The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Modern life presents us with too much stuff and too much information to deal with. In The Organized Mind, psychologist Daniel J. Levitin explains how we can work with our mind, instead of against it, to handle information and make better decisions.

Attention is the critical resources for taking in information, making good decisions, and forming memories. The difficulty is that we only have so much attention to go around. Our attentional systems work to make us unconsciously ignore many of the signals that come our way; we would be overwhelmed if they did not. Our built in systems pay attention to change or to things that seem important. Our natural state is to have a wandering mind, broadly attentive to the environment, screening out the stable and safe, occasionally zooming in on something novel or critical.

We can also use the executive functions of our mind to focus attention where we want it. This can consume a lot of energy, but we can do it very effectively, sometimes focusing to the point where we lose track over everything else.

Both forms of attention have their strengths and limitations. In addition, it is costly to our attention bank to switch between modes or to switch focus from one subject to another. The load of information that we have to deal with can exhaust our attentional system, leading to inattention, poor memory, and bad decisions.

Levitin offers solutions to alleviate these problems and work with the strengths of our brains. The primary suggestion is to offload as much information as possible to the environment. The less we have to remember, and the fewer minor decisions we have to make, the better off we’ll be. Highly successful people use systems of habits, calendars, filing, labels, and standards to minimize the amount of information they have to carry in their memories. It is often not so important to know something as it is to be able to find it when you need it.

A related concept is to use categories and chunk up information. Our minds do this naturally. For instance, we typically don’t remember a telephone number as seven digits, but as two chunks of digits. We can apply a chunking strategy by breaking large jobs into doable tasks, or be grouping related tasks together. We can create scenes or stories in our mind (we do it anyway) to connect a string of events. Sleep seems to be important our natural chunking process, consolidating memories, connecting new information to old, and formulating new concepts.

Levitin presents many tools to organize information and things to make it easier on our brains. In my opinion, one of the most helpful tools is the fourfold table. This is a simple method to organize statistical information and assess the probabilities of certain outcomes. We have horrible intuition for understanding probabilities and assessing risks. Even people trained in statistics typically get probabilities wrong when they guess. The fourfold table, which Levitin describes in some detail with examples, allows one to break down the numbers and evaluate the most relevant probabilities.

The Organized Mind is not a how-to manual, though it has many strategies for organizing based on how the brain works. Levitin discusses the structure and function of parts of the brain, but is not excessively technical. A reader could skim these sections without too much loss. A reader could also focus on a particular aspect of organizing (business, time, and even social life) based on the way the book is organized, though the first few chapters have a lot of information that is background for the other sections.

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

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

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

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

The Thinking Life by P. M. Forni

Levitin, Daniel J. The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in an Age of Information Overload. New York: Dutton, 2014.

How to Write & Present Technical Information by Charles H. Sides

Sides, Charles H. How to Write & Present Technical Information. 2nd ed. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx, 1991.

How to Write & Present Technical Information is a brief, informal, informative guide to communicating technical information in a variety of formats. It’s for anyone who writes or presents technical information as part of their work, including, but not limited to, technical writers. Its main audience is workers in high-tech industries, but the principles are applicable to most technical information.

This book differs from some other guides to technical writing in its emphasis on audience analysis. It devotes a chapter to the subject and revisits it several times throughout. Using the recommended questions, one can profile an audience and decide what should be included or left out of a document or presentation and how to present it.


Organization is also a major issue in the books and several ways of organizing technical information are presented. Many of the chapters apply organizing principles to particular types of documents.

A variety of documents is covered in this short book. These include technical documentation, user guides, papers, articles, memos, specifications, procedures, proposals, reports, and product descriptions. It also covers the use of graphics in written documents and visual aids in presentations.

The importance of grammar is discussed, but only a few common grammatical problems are discussed. If readers are looking for a detailed guide to issues of grammar and punctuation, they’ll need to turn to a stylebook.

Though grammar and punctuation is glossed over, editing is covered in some detail. The author recommends a process of editing in layers beginning with the organizational logic (do the ideas flow and make sense?). From there, an editor moves in order to the mechanical development of topics (is the structure of parts, paragraphs and sentences correct, and does it work?), style (is it appropriate and varied?), and manuscript quality (is it orderly and clear, with enough good headings?). Proofreading is tackled last because there is a temptation to think that all the editing is done when the proofreading is done, but proofreading alone may overlook larger problems with a manuscript.

The author draws on his own experience as a technical writer and teacher of technical communications. His experience is the source of several examples and illustrations.

