEM". Often when doing web design we think about our users and try to imagine what they are like. Since you are reading this on a web page (and I am typing it on a web page) by definition you and I are one of those strange creatures called "web users".

So how do we use web sites? Do we carefully read every word on every page? Do we carefully analyze the clever iconography that the graphic designers slaved over for hours? Do we methodically visit each section of a web site in order: Introduction to Product, What can this product do for me, What is the best way to use this product, and finally Here's how to order? Or do we do something else? In reality here is how we use the web:

We don't read pages, we scan them
We satisfice- we don't weigh options but rather we take the first reasonable option offered to us
We don't figure out how things work, we muddle through

In other words, our audience uses our web site like a giant billboard. Taking in the really big important stuff and ignoring the rest and making a snap decision about the relevance of what we see. So Krug asks the question: If our users are going to use our website like a big billboard, what is a designer to do? The answer is simple: Build a really great billboard!

Here are some ideas to do just that:

Create a clear visual hierarchy on each page so things are easy to find
Take advantage of conventions
Break pages into clearly defined areas
Make it obvious what is clickable
Minimize the noise

Krug argues that much of the text on most websites is either Happy Talk or Instructions. The author has a rather brutal method for handling copy on web pages:

Get rid of half of the words on each page. Then get rid of half of what's left.
- This reduces noise
- Useful content becomes more prominent
- Pages are shorter

Pet Peeve

Let me get a pet peeve off my chest. At the top right of each page on this site is a disclaimer that these "book reviews" aren't so much book reviews as just my personal notes. I think it's important to be upfront with readers about exactly what the author is providing. So when Krug promises early in the book not to engage in site bashing but rather show us good examples of web sites, I believed him. That is until about 1/3 of the way into the book when it struck me that nearly every example he was giving was of something that he didn't like on a web page.

I personally think Krug has every right to criticize all kinds of web sites and designs, but he shouldn't do so after telling us that he isn't going to do that. OK.. end of pet peeve! :)

Navigating

Navigation on websites is a field unto itself. Any web designer will tell you that he or she agonizes over where to put the navigation and how to best convey navigation information as well as how to structure the site so navigation is as simple as possible. Why is navigation such a difficult issue? In a nutshell the internet is a medium that creates these unique circumstances:

No sense of scale (How big is a given site anyway?)
No sense of direction (Is this page left or right of the last one you were on?)
No sense of location (Where does this page site in the vast sea of web pages?)

Krug has an entire section devoted to navigation and it is highly recommended reading. One of the nuggets he gives us is the analogy of Page Names to Street Signs. It is important to know where you are at any given time, so give each page a name!

Random Thoughts

Trunk Test - If you were blind-folded, thrown in a trunk and let out on any random page of your site, how quickly could you find your way around?
Home page - Above all else, convey the big picture!
Don't ask for personal information until you have to.
The only answer for religious debates is user testing.

Testing

The last 20% of this book is devoted to the topic of usability testing for the web. Krug takes the approach that cheap testing is possible and far more useful than no testing. The only way to really know if your site is good is to do some usability testing. Usability testing however is different than focus group testing.

Focus groups - A group setting good for getting opinions and feelings about a product or site
Usability testing - Individuals that are observed doing tasks and gathering information on a site

Here is a list of things that Krug says he knows about testing:

Testing is an absolute must for a great site
Testing 1 user is 100% better than testing no users
Testing 1 user early on is better than testing 50 users late in the project
The importance of getting "representative users" is highly over-rated
The point of testing is not to prove anything but rather inform opinions
Testing is iterative
Nothing beats a live audience reaction

Conclusion

This is a great little book about web usability. I loved the common sense approach along with the distilled principles that Krug applies. Anyone doing web design would benefit from reading this book. I strongly recommend getting a copy and putting it into your library. (Incidentally, I read the copy that my boss had in his library but there is now a second edition out that you should probably get instead!)

Non-Designer's Design Book - Robin Williams

Matt — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:56:33 GMT

Copyright: 1994

Publisher: PeachPit Press

ISBN: 0961392142

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.

Principles and Ideas

Williams presents her ideas with lots of clear examples. The book itself is a quick read and is a well-designed book for use as a quick reference or refresher down the road. Here I am going to bullet-point some of the useful things I learned from this reading.

Proximity: group related items together for the purpose of organization.
- Avoid too many elements
- Avoid putting things in the middle or the corners
- Avoid leaving equal space between all elements
- Avoid confusion of what the different elements (headers, titles etc) are supposed to be
- Avoid creating relationships in the design that don't exist in the information
Alignment: Find a strong line and use it
- The eyes like straight edges and borders
Repetition: Consistency is reinforced through repetition
- Avoid the overuse of repetition. It can easily become annoying
Contrast: If you use it USE it
Typography
- Concord: One face combined with similar variations (Good)
- Conflict: 2 or more slightly different faces (Bad)
- Contrast: 2 or more very different faces (Best)

Conclusion

I think the author was trying to be humorous in using phrases such as "don't attempt this without training" and "don't be a wimp!" but they come across at times as rather condescending. As someone who doesn't wear his feelings on his sleeves these phrases still jumped out at me as out of place for a book whose audience by definition admits they are not strong on design. The information in the book is quite useful, however I would caution that the author is interested in graphical design and layout issues... not information design. She uses multiple examples of how to lay out a business card with good layout principles but she never once asks (much less answers) the question "What is this business card supposed to do?" Without answering that question everything in the book becomes simply a tool in your tool box that should only be pulled out once you have defined the problem. This is an excellent book for beginners (like me!) and a quick read. I plan on getting the updated version of the book and putting it in my library.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - Edward Tufte

Matt — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:46:03 GMT

Published: 2001 (original 1983)

Publisher: Graphics Press

ISBN: 0961392142

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 of the principles in the book. I highly recommend reading this book if you are charged with visually displaying information!

Graphical Excellence

Graphical excellence consists of:

Well designed presentation of interesting data.
- Substance
- Statistics
- Design
Complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision and efficiency
Give the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space
Nearly always multivariate displays
Tell the truth about the data

Graphical Integrity

Physical dimensions should be proportional to the numbers
Clear, detailed labels should explain
Show data variations and not design variations
Deflated & standard monetary measurements should be used
# of dimensions depicted should not be more than the data
Graphics should not quote data out of context

Data Graphics

Above all else show the data
Maximize the data-ink ratio
Erase "no-data" ink
Erase redundant data ink
Revise and edit incessantly

Chart Junk

Moire vibrations (hatching) is ugly
The grid should be muted (or non-existant)
The duck (architectural term for a duck shaped building)

General Principles

Small, non-comparative, highly labeled data sets usually belong in a table
Relational graphs are more sophisticated than time series or maps

Bad ideas?

