How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

As you might expect from the creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams is skeptical of the value of life advice from a cartoonist, even if he is that cartoonist. Even so, Adams has had very great success in his profession, so he might be doing something right even if he has a very wrongheaded explanation of it.

That is a point Adams makes in his book How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big. Some things work even if we don’t understand them. Some beliefs help us move toward the life we want even if they aren’t correct—often even if we know they’re wrong. Adams expresses skepticism about a lot of things, and encourages his readers to use discernment, but he is willing to use what works with our without a good explanation.

One of those things is affirmations. Adams does not believe that affirmations shape the universe, or that the human mind or will or being has the ability to do such a thing. In a late chapter of the book, he speculates on why they might have some effect or, more likely, how people might convince themselves that affirmations work. In any case, Adams correlates some of his greatest successes to his use of affirmations.

Of course, Adams’ life has not been one of uninterrupted success. The title of the book acknowledges his failures. He doesn’t get hung up on them. His view was that if he learned something or gained a new skill from a failed enterprise, he still gained something. In his estimation, “every sill you acquire doubles your odds of success.”

“Odds” is a good way to put it. When it comes down to it, success is a matter of luck. Adams believes that you can take steps to improve your ability to take advantage of the luck that comes your way

The way you do this is by implementing good systems. Adams doesn’t believe in goals. You feel like a failure if you haven’t achieved your goal; you lose your motivation when you complete your goal. Systems are things you can continue doing as long as they are useful. If you do something to implement your system, you’ve succeeded. A system is anything you do regularly in improve the likelihood that you’ll be happy in the long run.

To Adams, happiness is the heart of success. If you can sustain happiness, you’re successful in the ways that matter most. He describes it as a “chemistry experiment.” The idea is that we know a lot about what makes us happy and we just need to find the right mix of elements that fits our particular needs. To be happy one needs to maximize control  over their schedule, find ways to improve skills for a long time (especially in their careers and hobbies), imagine a better future, take care of health (diet, exercise and sleep), help others, and reduce daily decision-making by creating routines.

The book includes a host of other advice. Most of this advice is told in the context of Adams’ life story. He particularly focuses on his business and career failures (from which he learned useful things), the rise of Dilbert and his battle with a unique health problem.

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

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Simple Pictures are Best by Nancy Willard with illustrations by Tomie De Paola

Toxic Success by Paul Pearsall

Adams, Scott. How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2013.

God's Equation by Amir Aczel

Amir Aczel wrote God’s Equation following the 1998 announcement of studies that indicated that we live in an open universe that will continue expanding without end. This is in contrast to theories that the universe might be closed, with gravity eventually pulling everything back in to a great collapse, or stable, with the universe continuing to expand at an ever slower rate. He attempts to show for a lay audience how these discoveries were built on the work of Albert Einstein and complex forms of geometry.

It is complex. Aczel does not dive too deep into the math. Most of his intended audience wouldn’t understand it—it is beyond any math I’ve mastered. It is rooted in Einstein’s general theory of relativity and his field equation, which describes it mathematically. Many people are familiar with E=mc². It is simple and it is fairly easy to understand what it is describing. The field equation may look fairly simple when written out, but behind it is very complex math that has complex ramifications.

I think a lay person could read this book and have no better understanding of the physics and math of our expanding universe than he did before. I’m not sure that understanding complex physics is the great value of the book anyway.

To me, the value of the book is the way it shows how science works. Aczel demythologizes the process, especially in relation to Einstein, without devaluing it or the accomplishments of leading scientists. For instance, the myth of Einstein is that he came up with the theory of relativity in an instant due to his extraordinary genius and it instantly revolutionized science.

The reality is that, even though Einstein was way ahead of his contemporaries, it took him years of effort and false starts to develop general relativity. He had help and input from other physicists and mathematicians. His work was met with skepticism. It took many years for Einstein and others to flesh out the ramifications of his theory, and for astronomers and other experimental scientist to confirm them.

Another bit of demythologizing is that Einstein wasn’t good at math. He simply wasn’t interested in math for its own sake, so he didn’t put in the effort as a student except to the degree he found it useful. Though Einstein came up with ideas with imagination that did not always depend on math, the fleshing out of his theories into sound physics required a lot of math. He applied himself diligently to mastering it, and it was quite advanced.