As you might expect from a book that is almost a decade old, some of the references to technology and software are dated. However, the principles of clear communication are the same, which makes this book hold up as a reference.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Elements of Technical Writing by Gary Blake and Robert W. Bly
How to Write a Manual by Elizabeth Slatkin

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. New York: Back Bay, 2007.

We make a great number of snap judgments regarding very complex issues and often these decisions are better than we might have made with much analysis. Gladwell is interested in how this counterintuitive situation could be.

The key is what Gladwell calls thin-slicing. We can make good decisions with very little information because our unconscious mind has a knack for identifying and using the information that make a difference. Too much information may even be a detriment to good decision-making because it obscures the important details.

Blinks are often good decisions, yet they can fail. There are times when the unconscious can make bad decisions. Often this is because the unconscious is biased with misinformation; Gladwell discusses a test for hidden racial bias in which even he, with a Jamaican mother, showed preference for whites. This test and others show that stress and lack of time can reduce the unconscious’ ability to make good decisions; it’s fast but not instant. The unconscious also isn’t so good at decisions where there are relatively few factors to consider and the stakes are low; conscious analysis does better then.

Understanding snap judgments and how they work, even if the details are hidden from our conscious minds, allows us to improve our decision making. First, we can recognize areas where our snap judgments are weak or strong and arrange to use the most appropriate type of thinking. Second, we can inform our unconscious minds. We can train ourselves to make better snap judgments. Gladwell demonstrates this through the informed, but quick and largely unconscious, judgments of experts.


In the afterward to the 2007 edition of the book, Gladwell calls for action, or at least reflection, base on the concept of the blink. One area was the disparity of conviction and imprisonment of blacks and whites. He tells the story of how screens that block musicians from judges resulted in more women breaking into major orchestras. People couldn’t hear the important evidence of a performer’s musical skill and talent once they had seen she was a woman and unconscious bias tainted their judgment. Likewise, programs that attack conscious prejudice may have little impact on unconscious racial bias, and to hide the race of defendants from juries might actually help them make better decisions by eliminating information that is less relevant.

Scan Artist by Marcia Biederman

When I want to find some information, I can pull my cell phone out of my pocket and search for it using Google (or some other search engine, but probably Google). I can remember a time when that was not an option. If the information I needed wasn’t in the dictionary or encyclopedia I had at home (which was already of date in some areas), I’d have to go to the library for additional references or—heaven forbid—the morgue of a newspaper office. Getting useful information was not a trivial affair. The generation before mine that saw a pre-Internet explosion of printed information after World War II especially felt the difficulty of keeping up. Evelyn Wood was there with an answer; Marcia Biederman tells her story in Scan Artist.

Evelyn Wood did not invent speed reading. She did not even like the term. However, for decades her name and face was more strongly associated with it than any other person. Though she built her reputation on being a school teacher, she never was not a regular classroom teacher (she was a school counselor) and she was not a reading specialist. She had a master’s degree in speech, earned under the direction of a professor who a studied theater.

Theater may be the lens for looking at Wood’s career. She started writing and staging plays when she was in high school and a college undergraduate. Many of these had religious themes related to her Mormon faith. When she was in Germany, where her husband served as president of the Mormon mission in Frankfurt as the Nazis began their aggressions, she fell in love with the opera and cajoled her way into back stage of the opera house. She began bringing what she learned of stagecraft into her own productions.

Back in the U.S. the Woods put Evelyn’s theatrical skills to work as lecturers on their European experience. They changed their focus as American sentiments shifted from Germany to Britain. They also put a pretty heavy spin on the Mormon relationship with the Nazis and greatly embellished the dangers they face leaving Germany.

Evelyn Wood’s success as a seller of her speed-reading system was largely built on such theatrics and embellishments. She claimed student could read thousands of words per minute; the faster one read the better their comprehension. (The fastest people can actually read is about 900 words per minute. Anything faster is skimming, and comprehension suffers when one skims). She managed to get endorsements from senators and she encouraged, or at least never corrected, the misconception that she was tied to John F. Kennedy and his reportedly fast reading speed. (Ted Kennedy took her course as a senator, and staffers in the Kennedy, Nixon and Carter administrations took the course, including Jimmy Carter himself, though Wood was not the teacher.)

The company she started changed hands and business models several times. A lot of money was made with her name and methods, and in the sale and resale of the company, but the Woods received only a small portion of it. Even so, she was ready to promote herself, her methods and the company that still paid her a consulting fee. She slowed down, but continued to make appearances and accept interview requests even after suffering cancer and a stroke.

