loose talk

Back to booker

Mon, 30 May 2011 06:56:29 +0100

I’ve just finished Richard Powers’ The prisoner’s dilemma. I must admit to being disappointed. Not enough happened for my liking, and there was too much description and far too much explaining people’s feelings.

After a bit of a break it’s back to my goal of reading all the short-listed Bookers. I’m on to last year’s winner, Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler question. What a contrast in styles with Powers! Most of Jacobson is dialogue. People’s emotions and motivations are revealed through the dialogue and actions rather than through description. Show not tell. I’ve noticed this difference between British and American books before, and I think the heavy description is an American thing. There are of course many exceptions (I adore the Rabbit series) but on the whole, Britannia rules the literary waves.

COMMENTSHERE

Last year in books

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:00:01 +0100

My previous post generated quite a bit of traffic so here by popular demand is the complete list of books and films I read and saw last year. I hope you find something you enjoy, and I welcome suggestions. The lists are in the order non-fiction, fiction, films.

Rumsey Probability for dummies
Quiggin Zombie economics
Sterling Linear algebra for dummies
Antonioni & Flynn Economics for dummies (2nd ed.)
Wallisch et al. MATLAB for neuroscientists
Crawley Statistics using R
Busmeyer & Diedriech Cognitive modeling
Wolke What Einstein told his cook
Ariely Predictably irrational
Bronson Solitary fitness
Rosenbaum MATLAB for behavioral scientists
Mitchell Complexity: A guider tour
Walford The anti-ageing plan
Bennett et al. Objective C for absolute beginners
Zuckerman The greatest trade ever
Brougthon What they teach you at Harvard Business School
Goldstein Objective C for dummies (Kindle ed.)
Wells Penguin dictionary of numbers
Blastland & Dilnot The tiger that isn’t: seeing through ... numbers
Barnes Nothing to be frightened of
Tett Fool’s gold
Churcher Beginning database design
Ball The music instinct
Nutting Learn Cocoa on the Mac
Van der Plas Simple bicycle repair
Dalrymple Learn Objective C on the Mac
Walters Hunting evil
Mark Learn C on the Mac
Galbraith The great crash 1929
Ratcliff A world in HDR
Nicolson The great silence
Koch The 80-20 principle
Chambers The last Englishman
Parks Teach us to sit still
Willetts The pinch
Christakis & Fowler Connected: The amazing power social networks
Cornish The Northumberland coast
Moran Queuing for beginners
Harford The logic of life
Earls Herd
Brooke The silent state
Scoppettuolo Aperture 3
Lee Lake district: mountain landscape
Schutze & Ferreira The state of the art in speech error research
Bacal How to manage performance
Moran On roads
Gladwell What the dog saw
Jenkins Thatcher and sons
Babatua The power of less
Horne Birdwatching watching
Rose The chemistry of life (4th)
Godin Linchpin
Vaynerchuk Crush it!
Sethi I will teach you to be rich
Wheen Strange days indeed: The golden age of paranoia
Nicolson The perfect summer
Wansink Mindless eating
Waite AA Landscape Photographer of the year 3
Waite AA Landscape Photographer of the year 2
Koren Wabi-sabi
McCollough High dynamic range digital photography
Lindstrom Buyology
Waite AA Landscape Photographer of the year 1
Reynolds Presentation Zen Design
Nightingale Practical HDR
Gallo The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs
Miles London calling
Fried & Hansson Rework
Diamond The third chimpanzee
Silvia How to write a lot
Dennett Breaking the spell: Religion as natural
Naughtie The making of music
Harford The under cover economist
Ehrenreich Smile or die
Byrne The secret
Willingham Why don’t students like school
Kalat Biological psychology 10th
Steinberg Consciousness reconnected
Smith & Tsimpli Mind of a savant
Hastings Nemesis
Hamilton-Brown The psychology of aging
Hanlon UK500: Birding in the fast lane
Elder While flocks last
Freeman The photographer’s eye

