The Big Con by David W. Maurer

Maurer, David W.  The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man.  1940.  New York: MJF, 2009.

Even as it was coming off the press in 1940, The Big Con was describing history.  The confidence game described by David W. Maurer had evolved with the times, opportunities, and creativity of the con men, and it surely didn’t stop evolving 70 years ago.  Even so, it’s an interesting history.

Maurer was a linguist who studied the jargon of criminals.  The book includes a glossary of terms used by con artists in the early 20^th Century.  If you want to talk like a character in a hardboiled crime story, check it out.

This study led him to the culture and methods of confidence men.  Con men were the kings of grifters. The grift involved nonviolent crimes, in contrast to the heavy rackets.  The confidence game was the highest grift because the marks would give their money to the grifter.  It was a game of intelligence and acting (and deceit) that tripped up the greedy.  Con men had to be able to mix with legitimate society and seem to fit in with people who had regular jobs, legitimate business, and money.  The appearance of respectability was so important that con men avoided the company of other criminals and cultivated associations with straight citizens (maybe just a little bent).

The Big Con is not a textbook for running a con game.  It does give you a pretty good idea of how con men worked.  Maurer concentrates on the big cons: the wire, the rag, and the pay-off.  These games all convince the mark to get involved in a crooked scheme for sure-thing bets on horses or stocks.  They give him a taste of winning, and then send him off to get all the money he can get his hands on.  When the big money is in, the scheme falls apart and everybody needs to skip town to escape suspicion.  A hooked mark is convinced he was onto something and may come back to try again.  Even if he is suspicious, he has little recourse because turning in the con men means admitting involvement in something shady and possibly criminal.

Maurer summarizes several short cons, too.  Some of these may still be around.  I saw a version of the wipe depicted on and episode of CSI: New York.  Because it was a CSI: show, the con artist was murdered; obviously not part of the plan.

The big cons are not one man operations.  Maurer describes the con mob.  He also discusses the relationship between con artists and crooked officials and other criminals.  He is interested in culture as well as methods.

Maurer comes off as having some a fascination with the con men, even a kind of admiration.  I don’t think he admired what they did.  He seemed to respect the skill it took to pull a successful con, especially to do it over and over.   The con men come off as charming, probably because they were.  They had to be charming, they had to be able to read people, and they had to recognize people who had the right combination of money and greed to make a good mark.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Man Who Loved Books too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

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150 Book Reviews Posted on Keenan’s Book Reviews

We’ve posted reviews of 150 books on this blog so far. The most recent 50 are listed below in alphabetical order by title.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
8 Minutes in the Morning for Extra-Easy Weight Loss by Jorge Cruise
Acres of Diamonds by Russel H. Conwell
Attitude is Everything by Jeff Keller
The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall
Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Changing for Good by James O. Prochaska et al
The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith
The Club of Queer Trades by G. K. Chesterton

The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense by Edward Lear
Copernicus’ Secret by Jack Repcheck
The Dangerous Duty of Delight by John Piper
The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett
Descarte’s Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel
The Difference Maker by John C. Maxwell
The Elements of Technical Writing by Gary Blake and Robert W. Bly
The Emotional Energy Factor by Mira Kirshenbaum
Fathered by God by John Eldredge
Follow Your Heart by Andrew Matthews

Genesis
The Golden Age of DC Comics by Les Daniels et al
Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary
The Hunter adapted by Darwyn Cook
Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast
The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton
Instant Self-Hypnosis by Forbes Robbins Blair
The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson
Keeping a Journal You Love by Sheila Bender
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Language and the Pursuit of Happiness by Chalmers Brothers
The Man Who Loved Books too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett
Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed
Maus by Art Spiegelman
The Mindful Way through Depression by Mark Williams et al
The Numbers behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden
The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot
The Once and Future King by T. H. White
Peace of Mind through Possibility Thinking by Robert H. Schuller
The Private Investigator’s Handbook by Chuck Chambers

Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary
The Richest Man Who Ever Lived by Steven K. Scott
The Secret of the Ages by Robert Collier
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
Triumvirate by Bruce Chadwick
Water by Marq de Villiers
The Way of the Wild Heart by John Eldredge
When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce
You Can Write a Column by Monica McCabe Cardoza
Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Additional or expanded reviews have been posted on these books:
The Amazing Adventure of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Big Necessity by Rose George
Blink by Macolm Gladwell
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont
The Emotional Energy Factory by Mira Kirshenbaum
Epic by John Eldredge
The Ghost Map by Stephen Johnson
God Wants You to be Rich by Paul Zane Pilzer
The Gospel of Luke
Gratitude by Melody Beattie
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis
How to Write Mysteries by Shannon OCork
The Joy of Supernatural Thinking by Bill Bright
Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed
No More Christian Nice Guy by Paul Coughlin (see comments)
The Numbers Behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden
One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer
The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen
Proverbs
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper
The Spirit by Darwyn Cooke
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose
The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin
Walking with God by John Eldredge
The Water Room by Christopher Fowler
Why Good Things Happen to Good People by Stephen Post & Jill Neimark
Wisdom from the Batcave by Cory A. Friedman

Additional reviews:
First 25 Reviews
Reviews 26-50
Reviews 51-75
Reviews 76-100

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer

Nicholas Meyer plays The Game. He presents his novel, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, as a found manuscript of John Watson, friend to and chronicler of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective inspired pastiches and fan fiction even during the time when he was writing the canon of Holmes stories. Meyer even mentions Doyle in the book, though in keeping with The Game, he alludes that he is something like a literary agent, helping Watson place his recollections in magazines.

The occasion of the reference to Doyle is his connection to both Watson and Doyle’s medical studies in Vienna, where most of the story is set. According to Meyer, neither the real life or fictional version of Doyle met another famous physician who resided in Vienna. That physician’s expertise in a certain specialty is the reason Watson and Holmes visit the European mainland.

After Watson marries and moves out of the Baker Street apartment, Holmes is more tightly gripped by his addiction to cocaine, the seven percent solution mentioned Doyle’s The Sign of Four and the title of Meyer’s book. Overcoming addiction was beyond the expertise of Watson and his medical colleagues, but the work of a Viennese physician gave him hope. Watson conspires with Sherlock’s brother Mycroft, and even enlists the aid of the old Holmes family math tutor Moriarty, to trick Holmes into going to Vienna to be placed in the care of Sigmund Freud.

The first half of the book deals with Holmes’ addiction and his treatment in the home of Freud. This is more interesting than some may think it sounds, and even in this section Meyer maintains the feel of a Holmes story.

In the second half, Freud’s consultation in the case of a silent patient prompts the kind of detective story you expect to see Holmes in. Freud is along for the ride and his insights prove useful to the detective. The physical side of the adventure ramps us in this part, too. The climax (can you do a spoiler alert for a 40-year-old book) is a saber duel between Holmes and the story’s villain on the top of a speeding railcar.

Meyer sticks close to the canon, though he does it by discrediting certain “disputed” stories. The long-retired Watson, dictating this after the death of his friend, admits to fabricating certain tales in order to protect Holmes’ life and reputation.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

Fic by Anne Jamison

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

Meyer, Nicholas. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974.

Rock Breaks Scissors by William Poundstone

People are terrible at producing randomness. We are very bad at recognizing it, too. In his book Rock Breaks Scissors, William Poundstone describes the ways we misunderstand randomness. In addition, he shows how knowledge of this blind spot can help us to make better decisions, or at least help us to avoid being duped by fraudster or our own minds.

The early chapters of the book describe how researchers have come to identify our biases related to randomness perception, even if we do not wholly understand it. Poundstone avoids the textbook psychology and pulls examples from interesting sources such as mass experiments in parapsychology (designed to sell radios) and a machine that beats people at a child’s outguessing game using a simple algorithm.

These experiments reveal two important things about our perceptions for randomness. First, we are almost incapable of intuitively recognizing true randomness and prone to identify as random things that aren’t. In addition, we have all manner of unconscious preferences that show themselves when we try to be random, though we’re unaware of their appearing.

The book takes its title from another child’s outguessing game: rock-paper-scissor. I risk angry comments with this description, because some people take the game very seriously. Serious players have strategies for playing the game. These strategies probably provide little advantage over advanced players, but may give you an edge over ordinary players. My own impromptu experiment seemed to confirm it. (This is another trap we fall into: seeing patterns and drawing conclusions from small data sets that may be random.)