While one may sympathize with her, especially in her illness later in life, the Evelyn Wood presented by Biederman is not easy to like. The Wood adopted a teenage girl largely to have a live-in nanny for their natural daughter when they moved to Germany; they never really acknowledge their adopted daughter or even saw her much once she was an adult. Wood was in some ways a con artist who played on the insecurities of her marks, some who were never knocked in spite of the mounting evidence that her program was at best an overprice lesson in skimming.

Wood found a way to take advantage of the insecurity of her day. She built a brand on it. While primarily a biography of Wood, Scan Artist reveals interesting things about America of the time and the obsession with self-improvement. It has not disappeared. Speed-reading apps still claim to greatly increase both speed and comprehension. TED-talkers claim to read a book or more a day. The Internet makes it easy to acquire a shallow knowledge of almost anything quickly, so perhaps people have become satisfied with what they can learn from skimming hundreds of books a year. Deep learning and understanding remains slow and effortful.

Biederman, Marcia. Scan Artist: How Evelyn Wood Convinced the World that Speed-Reading Worked. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2019.

Double Your Brain Power by Jean Marie Stine

In Double Your Brain Power, Jean Marie Stine doesn’t tell you how to make your brain more powerful. She tells you how to get more out of the power your brain already has.

There are five major areas of brainpower covered by the book: learning, memory, reading, listening and thinking. Under each part, a few short chapters introduce specific techniques for improving performance.

I was particularly interested in the chapter on reading. I read a lot for pleasure and work. If I can get my work reading out of the way more quickly, I’ll be able to manage my other duties better. If I can read more books, I’ll be able to post more reviews on my blog. I’ve picked up some books on speed-reading and found the techniques to be so tedious that I never followed through on developing the skill. Stine doesn’t try to teach speed-reading. Her focus is on reading smarter, getting the information you need without reading every word, and remembering the important information. The techniques probably won’t help you get through Moby Dick in a day (though they might get you through it faster than if you didn’t use them), but they probably will help you plow through the paperwork, memos, and reports that come across your desk.

I also paid close attention to the chapter on memory. If you’ve read books on mnemonics, you’ll have seen some of the techniques Stine includes. The down side of mnemonics is it takes time and effort to be good as using the techniques. Fortunately, this is not the only, or even the primary, thing in the chapter.  There are effective, and easily mastered, methods for remembering better that Stine includes.

There are recurring themes that apply to many areas of brainpower. Be attentive. Relax because your brain works better when you relax. Believe you can do better and have a firm intention of improving. Focus and concentration improve all areas of brainpower. Make connections to the things you want to learn and remember, both to things you know and to your personal experiences. Use your feelings as well as you thoughts. Review important information.

Double Your Brain Power is almost a model how-to book. It focuses on specific areas one may want to improve and skills for making those improvements. Stine built some of the skills she teaches into the structure of the book, especially reviewing. The reviews are very brief, so the book does not seem repetitive. Illustrative stories are few, brief, and directly related to the skills discussed.

This structure lends itself to including a lot of information and to brevity. I find that to be a very good quality in a nonfiction book.

In addition, Stine follows the old adage about speaking or teaching: “Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them.” This is not as bad as it sounds. Stine does not linger on introductions and reviews. They serve their purpose of reinforcing the major points briefly.

Double Your Brain Power does not have a great deal of original concepts, and the author readily acknowledges when ideas or techniques are adapted from others sources. The advantage of this book is that it brings many useful skills together, gets to the point and describes them briefly.

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

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Stine, Jean Marie. Double Your Brain Power. 1997. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2000.

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

Have you ever wondered about those people who can remember names, phone numbers, birthdays and odd facts with ease? Some people have prodigious memories. How do they do it?

Joshua Foer began to ask these questions when he covered the 2005 U.S. Memory Championship for Slate. Within a few minutes, the mental athletes at this event could memorize a poem, a deck of cards or a thousand random numbers. A year later, he returned to that event as a competitor, and he won. Walking with Einstein is Foer’s recounting of his year of training in memory techniques and his exploration of the meaning of memory.

This book is not a manual on memory techniques, though Foer briefly describes them. You can find them described in more detail elsewhere. Many of the techniques are ancient, or elaborations on ancient techniques. The discovery of the primary technique is attributed to Simonides, a Greek poet who lived about 500 years before Christ. After the collapse of a banquet hall, which he narrowly escaped because he stepped out to greet a messenger, he discovered he could picture in his mind where every guest had been seated, and was able to identify the location of the bodies. Later authors built upon this idea of a “memory palace,” and it was widely used before the invention of printing.

