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How much would you sell your knowledge for? posted on July 2, 2009
 General
Something I've been mulling of late. Think of the most valuable
things you learned at school, and then imagine that you could sell that
knowledge. How much is it worth?
I learned Spanish at college. I
was zealous about it. I took my junior year in Spain. I kept my diary
in Spanish and did everything I could to dream in Spanish. The language
turned out to be useful in my career. I spent 10 years in
Spanish-speaking countries, and my entry into BusinessWeek was as
Mexico City bureau chief.
Now, would I take $1 million to forget
it? I try to imagine it. I wake up tomorrow. Spanish is utterly foreign to me.
The books in my shelves are unintelligible. I don't understand the guys
planting the maple tree in the front yard. But when I check my bank
account, it's richer by $1 million.
It's not worth it. It would be like
getting a lobotomy. My friendships, my memories, the songs I sing, many of them are tied up with Spanish. So the answer is no... $10 million you ask? This is harder, but I still say no (though certain people in
my family might find this very maddening).
My point here is
about education. Certain things we learn make our lives richer. (What
they do for careers is a bonus.) If our minds are the houses we
inhabit, a foreign language adds an entire wing, which can quickly fill
up with people and books and food. It even changes the way we think: Spanish taught me to divide the verb "to be" into two forms. (Lera Boroditsky writes about how languages affect thinking.)
I imagine that learning a
science or math has a similar effect. Each one provides a platform, and
we build upon it. (That's why if a new language suddenly popped into my head tomorrow it would be worth only a small fraction of those I've lived with for decades.)
Some of the things I've learned aren't nearly as valuable. I took a course senior year on
the novels of Dostoevsky. I enjoyed it, remember quite a bit, think about them often.
But I think I'd forget my Dostoevsky for $1 million. Maybe I'd take an
expensive vacation and read The Bros. Karamozov again for the "first
time."
Which knowledge is priceless to you?
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Interview with Scott Rosenberg, author of new blog history posted on July 2, 2009
News
| Here's my interview with Scott Rosenberg. He wrote the new book, Say Everything, How Blogging Began, What it's Becoming, and Why it Matters. (cross-posted on Blogspotting.net)
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National Chamber puts Numerati in Top 10 posted on July 1, 2009
Marketing the book
Very gratified to see that the National Chamber Foundation, the think tank of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, named The Numerati as one of the top 10 reading selections for 2009.
Others on the list include:
Disrupting Class and The Innovator's Prescription by Clayton Christensen, House of Cards by William Cohan, The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson, The Second World by Parag Khanna, Climate of Extremes by Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling, Jr., The Tyranny of Dead Ideas by Matt Miller, Immigration Reform by Godfrey Muwonge, and The World is Curved by David Smick.
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Which possessions do you really need? posted on July 1, 2009
General
| This pair not only analyzes their use of every item in their house, but is moving toward tagging everything (and studying it as data). This might be a bit more zeal than most of us can generate on the subject, but watching this video got me into thinking about a massive clutter clean-up this weekend.
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The importance of saying "no" posted on July 1, 2009
General
We're swimming in information, we have limited time to communicate. In these circumstances, it's vital for us to say (and hear) the word "no." Brad Feld makes a good case for this as an aspect of personal time management (ex Fred Wilson).
Saying no is also important for reducing waste in the economy. Every pending request is an inefficiency. The person asking for a job lead or a nugget of information may not proceed to the next option before getting the thumbs down. For the person on the receiving end, the unwanted message is a bit of clutter--"noise" in the data vernacular. Ideally, a quick "no" educates senders so that they can refine their pitches--improving the noise-to-signal ratio.
That's the ideal. The sad fact is that sending a personal "no" doesn't work all that well, because it doesn't scale. It's like unsubscribing to a single spam. And most of the people (and machines) sending out messages don't have the time or inclination to learn from negative feedback.
My solution? I don't have one. I fish through hundreds of e-mails a day. If a few of them seem to be addressed to me personally, I try to send a "No" (or, more rarely, a "yes") I could try to block more of them and only receive messages from approved sources. But that would deprive me of the good idea that occasionally pops in. So I skim my inbox, surely missing lots of interesting stuff hidden amid the junk.
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Netflix prize: Does it also predict movies you've seen? posted on June 30, 2009
statistics
Reading about "likely" winners of the Netflix prize, one of the world's great celebrations of Numerati-dom. A couple questions come to mind. First, repeat viewing. If an algorithms recommends Godfather II or The Third Man to me, it understands my taste--but overlooks the fact that I've watched each movie numerous times and don't need the recommendation. I'm wondering if the Netflix algorithms factor in the movies we've already seen. Anyone know?