As a general rule, Tufte's ideas are applicable to data design today. Some things stand out as bad ideas and some of the data is old but this is a great primer book on the topic. One bad idea he had was the idea of using range frames. Rather than extending the edges of charts from zero to some arbitrary number, Tufte argued for limited the frame to just the range of the data. This leaves the zero (lower left) corner of the chart unanchored. Some eye tracking studies I have read indicate the eye uses such anchors in order to expedite searching so while removing them might convey some extra little bit of information, they reduce the overall effectiveness of the chart.

Another thought he had was moving the boxes from the classic box plot. The problem I see with this is we are left using empty space to indicate the range. If the range of the box plot is the important piece of data, empty space is not the best way to convey that. Empty space can be used to effectively accentuate the important data but shouldn't be used to indicate the important data.

Conclusion

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in HCI or data design. The principles are effective and useful in a great number of areas. Designers and programmers alike should read this book for a better understanding of the best way to communicate data to the user.

Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely

Matt — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:24:57 GMT

Copyright: 2008

Publisher: Harper Collins

ISBN: 006135323X

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 behavioral economics and what he refers to as JDM, Judgement and Decision making.

Decoys

Ariely starts into his exploration of human decision making by looking at the Decoy Effect. Humans are incapable of placing a value on something without a reference point. We use relative value when making economic choices which makes us susceptible to certain marketing ploys.

For instance, The Economist, a well known periodical had a subscription offer that Ariely came across while surfing the web. They offered the "web only" subscription for $59.95 and the "print only" version at $125.95. Then they had a third offering of both the web and the print versions together... for $125.95. Clearly, the web and print offerings together at the same price as the print only is the better offer. Right?

Ariely decided to do an experiment with this data. He surveyed students in his classes to find out which subscription would have the most appeal. A large number predicably chose the great deal of essentially getting the web only version for free along with the print version. The next part of the experiment was the interesting part though because Ariely removed the "print only" subscription and offered simply the two options, namely, web only at $59.95 and web + print at $125.95. This time the results were quite different. Even though in the earlier experiment virtually no one had signed up for the now missing "print only" subscription, its absence now made a difference in the results. Now a large number of students took him up on the much cheaper offer of $59.95.

The point of this experiment was that the print only subscription was a decoy. It was intended to give us a point of reference. We don't know how much the print only is worth or the web only. But we do know that if we can get both of them for the same price as the print only... then obviously that's the better deal because we are getting one of them for free. The decoy causes us to have a frame of reference for our decision... a frame that is chosen by the marketer and not our experience.

FREE is not just another price point

Another experiment that Ariely performed involved one of my favorite things, chocolate. He and his colleagues set up a table in an area busy with foot traffic. They offered two prices of chocolate. The higher priced truffles were $.15 each... arguably a bargain if you are a chocolate lover! The lower priced chocolates were simple Hershey's kisses at $.01. Unfortunately for chocolate lovers they were only allowed to buy one or the other... not both.

Because $.15 is a good price for a fine truffle, predictably more shoppers elected for the finer chocolate (no offense to Hersheys!) This is what the experimenters expected but what happened next they were not able to explain so readily. In the second part of the experiment, the price of both chocolates was lowered by $.01. Thus the truffles were now $.14 and the Kisses were FREE. Even though the value proposition was exactly what it had been before, now the Kisses went like crazy!

After several other experiments that controlled for things such as the hassle of searching for change etc, Ariely and his team found that chocolate lovers (and indeed all of us) are in love with the price of FREE. Making something free changes the equation and quite often can cause us to value the exchange differently. Thus offering a FREE pair of socks with the purchase of one, we can be persuaded buy a pair of socks that we might not otherwise be interested in buying.

Imprinting and Anchoring

First impressions are important. When we first see a particular brand of watch (or chocolate) the price we see associated with it when we first begin contemplating a purchase becomes the reference point for that brand. Ariely is an entertaining as well as thought-provoking author and he tells the delightful story about Tahitian Pearls. When they mottled gray pearls first hit the market, no one wanted them because they were different (and compared to smooth milky-white pearls they were ugly!) The early marketers took a step back and decided to try again.

Contacting a well-known jeweler in New York city they persuaded him to display a strand of these pearls in a shop window along with a collection of high priced and quite beautiful jewelry. In addition they took out large glossy print advertisements that similarly displayed the pearls in this context. Soon after, Tahitian pearls began to appear around the necks of the finest and wealthiest in New York and around the world.

The principle of relative value came into play. The new purchasers now had a context or an anchor for valuing the pearls. Now that they knew that these pearls belonged in the company of expensive diamonds and other beautiful jewelry, they were willing to pay a premium for these previously unknown jewels.

Irrational Motivations

What are some of the reasons we value things irrationally? Here are a few:

Attachment bias (we value what we own more than if we didn't already own it)
Loss aversion (we focus on the risk of loss - see prospect theory)
We assume other have the same perspective as we do

Attachment bias is an interesting one. Ariely goes into detail with a great example about Duke students and their value of tickets of basketball games, both after owning and before owning. The disparity is stark and the reasons given were quite intriguing. The book is worth the read if for no other reason than gems like this story!

One thing I noted as I was reading this book was that ownership bias can be costly when it comes to the ownership of ideas. When we have an idea that we believe is our own, we tend to value it more than we would if the idea belonged to someone else. Understanding this is key to having an open mind when discussing ideas in a collaborative environment.

Death By Options

Ariely launches this section with the story of Sun Tzu burning the ships behind his men to eliminate the possibility of retreat. When you eliminate options, you begin to approach the decision process of the remaining options differently. An important skill in decision making is the ability to eliminate options as you move forward.

The author's team did a number of experiments to show that we are in love with options. In one, students played a quite simple game on the computer in which they were offered three options in the form of "rooms". After choosing a room, clicking in that room would earn you a random number of pennies. Each room had a different payoff range and most students could quickly determine which was the best paying room and they would use all of their limited number of clicks in the one room. The cost of switching a room was just one click but once students found the right room they would still stay in that room clicking.

Next, the experimenters changed things up. They made it so that the door to a room would only stay open if you clicked on it every so often. So if you clicked 12 times in one room, they other doors would be closed and you could no longer click in them. This should be no problem since most students could figure out in less than 12 clicks which room offered the best payoff and rarely ventured back into the other rooms anyway.

Oddly though, even though it cost them a click to keep the other doors open, students couldn't stand the thought of those options going away. Even though they knew they would not be clicking in them any more, they would still waste clicks in order to keep those options open. Even after the experiment was changed so that it actually cost the students a few pennies to keep the useless options open... they still couldn't help themselves. They had to keep the options open, even though they weren't going to be using those options any more.

How many times in business do we make the costly decision to keep options open even though we know they aren't good options and we have decided not to pursue them. We often decide to "make sure we can still go down that road" even though we aren't ever planning on going down that road. Sometimes we need to just let go and move on with the good options and forget about the others.