Another way our inability to be random is used is in detecting fraud. We can expect certain sets of number to occur in certain distributions of frequency. For instance, Benford’s law describes the frequency of first digits in numbers. The most common first digit is one, and the frequency declines for each digit to nine (leading zeros are ignored for the first digit). If the distribution of first digits is different, and especially if there are thresholds that may be associated with incentives, then there may be some fudging of the number. In other cases, you might expect the frequency of occurrence to be equal, such as the last two digits of numbers. People will avoid digit pairs that don’t seem random and unconsciously favor certain pairs. An uneven distribution of these pairs could be another sign of fraud. Keep this in mind when you’re preparing your taxes.

The utility of Poundstone’s strategies varies widely. The outcome of rock-paper-scissors means little to most of us (I would not risk something I care greatly about on it). On the other hand, a patient, long-term investor might gain an edge on the market that could amount to a lot of money over time. The chapter for homebuyers might also save you a lot of money by helping you avoid an overpriced market. Use caution, though. Poundstone is pointing out how you might outguess people, because people have trouble with randomness. You’re not going to outguess the lottery because truly random things can’t be outguessed.

William Poundstone also wrote Fortune’s Formula.  If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Chance by Amir Aczel

The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot

Poundstone, William. Rock Breaks Scissors: A Practical Guide to Outguessing and Outwitting Almost Everybody. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014.

The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin

Devlin, Keith. The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter that Made the World Modern. New York: Basic Books, 2008.

The Unfinished Game is a book about math, history and how ideas can change the way we live. The title refers what is also called the problem of points. When a game of chance is ended prematurely, what is the fairest way to divide the pot?

The prevailing idea before Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat is that it is impossible to tell the future, and that made it hard rightly to divide the potential winnings. These mathematicians didn’t work out a way to predict the future, but they did figure out how to calculate the likelihood of different potential outcomes. The fair way to split the pot was in proportion to each player’s probability of winning.

Settling a debate amongst gamblers isn’t and especially important, but the concept of probability they created, along with its correct calculation, gave birth to something we do all time: manage risk. By estimating the likelihood of various events, we can make decisions generally increase our successes and reduce our losses. The insurance industry is built on understanding probability and decisions we make every day about what investments to make, what activities to undertake, even what to wear, are informed by our estimates of the probability of some future condition.

This concept of probability is common now. It can be daunting to think of how revolutionary it was at the time.

An interesting revealed in the book is how Pascal and Fermat worked out these ideas. It was through friendly correspondence. While much is made of the contentious debates and battles of ideas, much of our increase in knowledge comes from the cooperation of curious and committed colleagues. Both men were brilliant thinkers, but they weren’t haughty or difficult, though Fermat didn’t get along with everyone as well as he did with Pascal. For all the great math they considered in their letters, the correspondence is characterized by humility and grace.

Order this book here.

The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

Mlodinow, Leonard. The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. 2008. New York: Vintage, 2009.

We are bad judges of probability. When we get beyond the most simple probabilities, our intuition is terrible. It requires a rigorous logic that can trip up even professionals we might expect to know better. It can lead us to make inappropriate judgments about others and ourselves.

That is the premise presented by Leonard Mlodinow in The Drunkard’s Walk. The title refers to a random path that describes many things in nature, like Brownian motion, and society, like the stock market.

Mlodinow describes several way how and reasons why we make false assessments of probability. To begin with, we simply have poor intuition about randomness. Our brains are biased to see patterns even if one isn’t truly there. We can look into the past and piece together how we got where we are, ignoring all the ambiguities we faced at the time, but we can’t easily identify clear marker for the future. We make value judgments based on results when the results are due as much or more to random events as to the efforts of people. Worse, we make value judgments about people even when we know a result related to them is random. With each of these problems, the author presents examples from history or scientific studies.

In contrast to these problems, Mlodinow presents the sometimes counterintuitive, but more correct, views that come from using logic and statistical inference. In this manner her present several concepts of probability and statistics such as regression to the mean, the law of large numbers, Bayesian analysis, the law of errors, and normal accident theory. This isn’t a textbook, though, so the descriptions are aimed at making people aware of the power of these methods for correcting false intuitions, not training future statisticians.