A physicist will seek more technical books on the subject of cosmology. Arguably a book that is nearly 20 year old may be a bit dated, too. However, I think it is still interesting history and how our understanding of the world is developed over time with imagination, diligence, debate, testing and the effort to many people.

Amir Aczel also wrote:

Chance

Descarte’s Secret Notebook

Why Science Does Not Disprove God

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

Copernicus’ Secret by Jack Repcheck

Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps: Empires of Time by Peter Galison 

The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Miss Leavitt's Stars by George Johnson

Aczel, Amir D. God’s Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999.

The Computers of Star Trek by Lois Gresh & Robert Weinberg

Star Trek fans, I’m one of them, have praised the show for the way it has anticipated technology. It used to be quite the thing to compare a flip phone to the Trek communicator.

However, have you ever watched a rerun of the show and seen something that now seems quaint, even ridiculous, especially when it comes to computers? Back in 1999, Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg published observations like this, along with a few kudos for the shows, in The Computers of Star Trek.

The book covers episodes from the original series (TOS), The Next Generation (TNG), Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the films through Insurrection. While all the series, even the more recent prequel series Enterprise, depict a technologically advance future, none are focused on technology. They are more focused on telling stories that deal with the social issues in the periods in which they were made.

Gresh and Weinberg note this: Trek computers are mainly supersized versions of the computers of the time the show is made. In some ways, the Federation computers in the show are throwbacks to 1970s and earlier era mainframes, even though smaller, networked computers were becoming the dominant model when the revival series started in the late 1980s. This continued even as the Internet emerged and became part of the popular culture.

Of course the producers of the show aren’t especially interested in how computers actually work; they want to make an entertaining TV show and sometimes explore what is going on the society around them through the lens of a fictional future. Trek is interesting in this regard because it shows the attitudes of people about computers over time. In TOS computers are regarded with skepticism: computers break down, Spock is a hacker who takes over the ship, artificial intelligences take over planets but get fried by the illogic of emotions. By the time of TNG, computers are ubiquitous and acceptable—everyone uses them—but the threat of the Borg show concerns that computers might take over our lives and cause us to be depersonalized, destroying our individual identities.

An almost 20 year old book can’t help to be out of date, and the authors inevitably miss on some predictions. For instance, in their criticism of Trek’s take on medicine (not very advanced at all except when it is practically magic), the mention Army research into smart shirts that will monitor wearers for vital signs and injuries. It was a tee shirt with sewn in sensors that could be made for $30 (in 1998 dollars). Though we now have a lot of wearable technology, hospitals, soldiers and health nuts aren’t making use of cheap tees that keep track of their status moment by moment.

I don’t bring this up to knock the authors’ predictions. It’s hard to predict the future, especially by projecting from the current state of the art. Trek writers arguably haven’t tried very hard, but the show really isn’t about technology anyway.

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

A Little History of Science by William Bynum

Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger

How to Build an Android by David F. Dufty

I Am Spock by Leonard Nimoy

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

Gresh, Lois, & Robert Weinberg. The Computers of Star Trek. New York: Basic Books, 1999.

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall

Self-help books are baloney. Psychologist Paul Pearsall didn’t go that far, but he encouraged readers of his book The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need to have a healthy skepticism about the advice and claims of self-help books. Much of the standard advice in the genre is unsupported by research and sometimes just wrong.

Pearsall’s chief criticism of self-help is its focus on the personal and individual. He argued that there is more joy and fulfillment, along with better solutions to our problems, to be found in the interpersonal and relational aspects of life.

Good relationships are largely a matter of the value you place in them. If you want to others to like you, find ways to like them first. To get love, give love. To find a partner, become someone who would be a good partner. Look for the best in others and overlook their faults. Lasting, loving relationships are based on commitment, not passing, emotional passion.

Another important aspect of Pearsall’s perspective is that there is much to be said for accepting life as it is, good and bad, instead of buying into self-help’s striving for the perfect life.