Conclusion

This book is a fascinating book and well worth the read. I found some of the social explorations to be insightful into the liberal mindset. Many liberals have argued that free markets don't always work. Ariely explains clearly why these thought processes exist even in the face of much evidence that they do indeed work. Ariely argues that the markets can't fix irrational behavior since they rely on rational behavior to work. It is worth noting however that markets can correct for irrational behavior over time. Each of the examples that Ariely gives where irrational behavior might cause market failure can be extrapolated over time and you can easly see how competition can correct for irrationality. Overall the book is very though provoking and a great read.

Punished By Rewards - Alfie Kohn

Matt — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:11:06 GMT

Copyright: 1993

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

ISBN: 0-395-65028-3

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 Kohn's views, read the whole book. If you (like me) are just interested in a practical alternative look at incentives, skip to page 180 and read part III of the book and save yourself some time...I wish I would have.

The Problem with Rewards

In a nutshell the problem with rewards seems to be that Kohn doesn't like them. At times he sounds like a kid that didn't get enough cookies after class in school and is still upset. At other times he sounds like a condescending college professor speaking to a group of sycophantic students about how wrong the world is and if only they would listen to his ideas they would finally get it right. Still other parts of the book sound like an author desperately trying to make his point so that people will hire him for more lectures.

The problem with Kohn's book in my mind is simple. He hauls out an endless list of "interesting studies" that either prove his point or disprove Skinner's points. He glosses over the fact that many of these studies contradict each other. I would liken it to two scientists preparing elaborate studies, each of which predicts a different boiling point for water. Each scientist could scamper around looking for evidence from other studies to support his point of view... or he could wisely look at two opposing studies and look for what is different. Then the scientist might be able to write a paper explaining that you can't predict the boiling point of water by temperature alone... you should also consider pressure as well!

Kohn consistently uses hypothetical situations to prove his points. He also makes broad generalizations, usually with a caveat (like this one) that "such and such a state is most often the case." What I am interested in is why it isn't always the case? For instance he claims "most of us can think of something we enjoyed doing until we got paid for it" beside which in my notes I wrote "What is he talking about?!?!" He also claims "watching someone else get an award is a powerful demotivator" beside which I wrote "What kind of a person thinks that way? Must be an emo dude."

In spite of the meat-fisted approach of Kohn, I am interested in reading more about these ideas now that a decade and a half has passed since Kohn wrote this book because I think he missed some interesting things in his haste to prove himself right. For one, I would like to see a discussion about incentive in light of varying personalities. I would also like to see a discussion of incentives and motivation in light of different views on the distribution of power. Kohn approaches the subject as though everyone has the same personality (and thus reaction to externalities) and he views any disparity of power as a negative. What if these things aren't the case?

Teachers

Some interesting observations that Kohn makes that I think are still relevant relate to teachers. Teachers consistently object to merit pay and attempts to measure their performance in the classroom. Yet these same teachers insist that handing out grades (merit pay) is the only way to explain how well their students are doing (measure performance). What is good for the goose is apparenlty only good for the goose when it comes to teachers!

Some practical advice he gave for praise that can apply in a classroom is:

Praise the action, not the person
Make praise a special case
Avoid phony praise

Thoughts on Rationality and Motivation

One observation of Kohn's was that the western economic model makes two assumptions about people. First that rational people seek pleasure and avoid pain. Second that rationality is central to humanity. These seem to be reasonable assumptions to me but Kohn starts his book by questioning them which I think is a perfectly rational thing to do!

Another concept that he touched on is what social scientists call the equity principle. This principle essentially states that people should get what they deserve. Again, Kohn questions the validity of this principle because while it sounds like a sound principle on the surface, it raises more questions than it answers. For instance, what does it mean to deserve something? How do you properly allocate rewards for collaborative endeavors?

One last thought was raised by a quote from Kohn: "Rewards to not require any attention to the reasons." I think this is a very important idea for anyone involvced in incentives to understand. Simply gaining the right actions or reactions doesn't mean you have accomplished your real goals. Robert Austin covers this topic in detail in his book Measuring and Managing Performance In Organizations.

Conclusion

Skip to part III of the book and you will save yourself both pain and time!

The Drunkard's Walk - Leonard Mlodinow

Matt — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 19:15:04 GMT

Copyright: 2008

Publisher: Pantheon Books

ISBN: 978-0-375-42404-5

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 to ordinary peope like you and I. In the process he points out that the main reason you and I are ordinary is chance!

Basic Laws of Probability

Early in the book, Mlodinow points out a number of fundamental laws of probability that can be helpful for gut checks in every day life:

Probability that 2 events will both occur cannot be greater than the probability that each will occur individually.
To calculate the probability that 2 independent events will both occur, you multiply their probabilities together.
To calculate the probability that either of 2 independent events will occur you add their probabilities together.

Note that these laws apply to independent events, not dependent ones. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky conducted an experiment in which they asked some graduate students to consider the following statement and assign estimated probabilities:

Linda is active in the feminist movement
Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement
Linda is a bank teller

87% of the participants ranked number 2 as a higher probability than number 3. Without any other details about Linda's background, we know by applying Rule #1 that this cannot be the case. Yet in our every day life we often make the same logical mistakes because our minds tend to assign dependency even where there shouldn't be any assumption made.

Let's Make a Deal... and then Switch!

If you have read much in the field of probability or game theory, you have probably run across the Monty Hall problem. In a nutshell Let's Make a Deal consists of having three doors, behind one of them is a real prize, behind the other two there are goofy prizes. The game consists of the player choosing a door randomly and then the host eliminates one of the two doors that is left. Now the player must decide: without know what is behind the door he / she has chosen, should they switch to the new door or keep the one they have?

This question was put Marilyn vos Savant in her Parade magazine column "Ask Marilyn". She explained to the reader that the player should ALWAYS switch to the remaining door. If you are like me, the first time you heard this you thought to yourself "um... no... because it doesn't matter!" After all, you don't know if you have the winning one or the losing one so switching really won't make a difference!

But it does... and Mlodinow does a fantastic job of explaining this conundrum in his book. He explains it simply by pointing out that in the initial state of the game, you have 1 / 3 chance of guessing the right door. This means that you have a 2 / 3 chance of having guessed the wrong door. Once the host has eliminated a door, you know that particular door wasn't the one with the prize. This means there is a 2 / 3 chance that the door you chose is the wrong one. Since the door you have selected is most likely the wrong one, you should always switch.

Still being skeptical, my first thought was "I am going to write a simulator to prove this!" Turns out quite a few people have already done so... some of them being available online. One of them is by the Statistics Department of the University of South Carolina and it proves the theory right if you play with it for just a while.