In addition to these things, the book is a history of probability and statistics. Mlodinow goes back to the people who invented, developed and popularized the knowledge he is presenting. Many of these people are unusual characters. For instance, he introduces the battling Bernoullis, a family of mathematicians I was first introduced to through my background in hydraulics, who are colorful and combative enough to make an interesting subject by himself or herself. We get to meet some interesting gamblers, too.

Throughout the book, Mlodinow is building to the argument he presents in the final chapter. Namely, we should not judge people mainly by their results, whether or not they are successful or have failed, are rich or poor, are at the top or at the bottom. People with little difference in ability can have great differences in success due to random factors. We shouldn’t put too much stock in those that success or be to harsh with those who don’t.

We should take courage for ourselves, too. The more attempts we make, the more likely we are to eventually have a success.


If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Chance by Amir Aczel
The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot
The Pinball Effect by James Burke
The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin
War Against the Weak by Edwin Black

The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot

Blastland, Michael, & Andrew Dilnot. The Numbers Game. New York: Gotham, 2009.

The media is full of numbers that purport to tell us something important about our health, government programs and other things affecting life. These numbers can be confusing. Too often, they are misleading or meaningless.

The authors of The Numbers Game uncover the weakness and occasional strengths of the numbers in the news as they did on their BBC television series More or Less. However, the book is not an exposé. It’s a guide to making sense of these numbers. They provide perspective and pointers to make the numbers less confusing.


The perspective on numbers is that counting people and things related to their behavior is very difficult. People don’t fit tidily into neat categories, they move, change their minds, experience misfortunes and luck and sometimes even lie. The people who count people can have problems of their own like bias, poor methods and plain wrongheadedness. Even well meaning people and organizations call fall prey to logical fallacies. Blastland and Dilnot want you to have a healthy skepticism, but not to become cynical about the whole affair. Careful counting by people aware and respectful of the limitations of numbers can produce very useful information.

When you see numbers in the news, you can turn to the pointers to make sense of them. For instance, keep things on a human scale. When you see the huge cost of a government program, what does it cost per person or per unit of whatever is to be increased or decrease? On that scale, is it reasonable and realistic? Another tip is to remember that correlation is not causality. That two things rise and fall together (or inversely) doesn’t necessarily mean one causes the other, something else my influence both. In addition, though it seems unlikely, improbable things happen all the time.

Each of the pointers on how to understand numbers can be turned around. The people that count, make decisions based on numbers and report on numbers can do a better job by keeping numbers in perspective and making them more understandable.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
1089 and All That by David Acheson
Chance by Amir Aczel
Descarte’s Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel
Fortune’s Formula by William Poundstone
The Numbers behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden
The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin

Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan

Statistics provides of us with a power set of tools for describing things in our world and making inferences about them. They can also rely on math and logic that seems counterintuitive and they are subject to other pitfalls. Economist Charles Wheelan provides and accessible introduction into how we can use, misuse and abuse statistics in Naked Statistics.

Data is everywhere. In my life time, the falling prices and increased interconnectivity of computers have massively increased the collection of data. It can be overwhelming. At the same time, my experience as an engineer and government employee have left me frustrated with lack of data on some issue and wonder what inferences I might draw and how much I can rely on them.  Statistics provides us tools for dealing with these issues.

For instance, statistics provides us a way to summarize lots of data with a simple number such as an average (many people are familiar with sports statistics that summarize a performance of a play or team over a game, season or even a whole career). Statistics can help us find trends and estimate how much various factors may be contributing toward those trends. Even in the case where there is little data, statistics can help us evaluate the reliability of your conclusions (statistics can’t prove something definitively, but it can quantify how likely you are to be wrong).

“Statistics cannot prove anything with certainty.”-Charles Wheelan, Naked Statistics

Though he doesn’t delve too deeply into the mathematics of statistics, he shows that the math is often the easy part. Getting good data, designing experiments, constructing reasonable hypotheses, and avoiding bias present many stumbling blocks that can turn statistics into nonsense.