The basic idea is simple. We have amazing capacities to remember locations and images, so just tie things we want to remember to an image and place. First, pay attention to what you want to remember (it may only take a second). Next, form a memorable image that will remind you of the thing you want to remember. The more outrageous the image is the better it will work. Serious mnemonists develop systems of images. Finally, “place” those images in a memory palace, preferably some real place you know very well. It turns out that the main thing may be the attentiveness all of this technique requires and the multiple paths to remembering you create.

Like Foer, I was disappointed that feats mental athletes perform are not things I want to do. I’d like to be better at remembering names, but all I may need to do to improve is pay attention. I’d like to be able to remember passages of text, but this is very difficult even using mnemonics.

The more interesting thing in the book turns out to be Foer’s exploration of the place of memory in our history and culture. In an age before books, and especially before indexed books, it was very difficult to store information anywhere outside of memory. Even if you read something on a scroll, it would not be easy to find it again. If you wanted quick access to something, you needed to memorize it. People would intensely study the few texts they had and got to know them very well, possibly memorizing them entirely.

Books made accessing information much easier and therefore remembering less important. The Internet has made tons of information accessible in an instant. We have shifted away from valuing intensive study to valuing extensive study, or being widely read. We don’t know as deeply, but we know how to access information for a variety of places.

Memory is not a valueless art in our age. Memorizing techniques engage the imagination to create memorable images. In reverse, our memories are the feedstock of our imaginations. Our creativity, innovation, and invention draws upon the things we remember and the many connections we form between memories. For a creative mind to invent, it needs to be stocked with useful memories.

Similarly, memory has value in defining ourselves. Who we are as an individual is largely defined by our habits and memories. In a sense, the more we remember, the fuller are our lives. Shared memories are part of how we relate to others, and shared knowledge is important to culture.

I started reading this book with an interest in improving memory. My takeaway ends up being that I want to be more attentive to life. I want to form the most vivid memories I can of the people and events that are important to me.

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

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard

Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

If you want to improve you memory, you may also be interested in a fish oil supplement.

Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. New York: Penguin, 2011.

Google

The Private Investigator’s Handbook by Chuck Chambers

Chambers, Chuck. The Private Investigator’s Handbook. New York: Perigee, 2005.

Chambers pulls back the curtain on private investigation with instructions for the do-it-yourself investigator. He also provides advice to those seeking to protect their privacy and their assets.

That is an interesting aspect of the book. In one chapter, Chambers will reveal the techniques of investigations. In the next, he’ll describe how to protect yourself from investigators. He doesn’t assume an investigator is the person in the right and the investigated is up to know good. Some one might take up an investigation to seek justice or to exact revenge, steal an identity and harass an enemy.

Many might be interested in how to protect their identity and assets. Even if you don’t need to go as far as Chambers suggests you can, you might still be surprised at the number of ways you give out your identifying information when you don’t have too. You may not need to hide anything or trip up investigators, but you don’t need to make things easier for identity thieves.

You might also be surprised about how much information about a person you can collect from public records. If you have internet access, plenty of time and a little bit of money, you can get a lot of information about a person. Finding key pieces of information opens the door for a lot more.

The tone of the book is surprisingly light, sometimes tongue-in-cheek. For instance, the first chapter is entitled, “How to Catch the Cheating Bastard.” Chambers isn’t flippant, but the occasional touch of humor and examples from his own investigations makes the serious material readable.



Chambers is careful to point out what is within the grasp of amateurs, when to call in the professionals and when to call the police. He is careful to steer reader away from activities that are illegal those some may find to be shady like pretext work (i.e. lying).

Living Low Carb y Johnny Bowden

If you are overweight and having trouble losing the extra pounds (or keeping them off), there is a good chance that carbohydrates are your problem. In Living Low Carb, nutritionist Johnny Bowden describes the link between carbohydrates, insulin and fat storage. (I previously summarized this relationship in my review of Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes.)

 Bowden lays this information out very thoroughly in a way that will be accessible to most readers. What he adds is a lot of information on how to implement a low-carb diet that works for you.

 One way he does this is by reviewing 23 diet books and programs. Not all are strictly low-carb, but all limit carbs more than the typical American diet, and Bowden feels they are good blueprints for generally healthy eating. He rates most of the programs highly. The book has been through several editions, so he has weeded out the lesser programs.