O’Kelly Chasing daylight
Christie Endless night
Jansson The true deceiver
Brand My booky wook
Boyd An ice-cream war
Kalder Lost cosmonaut
Gunesekera Reef
Hosseini The kite runner
Ondaatje Anil’s ghost
Kennedy The boat in the bay
Niffenegger Her fearful symmetry
Sam Checkout
Ransome Swallowdale
Ransome Swallows and Amazons
Lynn Insecurity
Achebe Anthills of the savannah
Woodward August
Auster Moon palace
Cartwright Leading the cheers
Lessing Alfred and Emily
Ackroyd Chatterton
Mishra The romantics
Bainbridge An awfully big adventure
Brown 1966 and all that
Child Gone tomorrow
Dyer Paris trance
Tyler The accidental tourist
Davies The element of water
Shields Dressing up for the carnival
Jean Unstolen
Maupin Tales of the city
Hawes My little armalite

Julie & Julia
Weirdsville
Zodiac
October sky
Paranormal activity
The new world
The good German
Bronson
(500) Days of Summer
21 grams
Cinderella man
The black dahlia
The counterfeiters
The taking of Pelham 123
District 9
Coraline
Inglorious basterds
Star Trek (09)
The last house on the left
The damned united
Harry Potter and the half-blood prince
Moon
Synecdoche, New York
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
10,000 BC
The curious case of Benjamin Button
Milk
Nick and Norah’s infinite playlist
Revolutionary Road
The reader
Gran Torino
Indiana Jones and the crystal skull 4
Tell no one (Ne le dis a personne)
Trans-Siberian
Disturbia
Gone baby gone
A quantum of solace
There will be blood
The Incredibles
Frost/Nixon
Defiance
Prince Caspian
Juno
Starter for ten

COMMENTSHERE

More on my life of books

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 10:22:38 +0100

It’s the start of April and I’m aware I haven’t blogged for some time. This is not the way to build up a loyal readership. But following up on one suggestion, here is a list of what I’ve read and seen so far this year.

Nonfiction
Anderson Free
Rumsey Statistics for dummies
Burleigh Moral combat
Forseth, Burget et al. Pre-calculus for dummies
Farmelo The strangest man (Dirac biography)
Sterlng Trigonometry for dummies February
Smolin The trouble with physics February
Lewandowsky Computational modeling in cognition
Ryan Geometry for dummies
Fergusson When money dies
Sterling Algebra II workbook for dummies
Sterling Algebra II for dummies
Currie Weather lore: Fact or fiction?
Berns Iconoclasts
Kruschke Doing Bayesian data analysis
Sterling Algebra 1
McMahon & Rawlinson Apple Aperture 3

Fiction and biography
McCarry The tears of autumn
Foulds The quickening maze
Priest Inverted world
Donovan Julius Winsome
Coupland Generation A
Wilson Mysterium11

Films
From Paris with love
Robin Hood (09)
The departed
The proposition
Shutter island
Heat
Death wish
Avatar
Sherlock Holmes (10)
Up in the air
Me and Orson Welles
A serious man
Julie & Julia

COMMENTS

A life of books

Fri, 4 Feb 2011 17:02:46 +0000

Although I’m not making a blog a week, i’m currently bettering a blog a month, and I think that’s better than last year.

Talking of last year, my keenest reader might remember that last year I set myself as a New Year’s resolution the goal of reading 100 books and seeing 50 films in a year. Let us not dwell on the autistic reasons why, but how did I do? I managed to read 84 non-fiction books, and 32 novels, making 116, so reaching my book target. I only managed to see 42 films though. So on balance I reached my (admittedly meaningless) target.