Not only that, people can take advantage of the weaknesses of statistics to provide persuasive support for wrong conclusions. Not everyone throwing around statistics intends to deceive, but a few do. A few just make mistakes, too. Wheelan describes many of the common mistakes people make while using statistics. This can help people new (or not new to statistics) avoid them. Possibly more important, it can help users of statistics recognize possible problems in how the statistics they use are developed or interpreted.

“Statistics cannot be any smarter than the people who use them.”-Charles Wheelan, Naked Statistics

This is not a statistics textbook. Wheelan does not delve into the details, but he does provide intuitive explanations of the concepts and simple examples. A student of statistics might find this book helpful in getting over some of the conceptual hurdles that may get in the way of understanding the rest of the material.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Chance by Amir Aczel

The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin 

Wheelan, Charles. Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from Data. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Glossary

One of the most important books in a reader’s library is the dictionary. Here are a few words I’ve had to look up in my reading or that I thought were noteworthy.

Amended March 7, 2011

A

Acheron – a river from Greek mythology over which the dead were ferried by Charon

adamantine – hard, unyielding (the last syllable may be pronounced like teen, tin or tine, which could come in handy for rhyming)

aerolith, n. – a meteor (such as on might see in the empyrean)

aliquot – an adjective that describes something that is an exact divisor, or factor
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, OneLook

For example, when you factor a number, such as 60, you find its aliquot parts, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.

angstrom, n. – unit of length equal to one ten-millionth of a millimeter (10-7 mm), mainly used to express electromagnetic wavelengths (named for Swedish astronomer Andes Johann Ångström)
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, OneLook

aprioristic, adj. – preconceived, or considered valid independent of observation or evidence

“The grid for historical interpretation is more than something that facilitates the selection and interpretation of evidence: it offers an all-encompassing aprioristic view of reality into which the phenomena of history must be made to fit, whether by fair means or foul.”

-Carl R. Trueman, Histories and Fallacies

Argus – a giant with 100 eyes from Greek mythology

C

cagoule – a hooded, weatherproof jacket
Cambridge Dictionary, TheFreeDictionary

canescent – downy, as in the whitish or grayish down on some plants
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

caul – part of the amnion sometimes covering the head of a child at birth
Dictionary.com, OneLook

celebutante – a young woman who is famous for no discernable reason (from celebrity + debutante)

cicerone – a guide for sightseers (pronounced with a long e at the end)

cloaca – a sewer
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

concertina – noun musical instrument resembling an accordion with hexagonal bellow and button-keys – verb to fold or collapse like a concertina
Dictionary.com, OneLook

crepuscular – resembling or active at twilight
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

cuprous – containing univalent copper
Dictionary.com, OneLook

curlew, n. – a shorebird with a long beak that curves down, of the genus Numenius

D

dalton, n. – unit of mass used to express the mass of atomic and subatomic particles equal to 1/12 the mass of the carbon-12 atom; another name for an atomic mass unit (named for English chemist John Dalton)
TheFreeDictionary, Encarta, YourDictionary

disembogue – pour out
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

demimonde, n. – women with wealthy lovers who have lost standing in society because of indiscretions or promiscuity; courtesans or prostitutes (an individual woman of this class is a demimondaine)
Dictionary.com

“Humiliation no longer threatens the individual who hasn’t read a book, but the one who has; reading is seen as a degrading task that may be left to a woman of the demimonde.”
-Pierre Bayard, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read

doyenne – a woman with seniority in her profession or organization (feminine form of doyen)

“Sue Carter of the University of California at Irvine is famous as the doyenne of research on this potent hormone of attachment [oxytocin], which she has studied extensively in the prairie vole.”
-Stephen Post & Jill Neimark, Why Good Things Happen to Good People

E

elegiac, adj. - expressing sorrow or mourning

empyrean – sky

“The very empyrean seemed to be a secret.”
-G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

endogenous – internally originated
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, TheFreeDictionary, Encarta

“Because the internally focused [performance assessment and evaluation] frameworks of the [community water system] sector are based on endogenous measures of performance, they narrowly asses performance in terms of core processes, which differ by [community water system].”
-Jeffrey W. Rogers & Garrick E. Louis. “A standard efficiency metric for evaluation performance of community water systems.” Journal AWWA 97.10 (2005): 79-80.