Let Me Count the Ways

A very practical note to make to yourself is that the chances of an event happening vary depending on the number of ways that it can happen. So as Galileo noted with rolling three dice, there are 27 ways of rolling a 10 but only 25 ways of rolling a total of 9. This means that the chances of rolling a 10 is about 1.08 times more likely than rolling a 9.

Bayesian Probability

Earlier we noted a number of laws of probability that only applied only to situations where the events were completely independent. At times though, events are conditional at which point we enter the realm of Bayesian probability. It is an important and practical concept to understand.

Mlodinow uses an easy to understand example. What if the boss is taking a long time to respond to your emails? Perhaps you are no longer in favor and need to find a new job. IF your star is beginning to fade, there is a high probability that you need to start looking for a job. And IF your boss is unhappy with you, he will likely be slow responding to your emails. So we logically conclude a high probability that it is time to polish up the resume.

But wait... the reality is that there are a large number of reasons for your boss being slow to answer emails. Perhaps he / she is busy with a large project. Perhaps he / she has so much faith in you they don't believe you need constant baby-sitting. Perhaps the mail server is running slow during the week. Given that there are a large number of ways to explain this behavior, there is a lower probability that you have fallen out of favor.

Usually Bayesian probability problems are couched in terms of medical tests that come out with false positives. Mlodinow talks about those but I enjoyed his more applicable scenarios as they are more relevant to daily life.

Notes and Quotes

People have a very poor perception of randomness
"There is a difference between a process being random and the output of that process appearing random" - George Spencer-Brown ^*
We should judge people by their ability, not by their success.
"If you want to succeed, double your failure rate." - Thomas Watson

* Steve Jobs noted in a New York Times article that the iPod shuffling had to be "de-randomized" a bit because repeats caused people to think it wasn't random. It really was more random before but they had to fake the randomness in order to make it appear more random.

Conclusion

This book has been on my reading list for a while and after reading it, I wish I had read it long ago! Such a fascinating and delightful read. Considering that Mlodinow is a physicist and considering that most physicists are very smart but not particularly engaging, this book was a wonderful surprise. This book is a good read for anyone in any field who wants some practical insight to how the world works.

Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind - Gary Marcus

Matt — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:54:37 GMT

Copyright: 2008

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

ISBN: 0-618-87964-1

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 less educated. His schtick seems to be that of an argumentative professor that simultaneously wants to disprove intelligent design as well as put the damper on those who think evolution leads to perfection.

Pop Psychology

If you haven't read Blink or The Paradox of Choice you will enjoy this book a lot more. Marcus covers a lot of the same ground as these authors as he covers all the usual mind tricks and psychology studies that non-psychologists find so fascinating. I love to read this kind of stuff but at some point the studies about framing and videos of trickery get tedious and you want some real conclusions to be drawn.

Unfortunately 95% of Marcus' book seems to be an argument that the brain really isn't all that wonderful of an invention. He is enamored with what he calls "postal code memory" wherein information is stored in specific addressable locations and when you want that information, you just look up the address and presto, you have the information. The brain, as Jeff Hawkins points out in On Intelligence, uses pattern matching rather than specific addressing to find information. Marcus argues that postal code memory would solve many of the problems that we have with our brains.

At one point, Marcus goes as far as to argue that since Google can remember everything with it's underlying addressable memory scheme, the brain would be better off if it used the same thing. I think Marcus would do well to take a look at all the hardware and power consumption that goes into making Google work. If you could fit that all into something the size of the brain and power it with a few hundred calories per day, then perhaps I would buy into his argument a little more.

Marcus is also fond of pointing out things that I am sure his undergrad students find fascinating but I found a bit trite. For instance he points out that many of our tidbits of wisdom are contradictory. For instance:

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Contradicts with:

Out of sight, out of mind.

Think about it for a minute... what is the context in which you use these sayings? In the first case there is obvious desire. In the second it's something you are trying to forget. A simple look at the context (something our brain does quite well without conscious effort) is enough to see that these are not directly contradictory statements.

Tidbits

With regard to evolution, adequacy and not beauty is the name of the game. If it works, it spreads.
Beliefs (as Marcus uses the term) are based on contextual memory.
Types of mental contamination
- Focusing illusion (too much emphasis on one point)
- Halo effect
- Anchoring & Adjustment (starting point bias)
- Familiarity effect (preference for that with which we are already familiar)
- Confirmation Bias (notice things that we agree with)
- Motivated reasoning (reason towards existing conclusion)
Beliefs are formed by Hearing -> Accepting -> Evaluating. We would be better off if we evaluated before we accepted.
Control brings pleasure. The mind enjoys being in control. This is why software should be written in such a way as to put the user in the driver's seat. Frustrated users aren't enjoying our software much!

Book Conclusions

The majority of the book seems to be Marcus ranting about how wrong people are about the beauty of the brain. He goes on about the weaknesses of the brain without much in the way of practical knowledge. Towards the end of the book, he provides a list of suggestions, although most of these are only nominally related to the other sections of the book. It's almost as though he took a common sense lecture and tacked it onto the end of the book. Here are some of his suggestions:

Consider alternative hypotheses (including counterfactuals)
Rephrase the question
Correlation does not equal causation
Pay attention to sample size
Pre-commit to help resist impulses
Have a contingency plan (to help resist impulses)
Make important decisions while rested
Perform cost-benefit analyses
Imagine that your decisions will be spot-checked
Distance yourself from the decision (wait before you send that nasty email)
Beware of the vivid, the personal and the anecdotal
Choose your battles (don't try to make every decision perfectly)
Try to be rational

Conclusion

The book is a fun read if you can get past the usual professorial arrogance and the combative stance of the author. There are plenty of gems that keep you interested and while at times combative, the contrarian viewpoint is sometimes refreshing. Oddly, one of the most disappointing things to me was at the very end of the book. Marcus started a discussion about the role of education and how it should change given the state of technology today. Educators need to spend more time focusing on how to process information rather than how to store information. This discussion was incredibly short but extremely fascinating. If Marcus writes a book about education in the future, I will be first in line to buy!

Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction - Ken Binmore

Matt — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:15:23 GMT

Copyright: 2007

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISBN: 978-0-19-921846-2

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 appropriate title would have been "Game Theory Applied: A Very Short but Broad Overview."

Utility and Consistency

Early in the book, Binmore discusses briefly the concepts of utility. He makes and interesting observation in that acting consistenly is similar to acting to maximize the value of something. In other words, if we observe consistent behavior in someone, we know that they are trying to maximize the value of something, even if we don't know the specific something being referenced.