 Part of his review of each is his ideas about who might benefit most from the program. Everyone is different, especially in their lifestyles. An otherwise sound program that is a poor fit for your life and personality is going to fail. Bowden’s advice will help you had off a false start.

 He provides a lot of advice that will be helpful for any low-carb diet you may pursue. In addition to the books reviewed, he provides a lot of other references. Some of these are cookbooks. I think this is great. If you want to eat differently, you need ideas about what to eat. I intend to check out some of the cookbooks he recommends.

 Bowden pulls his information from a lot of nutrition and medical research, but his style is conversational and easy to understand. Readers can expect to be informed about carbohydrates and how they affect our bodies and health, especially related to weight., without being overwhelmed by technical terminology and figures.

 Bowden, Johnny. Living Low Carb: Controlled-Carbohydrate Eating for Long-Term Weight Loss. New York: Sterling, 2013.

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

Hari Seldon used mathematics to study psychology and society. He developed the science of psychohistory, which he would use to predict future social, economic and political trends. This was utter science fiction when I read Foundation in high school, and doubly so in the 1940s when Isaac Asimov was writing and publishing the stories that would eventually become the novel. (By the way, psychohistory now refers to the application of methods from psychoanalysis to the study of history and social sciences.)

We’ve come a long way. Computers are much more powerful and many of us carry a networked computer around in our pockets much of the day. The computers record a lot of information about us, especially how we use them, and are crunching the numbers so people can anticipate our wants and influence our behaviors.

Stephen Baker gives us a glimpse into that world in his book The Numerati. “Numerati” is Baker’s term for the mathematicians, computer scientists and other math-literate scientists and professionals who are trying to use numbers and equations to describe and predict human behavior.

This type of analysis has applications in many areas. As you might expect, stores, marketers and advertisers are using it to try to sell us stuff. Not only are they trying to persuade us, they are segmenting the market to try to get the highest prices they can for their products from each buyer (and spend less time dealing with die-hard bargain shoppers).

Similarly, politicians are using this type of analysis to reach swing voters. Companies are trying to get the most out of workers.  Health insurance companies are seeking to minimize exposures to risk. Law enforcement is getting all the information it can lay hands on to try to find the terrorist lurking in our midst (finding a needle in a haystack may be easier).

That sounds sinister, and Baker has reservations about the benefits of us sharing so much information, but there are opportunities for those of us who are not numerati, or can’t afford a staff of mathematicians to do our bidding. The numbers that show which workers are most productive could be turned around to help us show our value and potential win a raise or promotion. The numbers that show minute changes in our behavior might help us diagnose and treat diseases earlier and less expensively, or help us live more fully with chronic diseases. They might even match us with a soul mate.

Though science and technology have advanced in the decade since this book was published, the data sciences Baker described are still new. Some of the things we see being done with computers on television or film are still new concepts that don’t work nearly as quickly or accurately as depicted. However, people are working every day to make these technologies better.

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

Chance by Amir Aczel 

The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

Fortune’s Formula by William Poundstone

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

How to Build and Android by David F. Dufty 

The Numbers behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden

The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot

Rock Breaks Scissors by William Poundstone

Baker, Stephen. The Numerati. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.

Future Bright by Martin E. Martinez

Higher intelligence is linked to higher achievement. The demands of our world and culture are calling for higher achievement to address increasingly complex problems. As individuals and societies, we should strive to increase intelligence, which is possible, to arm ourselves to overcome these challenges. This is the opinion advanced by education professor Martin E. Martinez in his book Future Bright.

Martinez builds his case by starting with the link between intelligence and achievement. He cites studies that indicate that in school, work, and personal life, achievement is positively correlated to intelligence.

He moves on to describe what intelligence is, drawing on historic and current theories and research. A significant portion of the book is devoted to defining and understanding intelligence. The prevailing model is hierarchical. A single general intelligence is linked to achievement in all areas. There are also different types of intelligence that are linked to success in clusters of specific skills. Intelligence is affected by both genetics and the environment, and by both individual and cultural factors. If you are looking for a primer on intelligence that covers a lot of ground relatively briefly, you can find it in these chapters.

The hope that Martinez offers is that intelligence is, in part, learned, and it can be increased. Two major types of intelligence, most strongly related to general intelligence, are fluid and crystalline intelligence. Fluid intelligence is related to successfully dealing with novel situations. The heart of fluid intelligence is problem solving.  Crystalline intelligence is structured knowledge, such as is attained from formal education. It is not merely an accumulation of facts; it is an organized mental repository of useful information. The primary skill for crystalline intelligence is critical thinking, the ability distinguish credible, worthy, and useful ideas.