F

fissiparous, adj. – tending to split into factions

“Marxism has proved as fissiparous a philosophy as it has a political ideology.”

-Carl R. Truman, Histories and Fallacies

G

ghee – clarified butter
Dictionary.com, OneLook

glaucous - greenish blue or bluish green
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

I

inanition, n. – exhaustion from lack of nourishment; lethargy

L

lacuna – missing part (the middle syllable is pronounced like queue)

Laocöon, n. – Trojan priest who warned against accepting the horse left by the Greeks (Trojan horse); he and his sons were killed by serpent bites

lido – a beach resort or open-air swimming pool
Dictionary.com, OneLook



M

mantic – related to or having the power of divination
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

meretricious, adj. – having a flashy or vulgar allure, insincere or pretentious; characteristic of a prostitute

moue – a pout
Dictionary.com, OneLook

multitexting – the rude and dangerous activity of reading and writing text message on mobile communication devices, including e-mail message in the case of crackberry addicts, while engaged in other activities such as walking, driving, attending meetings and dining with others (from multitasking)

O

ouroborus, n. – a symbol of a snake or dragon eating its tail
Dictionary.com, OneLook

outré, adj. – unconventional or bizarre

P

patulous – spreading
Dictionary.com, TheFreeDictionary, Merriam-Webster Online, OneLook, YourDictionary

"Above the spire of St Paul’s, patulous white clouds deepened to a shade reminiscent of overwashed socks."
-Christopher Fowler, The Water Room

phenology – the study of the timing of recurring natural events
Websters, Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster


plover, n. – a shorebird having a thick neck, compact body, and pigeon-like beak, of the family Charadriidae, or a similar bird

prolegomenon, n. – scholarly preface (you can tell it is scholarly by its length)

putsch, n. – a revolt or uprising
Merriam-Webster, Encarta

R

retrosexual, n. – a man who cares little for or minimally attends to his appearance (i.e., the opposite of a metrosexual), or a man who adopts an old-fashioned masculine style (especially the suit-and-hat style of the 1950s and 1960s)
Merriam-Webster

S

sesquipedalian, adj. – multisyllabic
Merrian-Webster.com

“Do not build monuments to obfuscatory sesquipedalian tergiversation.”
-Elizabeth Slatkin in How to Write a Manual

sibilant, adj. - hissing

soidisant – self-styled, so-called, pretended (from French and pronounced in something of that style, i.e. swa-dee-zahn’)


spoor, n. – track or trail, especially of a wild animal
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster.com

“The victory always lies in our hunger for the spiritual intimacy of our union with Christ. In some since it is more than a hunger, it is a stalking—pursuing God as a safari tracks the spoor of big game”
-Calvin Miller, Into the Depths of God

stoat – the European ermine, Mustela erminea
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

suspire, v. – to utter with sighing breaths
Wordnik.com, Yahoo! Education

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame:
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
-T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

syncretistic, adj. – attempting the reconciliation of opposing principles, practices or parties

“Catholicism’s commitment to the developing cult of the saints was surly one of its great strengths during the church’s massive expansion during the fourth and fifth centuries, and the winning strategy of a somewhat syncretistic pattern of handling folk religion right down into the fifteenth century.”

-Carl R. Trueman, Histories and Fallacies

T

tergiversation, n. – a constantly changing, unclear or misleading opinion or attitude
OneLook.com



threnody, n. – a song of lamentation
traduce, v.t. – to speak maliciously or falsely, to slander or defame

V

viridescent – greenish
Dictionary.com, OneLook

vulpine – fox-like
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online


W

whinge, v. – to cry, to complain, to whine
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster

X

xanthic – yellowish
Dictionary.com, Dict.org, The Free Dictionary, Webster’s Online, Your Dictionary

The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions by Andrew Hacker

In the last decade or two, many have called for increased education in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math). As an engineer, I may hear more of it than others, or perhaps I am more attentive to it. Math, particularly algebra, trigonometry and geometry, has been seen as a foundation of STEM education with much support from the tech industry that has made it central to the Common Core curriculum used in the majority of states. However, this math requirement has become a stumbling block for many on the road to high school and college graduation. As when I was in school, students ask, “Am I ever going to need to use this?” The answer political scientist (and sometimes math professor) Andrew Hacker proposes in The Math Myth is no.