This concept is helpful in user interaction design for software developers. We might not always know what a user values the most, but observing consistent behavior tells us they are trying to maximize something. This week I ran across this quote in a slide deck: "The behavior you are seeing is the behavior you've designed for. (Whether intended or not)." The slide deck was titled Designing for Social Traction by Joshua Porter. The idea here is that if we observe behavior in our users that we don't like, chances are they are simply trying to maximize some level of utility of which we aren't aware. Our job as human computer interaction engineers is to figure out what the user really values and design with that in mind.

Good Samaritan or Bad Neighbor?

We have all read or heard about the tragedy of someone being mugged in a public place and yet no one offering to help or even call the police. Binmore talks about this unsettling behavior in humans and points out that it is perfectly rational and logical for this to happen. To understand you need to think about the game in terms of numbers. We will use "utils" to refer to something for which you have a preference, it might be time, it might be money, it might just be pleasure.

Let's have a group of people around someone in trouble. If the person is helped by someone everyone get 10 utils each. If no one helps the person no one gets utils. The problem is, you lose 1 util if you are the one to help. Now logically if everyone helps. your best strategy is not to help since you will get 10 utils and lose none. If you understand Nash equilibriums (which Binmore does explain briefly!) then you understand that there is 1 chance in 10 that no one else offers to help. We know this because we are indifferent between helping and not helping.

So if there are only 2 players, in order to have a 1/10 probability of the other person helping, each has a 9/10 probability of being the one to help. So only 1 time out of a 100 does the cry for help get ignored. Unfortunately, as you add players to the game, the probability of any one player helping goes down (in order to keep the chance of someone else helping at 1/10). Thus is makes perfect sense that when a large crowd hears a cry for help, no one person has a great chance of helping because they all assume someone else will help.

Does this make us all bad neighbors? No, but the numbers are certainly very interesting. I think the very fact of knowing these facts can add some utility to the act of helping someone in a large crowd. The mere holding of knowledge can dislodge the unfortunately equilibrium by creating new utility values in one or a few of the players.

What Doesn't Happen Is Important

When you get deeper into game theory, you begin to deal with iterative games and you see paths in games that are never taken. We know this to be true in table games such as checkers. There are moves that people simply don't take. However, are these moves not taken important in any way? Should we take into consideration behaviors that we never expect to see?

An event that isn't going to happen is a counterfactual. Sometimes we like to think that these counterfactual events aren't important because they are simply hypotheticals. Interestingly, Binmore argues that these sub-games that will never be reached are important precisely because they will never be reached.

To understand this, you need to understand that there is a reason these sub-games will never happen. The consequences of reaching them would be suboptimal for one or both of the players thus that part of the decision tree will forever remain unused. Understanding what makes these decisions suboptimal can be important when designing future decision trees.

Often in developing software, we provide the user with a decision tree as they process some task. If we come across a decision branch that is seldom if ever used, we can use our understanding of that to move that branch somewhere else in the tree, potentially shortening the decision tree for the user. Anything we can do to make more efficient use of the users time is generally a good thing.

Point of View

We are used to having our own point of view and dealing with others with potentially different points of view. Game theory takes a persons point of view into account using the notion of focal points or framing. Often it is necessary to understand the framing problem when conducting real games using real subjects.

For instance, in a theoretical game, you might set up a scenario where two people are driving towards each other. The game says both must simultaneously choose whether to go to the right or to the left. What is the optimal or logical choice? Logically it's a coin toss. If you were to conduct this game in real life in the U.S. you would find a great number of the players both choose "right". The same test conducted in the U.K. would have very different results! This is because from the point of view of U.S. drivers, "right" makes logical sense and in the U.K. "left" is the obvious choice.

When designing an interface for a user, the developer cannot design in a bubble. Nor can a developer design from his or her own point of view. Rather it is important to understand the focal point of the end user and use that to frame the design of the interface.

In addition, there are a number of designers who argue for using hard rules such as Fitts' law to design their interface. If the convention for the user is the go to the lower left hand corner to start a program, then arguing that the upper right hand corner is a better location for the "Start" button is going to miss the point.

Incentives Work... (but not always how we want them to!)

Binmore does a good job of applying Game Theory to the real world and one area he addresses is mechanism design. Mechanism design is solving the problem of finding the right combination of rules and incentives to accomplish your goals. Often we design incentive systems and only take into account one Nash equilibrium that we are striving to reach. Sometimes we hit the mark but there are other times when the incentives lead to a different equilibrium than the one we envisioned.

This happened all the time when I was at FedEx. Upper management was constantly tweaking the rules to try to incentivize the couriers to perform their jobs a certain way. It seemed like every time they made a change to the rules, some unintended behavior would result and after a certain amount of denial, the management would once again go to the drawing board to rework the rules yet again. This led to a certain amount of cynicism among the couriers and a common saying became "tell us what the rules are today and we will beat you at your own game... again."

Conclusion

The book is quite short. Even though it is 174 pages, the book is very small in size so the reading is quick. If you have never read any game theory or taken any classes using it, this book is not a good one for you. Binmore consistenly assumes you already know what the "matching pennies" game is or what is meant by minimax. He spends an unfortunate amount of time nitpicking some commonly accepted notions of game theory, probably because he is somewhat of an expert and feels the need to make his views known. He also goes into a number of applications that are only going to be interesting if you are already hard core into game theory or are heavily into a particular field (biology being one of them.) All in all the book is a good quick read if you want a refresher on some game theory or want to see some very quick practical applications.

The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy - David Smick

Matt — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:11:06 GMT

Copyright: 2008

Publisher: Portfolio

ISBN: 1-591-84218-2

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.

Gold, the Euro and the Dollar

One of the interesting discussions that Smick engages in has to do with where the world holds its cash. Right now a number of conservatives are clamoring for a return to the gold standard. A great number of people are rushing headlong to buy gold out of fear that the dollar will collapse and gold will be the only thing worth anything. It is interesting to note that there simply isn't enough gold in the world to handle the world's capitalization needs. The savings of the world are generally dollar denominated now but if the dollar falls apart, the Euro is the most likely next best choice. The pool of Euro's is still smaller than the Dollar and it is arguably not large enough yet to act as the world's savings denomination but it has a far better chance than gold.

The Case for (or against) China

Smick devotes an entire chapter to discussing the possibility of China becoming the next great economic powerhouse. His views seem to dovetail with the geopolitical views of George Friedman as discussed in The Next 100 Years. In a nutshell, both men feel that the great economic disparity between the coastal and interior regions of the country are going to create a political climate so unstable as to knock the economic rocket off course. Smick devotes a great deal of time looking at the possible scenarios from the fallout of a China meltdown.

Conclusion

As a broad economic overview this book is a good read. Smick has a tendency for self-promotion and some of the anecdotes in the book, while entertaining, seem to only serve the purpose of name dropping. Serious economists will likely find faults in some of the theories and ideas expressed in the book, however for most of us, the book is a fascinating read.