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The Third Man, 1950
Also, I was interested in the comments to Steve Lohr's blog post. A lot
of people seem angry that Netflix would encourage people to work for a
prize, which for most of them amounted to working for free. Are those
people also angry at Wikipedia and Linux for encouraging free work?
Seems to me that if Netflix can engage these people's enthusiasm and
brainpower, good for them. (We could use some of that magic at
BusinessWeek, where our Business Exchange runs on the enthusiasm and
smarts of volunteers.)
Also, this comment from Melissa W:
They’ll never really master the movie recommendations. People like my
husband and I, who share one account and rate movies under the same
user name, will always keep them on their toes!
Don't celebrate too quickly, Melissa. Good clustering programs
might be able to identify the two different patterns in the
household--assuming that it's worth Netflix's trouble to hunt for them.
(Which it almost certainly isn't...)
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What do we need to know? posted on June 29, 2009
General
Here's a question I've been wondering about for years: What do
we need to know? In other words, as we make our way through the vast
universe of information, with online encyclopedias and networks of
friends at our command, what exactly do we need to store in our heads?
It has to be changing. I remember reading in Mark Twain's Life on the
Mississippi about the amazing river pilots in the 19th century who had
to keep in their heads every twist and turn of a 2,000-mile river. As
they moved encountered boats traveling in the other direction, they
would learn about shifting sandbars south of Vicksburg or felled trees
near Cairo. And with this information, they would update the river
running through their brains.
What does a Mississippi river pilot need to know today? It has to be a
lot different, and the same thing goes for practically every
profession. How important is formal knowledge, the kind you get in
books or even an established Web page? And how does it stack up against
the awareness knowledge that comes from what's happening at this moment
on the networks?
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Michael Chabon on disappearing frontiers of childhood posted on June 28, 2009
General
I'm off to take my son to a lacrosse tournament, where I might be standing on the sidelines for four or five games, from early morning into the evening. These are things my parents never had to do, which leads me to Michael Chabon's excellent essay in The New York Review of Books. It's about the geography of childhood, and how overweening parents are stealing it from their kids.
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Not entirely about Michael Jackson posted on June 26, 2009
General
It was the summer of 1970. I was saving up money for a trip to visit my friend in Arizona, and my mother paid me $2 an hour to do odd jobs around the house. This involved clipping bushes and washing windows and cleaning the garage. I listened to a transistor radio as I worked, and I fell in love with "The Love You Save" by the Jackson 5.
A week later, my friend in Tucson informed me that the Jackson 5 was pure bubblegum. My friend had a cassette player (I'd never seen them before) and introduced me to Deja Vu by Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Off I went into album rock, FM radio, and everything that went with it.
But yesterday morning, I was listening to my iPod on my morning commute from Port Authority to Rockefeller Center. Crossing Times Square, that old Jackson 5 song came on. I hadn't heard it in years, and I hadn't even put it on the play list. (Apple's Genius had.) I listened intently, remembering that summer of 1970. Still a great song, no matter what my friend says (though I might tire of it over the next week or two).
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A trove of data blogs posted on June 26, 2009
General
Check out this post from Flowing Data for a great resource list of data-focused blogs. (I had to petition in comments for them to add TheNumerati.net.)
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Mr. Baker offers a highly
readable and fascinating account of the number-driven world we now live
in...
Drilling Through...
- The Wall Street Journal - John Derbyshire
Die Numerati
Die große Überrumpelung
Von Milos Vec
DruckenVersendenSpeichernVorherige Seite
...
- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Milos Vec
The Numerati...
Or revenge of the math nerds, in which a BusinessWeek reporter hangs out with millionaire techies in
the ...
- The Guardian (UK) - Steven Poole & Christopher Exeter
click here to read all reviews
Fiction: The Andean Correspondent
- May 30, 2009
It's OK not to read the book...
- January 8, 2009
List of favorite non-fiction books
- December 18, 2008
Early results of behavioral ad campaign
- November 4, 2008
Launching Numerati behavioral campaign: Will deliver 8 million targeted ads
- September 5, 2008
The Worker: Excerpted as BusinessWeek cover story, Aug 28, 2008
- August 28, 2008
Message for math and business readers
- August 27, 2008
We are going to target you with behavorial ads--and blog about it
- August 20, 2008
Steve Baker answers questions about The Numerati
- August 1, 2008
My Math Career
- July 20, 2008
A few more math covers
- July 19, 2008
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