"This country has a problems. But more math is mathematics is not one of the solutions,” Andrew Hacker, The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions

 One of the first myths that Hacker tackles is this issue of the usefulness of algebra and other higher math for STEM careers or adult life in general. Most people never need anything more advanced than arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), including most scientist, technicians and engineers. In the 25 years since I graduated from engineering school, I have never need to solve a differential equation. Easily 80 percent of the math I do is arithmetic—possibly more. The rest is basic algebra and basic statistics. On the rare occasion I’ve needed some more esoteric piece of math, I’ve learned or relearned it on the job.

 In spite of this, the move in the U.S. has been to require four years of high school math through Algebra II or beyond, plus a college level course in algebra or more advanced math. This applies even to students who plan to study liberal arts, humanities and other subjects that make practically no use of math. This requirement is the number one academic reason people do not complete high school or college (there are other reasons, of course, but they are not related to a required class or subject). Even youth form affluent families with educated parents can find algebra to be an insurmountable hill. Hacker wonders how much human potential goes undeveloped because educational opportunities are denied to people who do not need math beyond arithmetic, but must pass an algebra course to get their diploma or degree.

 Why is math, and especially algebra, a near universal requirement? Hacker points to college math professors and their influence on lower level curricula. They want prospective students to be prepared to move to the advanced subjects they study, though only on percent of undergraduates major in math, and that drops lower in graduate schools. These same professors almost never teach the entry level (and especially not remedial) math classes in their own colleges. For colleges generally, math can be a weed-out course. Even if most students don’t really need algebra, the requirement is a quick way to knock down the number of students. (As an engineering student, my fellows and I understood the sequence of calculus and math-heavy physics classes required of us as freshmen and sophomores was a way of persuading us to study something else—I almost did.)

 Tech companies also call for a math intensive education and lots of STEM graduates. Hacker points out that, in spite of the hype, there are actually not that many STEM jobs in the U.S., nor is there a lot of growth in these fields. A glut of STEM graduates, in addition to the foreign tech labor market opened up by H1-B visas, keeps wages low in the tech sector. If there was an actual shortage, employers would respond with increased wages. Computer programmers don’t use much math and great majority of them don’t earn high salaries. Sadly, the same is increasingly true in engineering. My advice to someone interested in an engineering career would be to pursue it if you find the work interesting, but don’t do it with the expectation that you’ll get a high salary or rise quickly because of the demand for your technical skills.

 I’d like to mention one more thing that Hacker brings up. Though the math people learn in school often has no practical utility in their work or daily life, people have a knack for math and often do complex mathematical things as part of their jobs. Hacker uses the example of a carpet layer, but I have seen it in machinists, carpenters and other skilled laborers. The use and shape materials in ways that require some complex math, but they don’t write out a page full of equations. They instead apply tools and methods they have learned on the job. I’m a little fascinated by some of this tool-based, mechanical math, and it seems to be just as effective and more understandable that school math, especially since very few of us aspire to study math for its own sake.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Numbers behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden

The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin

 Hacker, Andrew. The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions. New York: The New Press, 2016.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner look into the unexpected relationships between aspects of our society in their book Freakonomics. They not particularly interested in the things you might expect economists to write about such as business, markets or investment. Instead, they look at cheating, crime, expertise and parenting.

There is no particular theme of the book, except possibly that common explanations and expectations are often off the mark. Levitt and Dubner are skeptical of conventional wisdom and expertise. They are interested in data and what questions can properly be put to that data.

They sometimes come to conclusions that some might find disturbing or troubling. For instance, they trace the drop in crime rates in the 1990s to the legalization of abortion in the 1970s. Many of the women who had abortions in the wake of Roe vs. Wade were poor, had low education, or very young. All of these traits in the parents tend to produce worse outcomes for children, including a higher likelihood of committing crime. As the first post-Roe cohort of children reached their teen years in the 1990s, there were fewer who had been raised in those conditions that may have pushed them into crime, and therefore fewer budding criminals and a decline in crime rates.

Reading this made me think of the arguments of eugenicists. They believed that a host of social ills, including crime, could be mitigated by keeping the unfit people from reproducing. To the eugenicists, unfit was essentially equivalent to nonwhite, though it also extended to the feebleminded (a disease a eugenically-minded psychiatrist or psychologist might have found in any poor, uneducated person). The eugenicists saw intelligence, criminality, poverty and host of other features as fixed and hereditary. Limiting the reproduction of the unfit through abortion or sterilization would reduce and eventually eliminate poverty and crime.

Of course, Levitt and Dubner are not eugenicists. Nor do they propose abortion as means to reduce crime. Crime does not have its roots in race or intelligence. It is strongly tied to poverty and low education. Charles Dickens chilling portrayed Ignorance and Want in A Christmas Carol, and they are still a threat to all of us.

Each chapter reveals an interesting twist on some subject, though few are as potentially charged as that on crime. In another chapter, the authors show that crime does not pay, except for those at the top, on unlike in a corporation. In spite of faddish thoughts on the issue, parents matter, though maybe not in the ways we’d like to think.

My previous reading has inclined me to focus on the darkest part of the book, but the overall tone is conversational and light, though the authors are not flippant about serous subjects. They are not technical either. Their use of statistics is straightforward. They do not delve deep into theory, though they focus much on the central theory of economics that people respond to incentives.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Better for All the World by Harry Bruinius

The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

How We Got Here by Andy Kessler

The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot

The Peter Principle by Laurence J. Peter & Raymond Hull

War Against the Weak by Edwin Black

Levitt, Steven D., & Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: William Morrow, 2005.

Pascal's Wager by James A. Connor

Blaise Pascal had a great impact on mathematics. He laid the foundations of our mathematical understanding of probability. A computer programming language was named for him.

Pascal was also a deeply religious man and philosopher. His book Pensées is read as a devotional by many Christians. His argument that the belief in God is rational is widely known.

James A. Connor takes the name of that argument for the name of his biography of the man, Pascal’s Wager. Connor considers both Pascal’s life in science and math and his religious convictions.

For many, there is no conflict in scientific study and religious devotion, but there was for Pascal. He was a Jansenist, though somewhat at odds with the leaders of the movement because of his interests in science and philosophy. The Jansenists were deeply concerned with sin and living a life of penitence; to pursue anything else was to embrace worldliness. Pascal loved the discoveries he made by reason and experiment, but he also longed for a life of purity and closeness to God.

Pascal was seen as a bit of a mathematical prodigy, especially in his youth when his father led a secular life by the standards of the day. He published a pamphlet on conic sections when he was 16 years old. He invented a calculating machine, the Pascaline, when he was 19. He was still fairly young by modern standards when he developed a theory of probability in a series of letter he exchanged with Pierre Fermat.

He had a mystical experience in 1654 that changed his focus in life. He told know one about it, but wrote a note about it that he kept pinned in his coat to carry with him the rest of his life. The note was discovered by his nephew shortly after his death.

After his experience, he devoted more of his time to supporting Jansenism, which his entire family had come to follow, especially his sister, Jacqueline, a nun. Jansenists were in conflict with other Catholics over their views on original sin and election, especially with the Jesuits. Pascal became an apologist for Jansenism, and especially mocked the Jesuits in The Provincial Letters.

Politics and religion were deeply linked in 17^th Century France, and the conflict between Pascal’s sect and the wider French Catholic church became a conflict with Louis XIV. He felt that the Jansenist leaders capitulated to the king and the Jesuits, which brought him into conflict with them as well.

Though religious debates had been part of his entire life, this heating up of the conflict to such a level occurred toward the end of his life. He expressed his devotion to God in self-imposed poverty and care for the poor; which in one case took the form of establishing the first public transportation system. He did not abandon math, though, and published a paper on the cycloid as well. He had been sick most of his life and passed away in 1662 at the age of 39.

Connor’s book is approachable for most readers. Though Pascal’s fame today probably rests more on his accomplishments as a mathematician, Connor shows how his life was shaped by his religion and both the religious and secular traditions of his time (Connor is a former Jesuit priest).

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Chance by Amir Aczel

The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg

The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

On a Grander Scale by Lisa Jardine

The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin

Connor, James A. Pascal’s Wager: The Man Who Played Dice with God. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006.