Decoding the Universe - Charles Seife

Matt — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 04:51:16 GMT

Copyright: 2007

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 0-143-03839-7

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.

One of the fascinating aspects that Seife covers in Decoding the Universe is quantum information theory. The topic is interesting and Seife covers it in such a way that even I, a non-physicist type, could grasp what he was talking about. Of course I won't be expounding on qbits any time soon and much of the theory is far beyond anything I care to understand, but I felt like it was a good introductory tutorial so I at least know what the smart people are talking about when I hear them!

One tiny note that I thought was interesting on the information theory front was the notion that rules create redundancy. Redundancy makes things easier to understand. For instance, Seife plays with the words "fingry" and "trzeci". He points out that "fingry" almost sounds like an English word so you might try to place it in some sort of context. "Trzeci" on the other hand doesn't follow any of the rules of a normal English word so you know immediately that it is either a foreign word or nonsensical.

Using words and letters out of context or outside the rule book makes them stick out like a sore earlobe. Seife uses this turn of phrase to point out how quickly a broken rule can make you keenly aware of something different. The basis of information theory of course is how different something is from what came before. It is the difference of things that contains information but it is the redundancy that makes carrying information possible. (This is a gross oversimplification of information theory but it encapsulates a great deal.)

Conclusion

If you liked The User Illusion you will probably like this book. If you want to choose between one or the other, I would read this one for simplicity and because it is more current. Either book will give you a broad overview of information theory.

Revolutionary Spirits - Gary Kowalski

Matt — Sun, 24 May 2009 20:23:37 GMT

Publisher: BlueBridge

ISBN: 1-933346-09-4

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.

Unfortunately for Kowalski, he is trying to undo a long tradition of historians. There are volumes upon multiple volumes that catalogue and detail the writings of the founding fathers and point very strongly to the influence that religion had on their thoughts, writings and decisions. Kowalski, in under 200 pages, has time only to present one side of the evidence for his arguments. He painstakingly digs through the writings and statements of the founding fathers looking for evidence that they really weren't "true believers."

Whatever the truth may be, Kowalski falls short of convincing the previously unconvinced. Liberals and progressives will likely point to this book as "proof" that we aren't really a Christian nation and that Christian principles do not underlie our founding documents. Unfortunately, anyone with even a cursory understanding of Christianity can easily point to a number of principles found in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution that clearly come from Christian influence.

Clearly our founding fathers wanted to be inclusive. They went out of their way to not offend those not of their particular faith. Like most religious people, the founding fathers had differences of opinions with their own churches and like most Christians they went through periods of doubt and questioning. To point to some of these evidences as proof that the founding fathers were not Christians or that we are not a Christian nation is a bit of a stretch.

To be fair, many on the religious right have gone too far in the other direction, claiming that perhaps some of the founding fathers shared their own particular beliefs. Digging up obscure references and finding anecdotal evidence to suppor their claim, they wish to paint George Washington and Ben Franklin with a brush that mirrors their own lives.

The truth likely lies somewhere between the religious right and Kowalski's slightly biased history. Our founding fathers were clearly influenced by their religious backgrounds but they were all fiercely protective of religious freedom, not just toleration. Kowalski doubtless has provided a much needed perspective on our founding fathers and the time period, but you should read it understanding his bias. To his credit, he doesn't try too hard to feign impartiality. Overall the book is worthy of a good read by anyone interested in that time period.

Man and His Symbols - Carl Jung

Matt — Sun, 24 May 2009 19:34:51 GMT

Copyright: 1964

Publisher: Doubleday

ISBN: 0-38505-221-9

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 of the book being adorned with illustrations of art-work and historical photos. Aside from that, I quickly lost interest in Jung (and his followers who wrote parts of the book) long-winded descriptions of how wonderful their dream interpretation was.

One semi-useful tidbit I picked up was Jung's differentiation between signs and symbols. Signs, he asserts, are shorthand replacements for the real thing. As such, they are always less than the concept they represent. Symbols on the hand, contain deeper, non-obvious meanings and are thus always more than the concept they represent.

This distinction is somewhat intriguing for me as a software developer. Icons and other graphical representations typically are short-hand sign-posts to point the user in a given direction. Often though I have seen symbolism used which tends to get in the way. The difference from a human-computer interaction standpoint is that signs should be universally recognizable while symbols depend on context.

Another interesting tidbit was the difference between how Freud and Jung looked at dreams. Freud tended to see dreams a good starting point for free association which he felt would lead his patients to reveal latent and subconsciously repressed thoughts. Jung on the other hand believed the subconscious was purposely concocting the symbolism in the dream and that the symbolism itself was the revelation of the inner workings of the mind. In conjunction with some of the other reading I have done on conscious thinking, I tend to lean more towards Jung's interpretation. That said, I don't plan on doing any dream interpretation, even my own, any time in the near future!

Conclusion

Read this book if you love psychology and "squishy" sorts of science. Avoid it if you are hoping for some practical useful things in your study.

Growing Up Digital - Don Tapscott

Matt — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:06:50 GMT

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

ISBN: 0-07-063361-4

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.

Shortcomings

I will start off with the negative. Tapscott did something that always annoys me in an author. He overstepped his influence and tried to change the term "Generation Y" into "N-Gen". Throughout the book, you have to constantly remind yourself that this "N-Gen" that you never heard of is actually what most people call Gen-Y. He puts forth a good argument on why he likes the term better, but unfortunately for him the term never took off. Most likely because it was embedded in a book that had such a short shelf life. The copy I borrowed from the local University had last been checked out in 2000.

This wasn't the only term that was out of place. He used "the Net" rather than "the internet" as we are now accustomed to doing. He used terms such as "C-girlfriend" and "C-life" to refer to "cyber-girlfriend" and "cyber-life". The term "cyber" has all but disappeared with reference to the internet and I had never even seen the shortened "C-*" versions before.

I put forth these criticisms because I have been using the internet since 1992 and have children in their teens now who have grown up using the internet. Hopefully authors who write about current trends in computers will learn not to try so hard to be hip and cool and will instead stick to the more mainstream terminology.

In addition to the terminology oddities, Tapscott comes across as an old fuddy-duddy trying too hard to be cool. He blatantly leads cheers for "the kids" and builds them up as extraordinary because of their computer skills. Throughout the book are quotes from teens and children regarding various issues from their usage of the internet to world peace. These seem to be cherry-picked to make it seem as though these "N-Gen" kids are more advanced than their disconnected peers. I have 2 teens who are straight-A students who write well and they would still need coaching to use some of the sentence structures that supposedly came from an 8, 9 or 11 year old.

Gems

There were a few things that I gathered from reading this book. One observation was that human communication has gone from text to graphics and back to text. Tapscott points out that the printing press made text a means of mass communication. The television turned us towards graphic or video displays of information. With the advent of the internet, we now have email, blogs and plenty of text based web sites that are part of our communication medium.

