Dan

Defend yourself from the number-tossers, July 4 2004

How to Lie with Statistics, by Darrel Huff, should be required reading for everyone. The cachet of numbers are used all the time in modern society. Usually to end arguments--after all, who can argue with "facts"? Huff shows how the same set of numbers can be tweaked to show three different outcomes, depending on where you start and what you use. The fundamental lesson I learned from this book is that mathematical calculation involves a whole set of conditions, and any number derived from such a calculation is meaningless without understanding those conditions.

He also mentions that colleagues have told him that the flurry of meaningless statistics is due to incompetence--he… Read more

Insights into America, obtained by traversing its spine, Jun 26 2004

The Great Divide, by Stephen Pern, explores one man's trip from Mexico to Canada along the Continental Divide. Now, this book explores the backbone of the USA, but the author is definitely (perhaps defiantly) English--and in many ways, from his frequent stops for tea to his sardonic wit to his idioms (biro, peg), it adds to the charm of the book. From New Mexico to Montana, Pern relates the obstacles, emotional, physical and personal, which confront him during his journey. Typically tongue-in-cheek in his prose, he also strikes true notes, especially when commenting on life in America. He lays out a succinct contrast between the New World and the Old: when confronting the lack of historic… Read more

Full of ah-ha moments, though a bit of a slow read., May 13 2004

I just finished reading The Social Life of Information, by John Seeley Brown and Paul Duguid. This was not the quickest read; it's a business book with the obtuseness of vocabulary that implies. However, if you're a computer person with any desire to see your work in a larger context, this is a book you should read. In it, they examine eight separate areas in which computers, and the internet in particular, have supposedly changed our lives (this is typically called 'hype', though the authors don't use the word) in the latter years of the 20th century. (This book is copyright 2000.) You probably remember some of these claims: the death of the corporation, of the university, of paper… Read more