It was however very hard work. I could probably have squeezed a few more books in by cutting back on loitering and staring into space, but not many. If there is a point to this activity, it is to ponder how best should we use our time. Is there a limit to how much intellectual work we can do? Of course there is. I am amazed by the energy of some people; I find now (much more so than when I was younger) that after a hard day in the office I’m exhausted. I’m so tired by dealing with management emails and meetings that when it comes to relax I can’t. At 6 pm I can’t start writing that paper, and can read that book only slowly. I can’t concentrate on a whole film. I think I’m neither a particularly fast nor slow reader, and certainly if I’m going to remember any of it I couldn’t read significantly faster. (The data show that speed reading doesn’t really work; you can’t skim a page a second and remember much of it.)

I find it impossible to say what the best nonfiction books were; each is so different. Particularly memorable though were Broughton’s “What they teach you at Harvard Business School”, Nicolson’s “The great silence” on the years immediately after the Great War), Chambers’ “The last Englishman” (about Arthur Ransome, read appropriately enough beside Lake Coniston), Parks’ “Teach us to sit still” (about his prostate), Harford’s “The logic of life” (all about behavioural economics, the new hot area),
Willingham’s “Why don’t students like school” (which should be read by every teacher), and Max Hastings’ “Nemesis” (about the final years of WWII in the Pacific).

I look back at my list of fiction read and already some of the titles are losing their content! I eventually got round to reading Maupin’s “Tales of the city”, rereading Dyers’ much under-rated “Paris trance”. Kennedy’s “The boat in the bay”, and Kalder’s “The lost cosmonaut” about travelling through obscure parts of the former Soviet Union.

And here are the films I particularly enjoyed (bearing in mind I lag behind reality by a year or so): Juno, Defiance, Frost/Nixon, Disturbia, Trans-Siberian, Gran Torino, The reader, Nick and Norah’s infinite playlist, Milk, The curious case of Benjamin Button, The damned united, Star Trek (2009), Inglorious basterds, Cindarella man, 21 grams, (500) Days of summer, Bronson, Paranormal activity, and Zodiac. Most over-rated and disliked film of the year for me was “Synecdoche, New York”.

Am I a better person for all this? Don’t ask me, ask the wife.

If you managed to read more than this, and see more films, and also managed to have a life, I’d really like to hear from you, and find out how.

<REPLACE ME>

The problem with research grants

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 11:21:32 +0000

I had this letter published in the Times Higher on 4 November last year:

“Many believe that above a certain threshold of competence, the award of research council grants has become almost a lottery ("Grant award? It could be you", 30 September).
The success rate is very low; many applicants have little confidence in the review system; and researchers suspect that the quality of the reviewers has gone down, with many experienced experts too busy to examine the ever-increasing number of applications.
With just a few reviewers, one or two adverse comments, a throwaway line in a review or the unlucky assignment of your mortal enemy to your application, months or years of work can be ruined.
I suggest an alternative. Instead of a couple of experts giving detailed reviews, each application should be sent electronically to as many reviewers as possible. Each reviewer must merely grade each application from one to 10; more detailed comments would be optional. A computer would then rank the applications by arithmetical means (no need for expensive and distorting council panels) and award the applications from the top mean down until the cash ran out.
We know from work on the wisdom of crowds that pooling many judgements can deliver highly accurate estimates of underlying quality. My system would be faster, cheaper, fairer and more accurate.”
There was a bit of a response, but the research councils - or Government - haven’t leapt at implementing my proposal. The only objection mentioned to me was that this scheme would increase the possibility of stealing ideas, to which my response is that the earlier and more publicly ideas are out in the public domain, the less easy it is to steal them.

Indeed, research councils, most recently the ESRC, are going the other way, making the application, appraisal, and mechanisms of grant submission even more complex by introducing application quotas, either at individual or institutional level. The problem is that now there are too many applications - many of them very good - and too little money and time. So let’s simplify with the wisdom of crowds.

A Happy New Year to all my readers, however few of you there are. My resolution this year is to blog more regularly.

REPLACEME