Another interesting observation was what Tapscott called the "transparency" of technology to children. He described this as being like air... it is necessary to life but mostly we don't pay attention to the air itself. Kids (and indeed now many adults) have a tendency to view technology the same way. Most of us (gadget geeks aside) don't care about the technical specification of the screen we are reading our email on or the programming behind the email client. Instead what we care about is that "Jay needs to meet with me at noon today to go over the upcoming soccer schedule." The computer, the email client and even the email itself are transparent... it is the message that we care about.

This notion of transparency means that computer programmers must be careful not to impart too many of our values into our programs. People using our software will unlikely pay enough attention to the software itself to differentiate values that we insert from reality. An example of this is the game Sim City. One young person learned from Sim City that "raising taxes can cause riots." Well... certainly in extreme cases that can happen, however it is questionable whether we want that to be the only lesson that a child learns about higher taxes!

The notion of community on the internet was pretty big back in the late 90's but it hasn't come of age until more recently with the surge in popularity of MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn and other "social networking" sites. Tapscott observed some interesting things with regard to how boys vs. girls used language in building communities.

Boys tended to use language to assert their position in the community hierarchy. They also used language that was designed to draw and hold an audience. In addition they used language to compete with others. Girls on the other hand had a tendency to use language for building the community rather than themselves.

Conclusion

I have a vested interest in understanding the impact of computer and the internet on children, particular in the context of education. That said, this book was interesting for me to read as Tapscott did a large amount of empirical research into the topic. He directly interviewed and observed a large number of young people and their usage of the internet and computers. His book is a great reference book for numbers and trends, albeit all of them from the late 90's and largely out of date today. I would only recommend this book if you have an interest in the historical perspective of the period or if you are looking for some anecdotal data for some specific research you are doing.

The User Illusion - Tor Norretranders

Matt — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:35:34 GMT

Published: 1999

Publisher: Penguin Press Science

ISBN: 0-140-23012-2

In The User Illusion, Tor Norretranders explores a broad range of topics from information theory to cognitive psychology to existentialism. The edition I read is an excellent translation of the Danish author's work. At times it is evident that Tor over-reached in the scope of the book and you sometimes wonder about the point of the book. All in all though it is a fascinating read and for someone interested in Human Computer Interaction as I am, it is a very good survey of a number of excellent topics.

Interesting notes

There is so much information in this book that my notes here are going to be just a smattering of interesting factoids and tidbits that I found interesting as I read.

Quote- "What is done by what is called myself is, I feel, done by something greater than myself in me." James Clerk Maxwell

Note - The end result of a calculation is valuable because of the information that it does not contain. Calculating is the process of discarding unintersting information

Comparison - Thermodynamics is about macrostates that interest people; e.g. Heat. Information theory is about macrostates that interest telecommunication companies; e.g. Symbols

Note- To Shannon, entropy was information. The more disorder, the more information contained in it.

Quote- "I am unprovable" : Godel. This is a true statement which means there is truth that cannot be proven. Consistency cannot be proven from within a system.

Note - Turing conceived the theory of computing at the moment he realized you could not create a machine that could compute everything. (The most accurate map is the terrain itself)

Note - You can do whatever you know you can do. You know whether you can do more only after you have done it.

Note - Order is order. Everything else is unprovable. It might be order in the end.

Definition - Computational Irreducibility: We do not know the pattern until we have computed the formula.

Three levels of Communication Theory

Technical - transmission of symbols
Semantic - Meaning conveyed
Behavioral - Impact on receiver

Interesting - Conscious perception has been computered at between 16 and 50 bits per second. Sensory perception has been estimated anywhere between 10 and 100 billion bits per second.

Conclusion

There is no way this review does justice to a book of this magnitude. I would recommend if someone has an interest in any of the topics addresses. Tor does a fantastic job of bringing some of the theoretical physics and philosophical discussions down to a level that mere mortals can comprehend!

Shake Hands With the Devil - Romeo Dallaire

Matt — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:18:20 GMT

Publisher: Carroll & Graf

ISBN: 0-7867-1510-3

Lt. General Romeo Dallaire was the UN commander in Rwanda during the genocide debacle in 1994. In this intense accounting of the UN actions (and inactions) during the 100 day civil war, Dallaire doesn't pull any punches. He places blame squarely where blame is due, even pointing the finger at his own blunders and short comings. He pointedly deals with his own mental health degradation towards the end of the conflict and makes no excuses for himself or anyone else. In his final conclusions he states plainly that the Rwandans are to blame for the genocide but that the rest of the world sat on the sidelines while it happened was an unconsiounable failure.

The UN

While the book contains a great deal of detail regarding the atrocities that occured, the bulk of the book is reminiscent of Eisenhower's accounts of World War II and his Presidency. The book is filled with details of the inner workings of the political machinery and insights into the ugliness of how government works in time of war.

I learned from this book that Kofi Annan was heading up the Department of Peace Keeping Operations at the UN during the Rwandan conflict. While Dallaire seems to respect Annan, he points out that Annan was key in keeping intervention forces out of Rwanda at a time when they could have stopped much of the killing. The lack of cooperation among key elements of the United Nations is painfully clear in Dallair's account.

The political storms that surround actions in the UN are part and parcel the reason I doubt the usefulness of the institution. The "united" portion of the moniker seems to apply only when convenient. Dallaire's account of the end runs and political intrigue that accompany every decision at the UN are fascinating. Since Dallaire largely considers Rwanda an example of a UN failure, his perception is undoubtedly biased but he paints a pretty clear picture of "divided nations".

How Many Deaths Does it Take?

At one point in the book, Dallaire laments that it was difficult to get the world to care about Rwanda. He mentions that the media spent more time talking about Tanya Harding's criminal difficulties than they did about the hundreds of thousands of dying Rwandans. I vividly recall the media frenzy during that time frame and I only vaguely recall the Rwandan conflict making the news.

I wonder if these had been deaths in Europe or Asia or even Israel / Palestine, if the media would have covered it more closely? Recent events in the Gaza strip have received much attention, and deservedly so, but its an interesting point of human nature that we seem to ignore problems in Africa. I am a far cry from a bleeding heart liberal but Dallaire's book made me think long and hard about these issues.

Conclusion

There are some very raw parts of this book as Dallaire tries to give us a small glimpse into the hardships that the Rwandans faced. He spares no details when it comes to describing some of the brutality and squalid living conditions that he and his men witnessed and endured. I found the book fascinating to read and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the Rwandan conflict a little better.

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Matt — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:50:11 GMT

Published: 1999 (Written ~1957)

Publisher: Plume

ISBN: 0-452-01187-6

This is another of Ayn Rands philosophical novels that my boss recommended I read. Similar to The Fountainhead it is chock full of drama, hero worship and tragedy. In addition it carries a very clear message with regard to human motivation and the effects of government interference on the economic output of productive people.