Problems solving and critical thinking are skills that can be learned and improved. Similarly, we can learn new information. By these means fluid and crystalline intelligence, and with them general intelligence, can be increased.

Intelligence is not the only determinant of success, for many intelligent people are not successful. Another important factor is what Martinez call “effective character.” These are personality traits that Martinez suggests can be learned or improved in most people. The critical trait is conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is associated with setting and pursuing goals, working with diligence, and seeking excellence.

Martinez offers several strategies for increasing intelligence. One that is in keeping with the motivation behind this blog is to increase crystalline intelligence (structured knowledge) by reading books. A work as long a book must be structured well to be coherent from beginning to end. In addition, effective written communication presents ideas in a manner that lends itself to analysis by critical thinking. Nonfiction books are especially useful for cultivating crystalline intelligence.

Though the strategies are aimed at the individual, he discusses how some of them are adaptable to parenting and schools. Because Martinez in the early chapters suggests societal benefits to higher intelligence, it makes sense that his book would also include suggestions for policy and cultural adaptions.

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

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

Double Your Brain Power by Jean Marie Stine

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

How to Build an Android by David F. Dufty

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

No Excuses by Brian Tracy

One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Martinez, Martin E. Future Bright: A Transforming Vision of Human Intelligence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Bibliography

I notice Man vs. Fiction has posted a bibliography of the books reviewed on the blog so far.  I typically include bibliographic information with all my reviews.

Is bibliography important?  I think it is a matter of context.

In academic or research settings where it is important to produce verifiable results, it is important.

In a context like this blog, it is not very important.  One can find a book pretty easily online or on a library’s computerized catalog with just the title or author’s name.  Readers of this blog aren’t likely to be helped by additional publishing information except possibly the year of publication.  Some people are mainly interested in recent books, though obviously I’m not.  A detailed bibliography is not necessary for a blog like this, but it is easy to include, so I do.

The Wright Brothers by David McCollough

Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright rose to fame at the beginning of the 20^th Century by building the first successful manned, powered flying machine. In popular culture, they tend to be presented as geniuses who went out to Kitty Hawk and started flying one day. In his biography of these men, The Wright Brothers, David McCollough does not dispel the notion of genius, but he focuses on their courage, determination, careful study, methodical approach, and persistence in the pursuit of something they believed could be.

As boys, the brothers were inspired by a toy to consider the possibility of flight. As grown men, they made a careful study of it. Before beginning their experiments, they gathered the available information, including contacts with earlier experimenters in flight such as Octave Chanute and Samuel Pierpont Langley (the director of the Smithsonian Institute who’s “aerodrome” was a failed early flyer). When they began conducting their own experiments with kites (and later using a small wind tunnel they made), they found the published data to be lacking in useful or correct information.

Therefore, it was mainly on their own that the brothers invented their flyers and the means of piloting them. They had the practical view that inventing a flying machine included inventing the method for controlling it in flight.

An interesting note is that the Wrights funded their experiments and first airplanes with their own money. Their bicycle shop must have produced a decent income, but they lived modestly. They lived in a modest home together with their father and sister until after they completed built three working airplanes, the third model being the one they demonstrated publicly. Even after they began to make money making airplanes and decided to build a new, larger house, they shared it. Wilbur’s only request for the new house was that he have his own bedroom and bathroom.

McCollough emphasizes how much the success of Wilbur and Orville was a family affair. They were close to their widowed father, who survived Wilbur by two years. Once they began to demonstrate their airplane and make a build a business on it, their sister Katherine became a social manager for them, and she share a house with Orville until she married at the age of 52 (she passed away three year later). Orville had a long life and saw many improvements in aviation after he sold the company, including Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight and the use of bombers in World War II.

The book is fairly brief. McCollough concentrates on the period when the Wrights were most involved in experimenting with, building, and ultimately demonstrating their invention. Even so, one gets a sense of what the brothers and their immediate family and friends were like.

David McCollough also wrote The Great Bridge. 

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

Make a Joyful Sound by Helen Elmira Waite

McCullough, David. The Wright Brothers. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

The Power of Fifty Bits by Bob Nease

Our brains handle an amazing amount of information. Almost all of it happens without our conscious awareness. Our conscious mind has a narrow bandwidth of about 50 bits per second according to engineer and designer Bob Nease.

The result of this narrow bandwidth is that much of human behavior is characterized by inattention and inertia. In his book The Power of Fifty Bits, Nease suggests that we accept the limitation of our brains and design things in a way that help us make and stick to good decisions.