Life is never going to be perfect anyway. There is no reason to make yourself crazy trying. Instead, aim for a good life of deep enjoyment and engagement. Life is chaotic. Remain calm and learn to enjoy the messy reality. Practice mindfulness; accept the facts of life as it is, but do not passively accept the interpretation you may receive from others. You find the great pleasures and great challenges of living in thinking for yourself.

The themes of relationships and mindful acceptance run through all the chapters of the book. In addition to those areas already mentioned, Pearsall address health and work.

If you’ve read a lot of self-help, you may feel burdened by the gap between where you are and where self-help authors say you can be. Pearsall’s book may be an antidote for that. At the very least, reading it may put things in perspective and help you give yourself a break.

Paul Pearsall also wrote

The Beethoven Factor

Toxic Success

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

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Pearsall, Paul. The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need. New York: Basic Books, 2006.

Stat-Spotting by Joel Best

We are confronted with statistics in the news wherever we turn: television, radio, newspapers, magazines and the internet. It can be hard to sort out what meaning to make of the numbers, especially when there are competing statistics or interpretations.

Sociology professor Joel Best provides advice on recognizing suspicious statistics in Stat-Spotting. This is by no means a technical or mathematical guide to statistics. It is aimed squarely at the layman who is confronted by statistics in the news and from the mouths of politicians or experts.

A good place to start is with a bit of advice that Best puts toward the end of the book (this isn’t inconvenient; it is a short book). If a number seems shocking, unbelievable or far outside of what your own experience might lead you to expect, it is probably worth digging into it some more.

Not every bad statistic is the result of bad faith. By the time a statistic reaches the public, it has been through several hands. It starts with some research, which may be undertaking by a fairly neutral party or by an advocate. In either case, they have a motivation to get attention for their work. Someone has to bring a study to the attention of the media, and they may add a layer of interpretation on the statistics. Finally, reporters, editors and producers are looking for stories that are sufficiently interesting or important to draw an audience.

This is a process that can introduce mistakes, even unintentionally, and bring sensational statistics to the fore. Many of these people don’t know any more about research methods or statistical analysis that you. The math and logic of statistics, especially when it relates to probability, can be counterintuitive, and even professional researchers sometimes don’t have a solid grasp on it. Of course, some of these people are producing statistics with the intent of supporting a particular point of view.

Best points out 32 ways in which the statistics you see may have a problem. These are easy to grasp and don’t involve much if any math. He presents them in simple terms, and in each case provides an example from the news.

There are a lot of demands for our attention and action, and statistics are often cited as part of these appeals. It is helpful to approach these numbers with some skepticism. Stat-Spotting provides accessible tools for testing the reasonableness of the statistics we come across day to day.

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

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

The Johnstown Flood by David McCollough

Best, Joel. Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Statistics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008.

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Gawande, Atul. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. New York: Picador, 2009.

Many of the things in our modern world are very complex. Little things done are not done, especially by the experts who undertake some of the most complex tasks, can have significant results. Surgeon Atul Gawande suggests a solution for managing this complexity and making sure that those important, little things aren’t overlooked. His solution is the checklist.

The thread through his book, The Checklist Manifesto, is the development by the World Health Organization (WHO) of a surgical checklist. WHO wanted to reduce surgical complications, especially in the third world. The team they put together, including Dr. Gawande, eventually settled on a checklist.

It was met with much skepticism, even on the part of those who developed it. The results changed minds. Use of the checklist cut serious complications from surgery almost in half. Dr. Gawande recounts his own experiences using the checklist and how it helped him prevent and solve surgical problems.

The checklist isn’t purely a matter for medicine. A very successful user of checklists is the aviation industry.

Aviators were once like surgeons, seen as virtuosos who drew upon skill, daring and intelligence to perform their jobs. Airplanes eventually became to complex for pilots, as the book illustrates in the case of a once experimental military craft. The pilots who took on the new airplane looked for ways to succeed, and survive, where their successors hadn’t. Rather than more training or expertise, the fallback of many professionals, they looked to the checklist. Use of checklists have become standard in aviation, where it checklist making has been much refined.


An interesting chapter deals with the landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River a few years ago. Dr. Gawande praises the skill of the pilot and crew. He also points out, as the crew of the flight always have, the importance of the procedures they used, and especially the checklists that helped them to implement those procedures.