Overview

A lot of reviews have been written about this book so if you are looking for a traditional review you might want to Google again! In a nutshell, this book is the story of a heroine (Dagny Taggart) who runs the operations of the nation's largest railroad. She finds herself caught up in a political mess as she tries to save her railroad from being destroyed by the inept policies of politicians who do more harm than good as they try to "save the world."

As in The Fountainhead, Rand resorts to shocking intimate scenes that frankly, I am not sure what they add to the story or to her philosophy. Apparently I am among the "unenlightened" when it comes to this part of her writing but it seems to me to be gratuitous.

In addition, I find her plot to be twisted and not in a good way. There are times as you read that it is obvious she contorts her plot in order to give a character a chance for a 5 or 10 page oration. She also spends an inordinate amount of time developing her characters... sometimes going overboard even after the character has been fully developed. The book would have been twice as good had it been half the length.

Philosophy

In general I agree with Ayn Rand's view of government regulation of the marketplace. What I don't agree with is her apparent belief that everyone that produces is a god and everyone in government is a dolt. Of course she uses hyperbole to make her point... but I think she weakens it by treating everything so starkly.

For instance, over and over you find examples of people not making a decision because they don't want to be responsible. You find them passing the buck and making sure they don't take the blame for anything. She writes about these people in such a way as to make them seem immature, incapable and unappealing. Naturally she is extolling the virtue of those who are risk takers in our society.

Of course we have seen plenty of examples lately of "risk takers" who didn't know what they were doing that have caused a lot of trouble. Risk taking doesn't equal competence. People who are confident in their abilities tend to be risk takers because they have a strong belief that they can handle even the downside of a decision. But there are also people who are risk takers who don't consider the downside of a decision... they take risk recklessly.

Straw Man

Several times Rand throws up straw man arguments in order to pontificate. At one point, Francisco D'Antonio overhears a party-goer pronounce "The love of money is the root of all evil!" Francisco gives a 15 minute speech to all within earshot explaining that money is not evil. Then as an after-thought he throws in a paragraph that "loving money isn't evil" either.

The statement however neither says that money is evil nor that the love of money is evil. It says instead that the love of money is the root of all evil. So just as you must be careful with anger, which is not in and of itself a sin but can lead to sin, you must be careful of the love of money, which is not evil but can lead to evil.

Government Regulation

In Atlas Shrugged, government regulation is seen as the nemesis of progress. In one of the classic scenes, John Galt roars out "Get out of my way!" as the answer to how to solve the world's financial and economic melt-down. Today of course we hear a lot of Libertarians and Conservatives who are screaming the same thing... "Stop all the regulation!"

In general I agree with the idea that government should do less regulating. The problem is that I view free markets in the classical sense. "Free market" has come to mean "free from government regulation" in the minds of many conservative thinkers. In reality though, "free market" means the "free flow of capital" in response to market forces (supply and demand).

Thus, any and all interference with the free flow of capital in response to supply and demand is a detriment to the free market system. It doesn't matter what the source might be. If it's a government that is setting a price floor or ceiling, it is a detriment. If it is a business that engages in monopolistic practices, it is a detriment. If it is a cartel (behind which foreign governments exert force) it is a detriment. Irregardless of the source of the interference, free markets cannot exist with these kinds of interference.

Thus, there are times when government intervention is a good thing! If the government keeps a business or group of businesses from engaging in practices that are harmful to the free market, that intervention is good.

Conclusion

I like reading things that are provocative. In this case, the ideas and theories of Rand are provacative and I like to be challenged in my thinking. I tend to agree with her more than I disagree. My main disappointment was her insistence on "proving" that morality is in the eye of the beholder. She did nothing more than sully her plot with the explicit scenes that could easily have been left out. As such I wouldn't recommend this book but I am looking forward to reading some of Rand's non-fiction work sometime next year!

Real Number - Jean E. Cunningham and Orest J. Fiume

Matt — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:43:54 GMT

Publisher: Managing Times Press

ISBN: 0-9728099-0-2

Real Number: Management Accounting in a Lean Organization would be considered by some to be a "dry read". Personally, I found it a fascinating read as my interest in Lean principles has been piqued over the past year and a half or so. Jean Cunningham serves as CFO at Lantech, Inc. and Orest Fiume retired as VP of Finance and Administration of Wiremold. Fans of Jones & Womack, authors of Lean Thinking and The Machine That Changed The World, will recognize these two companies as having been case studies in Lean Thinking.

Measure The Important Stuff

A few things jumped out at me that are practical and useful for my situation as a software developer. The notion of cost based accounting is firmly entrenched in the business world. I remember as I earned my business degree, taking accounting classes and having to sit through long sessions as my professors intoned on and on about how to get these numbers. In a nutshell it involves a lot of guessing about how much time, effort, overhead and material cost should be assigned to each unit that is sold.

Lean thinkers have a different approach to calculating costs. They suggest, shockingly, that you simply assign costs based on what it actually cost. If you are using Lean Manufacturing principles, you should have a very clear picture of the costs of each unit as it passes through your flow.

For me, this translates into a simple principles in the planning portion of Lean Software. If it's important enough to measure... it's important enough to truly measure. We do a lot of "guess work" in our planning and often that is good enough. We used to spend a lot of time trying to measure how quickly we could produce things. What we finally discovered was that we were really just guessing. So rather than measure our guesses... we just stopped measuring.

In the near future I hope we can find some truly measurable metrics that will be useful to us, but in the meantime we have decided that guesses aren't important enough to be measured.

How Much Does That Measurement Cost?

Another high level principle that I gleaned from this book is the notion that it is expensive to measure things. Accounting is ostensibly all about measuring. In the section on "closing the books", the authors go through an exercise in which they calculate how much it costs companies to close their book every month, quarter or fiscal year. It's a lot of money! They strongly suggest that you reconfigure the process so as to reduce costs.

For me, this translates into a desire to make sure that the value I gain from making a measurement is greater than or equal to the cost of the measurement. The two components of this of course are a) the value and b) the cost. The value of a measurement can be increased by timeliness and accuracy as well as focus.

The cost of a measurement can be decreased by focusing only on the relevant information. You should also continually refine the process of collecting the data and performing the calculations. Apply Lean Principles to the measurement process itself and you should see some pretty amazing gains.

Conclusion

Honestly, I love this kind of book. Intensely practical, full of good meaty Lean Principles and sufficiently geeky to get me excited. Unfortunately I have to admit that unless you are an accountant in a Lean Company or just have a very strong interest in all things Lean, you probably won't have much fun with this book. If you are involved in Accounting at a Lean Company and this book isn't on your bookshelf... shame on you!