Nease has practice in designing such systems. As the chief scientist at Express Scripts, he and his team looked for ways to get people to use less expensive drugs and pharmacies, refill prescriptions on time and stick to treatment regimens. He calls the techniques he developed “fifty bits design.”

Because our brains have so much information to handle, they use shortcuts. These shortcuts are not always adaptive to modern life. They are still geared toward tribal life in a dangerous wilderness.

He focuses on dealing with these shortcuts. We feel a lot of pressure to fit in; we follow social norms and go along to get along. We are very averse to loss. We seek to enjoy rewards today and push off losses as long as possible. As a result, it is easy to have good plans and intentions, but hard to actually change our behavior.

Nease offers strategies to interrupt, circumvent and utilize these strong tendencies to turn people’s good intentions into actions. You can interrupt a process briefly to require a choice between options. You can ask people to commit now to actions in future situations. You can make the desirable choice the default and require action to change it. You can get attention by inserting a message where people will already be looking. You can frame choices in more compelling ways.  You can make a good choice a side benefit of doing a fun or desirable activity. In all things you can make good choices easier to implement and bad choice a little harder.

It is hard to do justice to these strategies in a few words. Nease provides examples from his own work and from the research of others. He also provides insight into which strategies are best suited to certain situations and how they can be used together to greater effect. He also considers some ethical considerations of using fifty bits design.

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

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Nease, Bob. The Power of Fifty Bits: The New Science of Turning Good Intentions into Positive Results. New York: HarperCollins, 2016.

Interesting Stuff April 17, 2011

A funny Superman comic by Kerry Cullen
Banana Peels Can Remove Lead, Copper from Water
Boy Scouts to Add Merit Badge for Robotics
Commodore 64 is Back (I had a Vic 20)
The Day the Typewriter Died

Missouri Floods
-Missouri's Black River levee fails. Where floodwaters could hit next.
-MoDOT Traveler Information Map Offers Flood Information
-Volunteers work to stop flooding in Midwest, South

Interesting Stuff March 18, 2011
Nicolas Cage’s Stolen Action Comics #1 Recovered Unders Super Sketchy Circumstances
S.846: To designate the United States courthouse located at 80 Lafayette Street in Jefferson City, Missouri, as the Christopher S. Bond United States Courthouse
Should we tear down I-70 in St. Louis?
Urban Buildings Unplug from Water Grid
U.S. Population Centered in Missouri
Yuri Gagarin: First Man in Space

Keeping a Journal You Love by Sheila Bender

Bender, Sheila. Keeping a Journal You Love. Cincinnati: Walking Stick Press, 2001.

The starting chapter of Keeping a Journal You Love is brief and covers two subjects: the reasons people write journals and the basic mechanics journaling. Bender frames the second subject as a FAQ. The rest of the book focuses on getting the reader to practice writing.



As you might expect from a book on writing by a teacher of writing, there are many exercises. An early chapter is devoted to a group of seven exercises to get the budding journalist warmed up. A later chapter recommends list structure list of several ways to enrich a journal.

Among these exercises is anaphora, a series of sentences beginning with the same words. An example provided by Bender is the list of indictments against King George from the Declaration of Independence. I grew up in a church, so it reminds me of the rhythm of sermons.
God’s grace is a gift.
God’s grace saves us.
God’s grace redeems us.
God’s grace revives us.
God’s grace justifies us.
God’s grace imputes righteousness to us.
God’s grace abounded when our sins abounded.
God’s grace frees us from bondage to sin.
God’s grace gives us mercy.
God’s grace gives us help in our times of need.
God’s grace came through Jesus Christ.
God’s grace brings us to believe.
God’s grace we access by faith.
God’s grace makes us alive.
God’s grace gives us eternal life.
God’s grace He gives to the humble.
God’s grace is sufficient.

The main body of the book explores examples of journal entries from various writers of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. These examples illustrate various styles, techniques and subjects. After samples from each contributor and a brief discussion of their journals, Bender suggests several exercises for the reader to practice in there own journal.

Some of the contributors wrote very interesting journal entries. I found one to be boring. They were all very different in style and content. Some hardly resemble what one might expect of a journal. Fruitful journaling is as unique as the varied journalists are.

The point is not to imitate the journals of these other writers. The intent is to help people develop their own journaling style that is deeper, richer and more rewarding.