Through several examples, the outline of what make a good checklist and the cases where they work best are show. There isn’t yet and exact science to making checklists, but there is a well-developed art, which includes testing and revision.

It takes a dose of humility to accept that checklists can help highly trained professionals do their jobs better. Dr. Gawande seems to hope his fellow surgeons can show some the humility shown by pilots and allow checklist to become a tool for improving their work.

I come from a background in engineering and this makes sense to me. A procedure is designed much like anything else. If there are critical elements in anything, it is wise to reinforce them in ways that ensure their performance. The human mind is capable of amazing things, but can’t necessarily be relied on to remember to turn off the lights or stove or do any number of other little things.

I’ve also worked in the regulatory field, and seen thoughtless, narrow adherence to rules bring about undesirable results, sometime contrary to what the rules intended. This is not at all in the spirit of The Checklist Manifesto. A good checklist ensures consistency and quality while at the same time freeing the minds of its users to creative deal with the complexities of their task.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Awakening the Entrepreneur Within by Michael Gerber

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

STEM Books

I’ve reviewed 39 STEM-related books (and counting).  STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  As you may have seen in the news, there is a push to improve STEM education, interest students in STEM fields, and grow the number of workers in these fields.  The idea is that these will be the skills needed by workers of the future.  If you’re a STEM educator or a student considering a career in STEM fields, you might like to take a look at some of these books.

I’ll confess that I’m not an educator, but I think most of these books will be accessible to high school and college students, and a few to middle school students.  The list is also a reflection of my career and interests in engineering, public health, policy, and history.  Even with these biases, I think it is a good list for someone looking for STEM-related books.

How to Build an Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick’s Robotic Resurrection by David F. Dufty

I was fascinated by robots as a kid.  I enjoyed reading Isaac Asimov’s robot stories.  I longed for the Omnibot 2000 in the Sears Wishbook.

Robots have come a long way.  In How to Build an Android, David F. Dufty describes the short strange life of a very complex robot made to look and talk like science fiction author Philip K. Dick.  The robot had a very sophisticated and lifelike head and complex artificial intelligence.  As with most complex things, it was the work of many people who had to solve a lot of problems.

If you’re interested in robotics, this is an interesting nontechnical book.  In addition, you’ll get introduced to some freaky sci-fi.  You may even get as (somewhat) legitimate reason to use the word “Dickhead” (capitalized, it refers to a fan of PKD, so don’t go using it on anyone).

The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways by Earl Swift

The Interstate highway system in the United States is one of the most enormous structures built.  Some of the prospective STEM students who read this may actually be younger than the Intestate system, though in some sense it is never complete because it needs constant repair and maintenance.  The Interstates were completed in the 1990s, but the Federal-Aid Highways go back to 1916.

Earl Swift wrote an accessible history of the Interstates in The Big Roads.  If you interested in automobiles or transportation, it’s a good read.

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

Deborah Cadbury describes seven wonders of engineering in Dreams of Iron and Steel.  It covers almost a century of history, but many of the events are concentrated in the Victorian Era.  That was a time of great technological innovation.

Though the book is history, many of the structures still stand.  Railways, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Suez and Panama Canals, and Hoover Dam stand testament to an age of big engineering.

The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios

Though the memory of Professor Wragg’s sneer prompts me to not make this confession, part of my interest in science and technology came from comic books.  Iron Man was cool.  Spider-Man’s web shooters were very cool.  Superhero comics are full of fantasy, admittedly, but the strange, unrealistic science and technology they depict have inspired many to study STEM in reality.

Physicist John Kakalios uses examples from comic books to explore real physics in The Physics of Supeheroes.  Sometimes comics get there science right.  Even when they get it wrong, it can be instructive.  If you know what people are talking about when they refer to the “New 52,” you may find this book to be a great introduction to physics.

1089 and All That: A Journey into Mathematics by David Acheson

Here is another confession: I’m not especially interested in math.  I endured a lot of math classes to study engineering.  Reading David Acheson’s 1089 and All That did not require such endurance.  For one reason, it is a short book.  For another, Acheson doesn’t expect his readers to be mathematicians; it is enough to follow the outline of the math he discusses.

I recommend this book because so many people have a fear of math.  1089 can be followed by many high school students and older folks with math phobias.  Just take a deep breath, relax, and follow along as well as you can.  You’ll see that math can be interesting, useful, and even beautiful in a way.

The Brooklyn Bridge: They Said it Couldn’t be Built by Judith St. George

Judith St. George’s The Brooklyn Bridge is a short history of and iconic bridge.  Written for the bridge’s 100^th anniversary, it is also the story of the engineers who sacrificed life and health to see it completed: John Roebling and his son Washington.  John Roebling was a German immigrant who built many suspension bridges and owed a wire-making business.  He gave his son and extraordinary education in bridge engineering for the time, and before beginning work on the Brooklyn Bridge he served as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Why should a cutting-edge STEM student read about a bridge that is almost 130 years old?  It’s because we still use and rely on very successful, centuries old technologies.  Improving and rebuilding our infrastructure will be an important part of our economy.  As recently as 2010, New York City and the federal government committed $500 million to repair and repaint the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems by Henry Petroski

STEM lumps together science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  Is there a difference between science and engineering?  Is it important?

Henry Petroski, a professor of civil engineering and history and author of The Essential Engineer, believes there is an important difference.  At heart, science is about increasing knowledge.  Engineering is about invention.  Of course, new knowledge makes new invention possible.  Just as often, though, engineering runs ahead of science.  Sometimes science didn’t advance until someone invented the instruments to conduct new observations and experiments.  The invention of the microscope made possible the science of microbiology.  Steam engines were built and greatly improved before we had a modern scientific understanding of thermodynamics.  In fact, thermodynamics was to a large extent born out of desire to understand steam engines. In this sense, it is an engineering science (study of manmade things) as much as a natural science (study of natural things) or branch of physics.

Petroski’s focus in the book is the importance of engineering to policymaking, where it is often overshadowed by science.  Policy, science, and engineering play off of each other a lot.  Most of my career as an engineer has been related to government, policy, and regulatory compliance.

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

The Ghost Map by science writer Steven Johnson is the story of the birth of epidemiology.  Epidemiology is a medical science that uses statistics to help us understand how diseases operate in a population.  Using various statistical and geographic tools, long before we had computers and GIS, physician John Snow demonstrated that cholera, once a recurring plague that wiped out hundreds of thousands of people in some outbreaks, was a waterborne disease.  This understanding, initially met with much skepticism, allowed officials to intervene to prevent the spread of the disease.  For those who say of their math classes, “I’ll never us this,” here is a case where math (and science and policy) were used to make a great difference.

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose

It is not much publicized today that the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804 to 1806 had a partly scientific mission.  Captains Lewis and Clark were charges with bringing back samples of the flora, fauna, and culture of the western territories.  It was also hoped that they would find a water passage to the Pacific Ocean.  In Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose writes about the scientific mission as well as the policy, diplomacy, and commercial hopes the expedition carried.

Of course, what attracts most people to the Lewis and Clark expedition is that it was a great adventure.  There is a place in STEM fields for thoughtful adventurers and explorers. 

Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear by Jan Bondeson

A list like this deserves something strange, creepy, and more fun than you care to admit.  Right now, thousands of very young future STEM workers are catching bugs and snakes, breaking their toys to see what is inside, or staring into space with a weird expression of vacancy and concentration.

Jan Bondeson’s Buried Alive is not a morbid book.  It is sometimes humorous, especially in consideration of topic.  From a STEM point of view, Bondeson shows how knowledge accumulates over time.  The fears and activities of our forefathers may seem strange to us, but they sometimes made sense in light of what they knew.  Buried Alive doesn’t simply play off our fascination with the grotesque and death, though the book might not have been written if we lacked that fascination, I think it reminds us to approach our ancestors with a touch of grace and humility.  Maybe our progeny will show us the same courtesy.

If you’re looking for something for a younger student, check out this post→ from Joanne Loves Science or these recommendations→ from STEM Friday.  By the way, I also write about engineering, infrastructure and the environment at Infrastructure Watch.

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