Though journaling is typically a very private matter, Bender includes and interesting chapter on journaling groups. Journaling groups vary in their practices, but some find the setting, information and discipline that comes from being in such a group helps them start, stick to and improve their journaling. Bender provides some practical tips for finding an existing group or starting your own.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Write Your Heart Out by Rebecca McClanahan

The Numbers behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden

Devlin, Keith, & Gary Lorden. The Numbers Behind NUMB3RS: Solving Crime With Mathematics. New York: Plum, 2007.

The Numbers Behind NUMBERS is not a math textbook. Like the television show it accompanies, it aims for a broad audience. Where NUMB3RS is chiefly a crime drama, this book is about how math is and can be used to solve real word crime and other problems.

Even for a popular book about math, there is very little use of mathematical notation. The only complicated equation in the book is in the first chapter. It is Rossmo’s formula, which is used in geographic profiling of crimes to determine a likely home of a criminal. Devlin and Lorden describe the formula in plain English, as they do all the math in the book.

One of the notable things about Rossmo’s formula, and nearly all the math in the book, is that it simply attempts to describe actual things in numerical terms. Because we have tools for handling numerical information, the hope is to predict behavior and uncover hidden patterns using these tools.

An interesting thing that is brought out in the book is that the mathematical contribution is not always about numbers. Math is also about logic and abstract reasoning. The contributions Charlie, the mathematician character in the show, makes are often about approaches and perspectives and may not involve any calculation.

Also highlighted by the book and the show are how much applied math uses computers. One of the things that makes math so powerful is our ability to automate calculations. Going back to Rossmo’s formula as an example, you will find in it operations that would be familiar to most people. However, if you applied it to a grid that might have hundreds or thousands of squares, you would soon run into an insurmountable mountain of calculations if you had to do it by hand. Because computers can calculate very quickly and repeatedly, math can be powerful and timely.

Even so, using math to solve problems, just like using standard investigative techniques to solve crimes, can be slow. This is something the book admits, but it does not work well in a television show that fits in and hour along with some commercials. Real world math must deal with real world data that is often disorganized, incomplete and inconsistent. Even a straightforward analysis may take a long time because of the effort needed to gather, organize and standardize the data.


Numbers is a surprisingly easy read. People who enjoy the show and would like a little better understanding of the math without needing a graduate degree will likely enjoy this book.

Keith Devlin also wrote The Unfinished Game.

The Ultimate Weight Solution by Phil McGraw

McGraw, Phil. The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom. New York: Free Press, 2003.

Psychologist Phil McGraw, television’s Dr. Phil, began to build his national reputation as a jury consultant for Oprah Winfrey when she was sued for statements she made about beef. It turned out his psychological practice was broader than reading potential jurors, and included weight management. McGraw has laid out his approach to weight management in The Ultimate Weight Solution.

McGraw describes seven “keys” to weight management. They seem to cover every aspect of life that relates to food. They can be loosely divided into two categories.

The first category involves discovering and counteracting mental and emotional issues that drive or support become on staying overweight. There are many subtle ways people may be sabotaging their weight-loss efforts. Some may have psychological issues that may require professional help, but many can use McGraw’s strategies to change their thinking and use new ways of coping with emotions that are more consistent with good health.

The second category focuses on behavioral change. In general, the approach is to institute healthy behaviors that will supplant unhealthy habits. Each key contains specific actions one can take to make practical changes. These strategies touch on habits, environment and relationships.

McGraw devotes more ink to the behavioral part. Ultimately, if one is going to attain and maintain a healthy weight, one must behave in a way will result in it.

The overall philosophy is that people behave the way they do for reasons. They may not be consciously aware of those reasons. Those reasons might not make sense if they were evaluated rationally. Even so, in some way a person finds the advantages of their behavior to be greater than the disadvantages. Change involves reevaluating the payoffs and costs of old behaviors and implementing new behaviors that have more desirable and rational payoffs.



A secondary philosophy that comes through is that one shouldn’t rely exclusively on one strategy, or even just diet and exercise, and especially not willpower. The keys touch on thoughts, emotions, habits, relationships, environments, exercise and diet. The more supports you have, the more likely you are to succeed.

As you might expect from a book on weight management, there is also information on nutrition and exercise. Obviously, how much we eat, what we eat, and our level of physical activity is behaviors that greatly and directly affect our weight.

McGraw provides some brief explanations of the science behind his strategies, including a bibliography of the works to which he refers. The book is not very technical, though. It is a practical guide aimed at people seeking to control their weight, not a clinical manual or textbook.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen
How Much Does Your Soul Weigh? by Dorie McCubbrey
I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna