Hey.  It’s Friday!

This week I read: 

The Signal And The Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t
By: Nate Silver
Penguin Books; 1 edition (February 3, 2015)
560 pages

This book is about prediction. Like so many other books, I am probably biased here too, as I was a teaching assistant for a statistics class while in graduate school. Between elections, hurricanes, investments, and sports, everyone is suddenly interested in forecasting. And who can blame them. Predicting the future better than others usually means money. So here is to better predictions. To using percent chance, rather than binary guesses.

Two of my favorite quotes:

Bayes’s theorem says that we should update out forecasts any time we are presented with new information. A less literal version of this idea is simply trial and error. Companies that really “get” Bid Data, like Google, aren’t spending a lot of time in model land. They’re running thousands of experiments every year and testing their ideas on real customers.

Staring at the ocean an waiting or a flash of insight is how ideas are generated in the movies. In the real world, they rarely come when you are standing in place. Nor do “big” ideas necessarily start out that way. It’s more often with small, incremental, and sometimes even accidental steps that we make progress.

Don’t miss the rest of this week’s posts:

The Pernicious Myth Of Doing?

Random Thoughts – 114

Stay Safe Out There, Coffee Drinkers

5 Things I Learned Reading: Book Launch

Begging Time To Stop

Focus On That One Thing?

I hope you have a great weekend.

-Sterling

Hey.  It’s Friday!

This week I read:

Mastery
By: Robert Greene
Penguin Books; Reprint edition (October 29, 2013)
352 pages

In Mastery, Greene lays out a solid foundation of how to become a master of something. This is primarily related to vocation, but I guess you could become a master of nearly anything. The timeless principles in the book should not be overlooked. Much like The 48 Laws of Power, but maybe even more so, this book should be required reading during your senior year of high school. It is more complicated than that, but here is the crux of it all.  Mountains of hard work + Even more time and persistence = Mastery. Go read this book.

Two of my favorite quotes:

“Understand: the greatest impediment to creativity is your impatience, the almost inevitable desire to hurry up the process, express something, and make a splash. What happens in such a case is that you do not master the basics; you have no real vocabulary at your disposal. What you mistake for being creative and distinctive is more likely an imitation of other people’s style, or personal rantings that do not really express anything. Audiences, however, are hard to fool.”

“Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers. Feeling motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything. Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive.”

Click here to buy this book.

Don’t miss the rest of this week’s posts:

How To Decide To Get Rid Of Something, Or Not

Writing Is Like Sitting Up With A Dying Friend

Random Thoughts: #113

Make Your French Fries Better With This, No Really

5 Things I Learned Reading: The Miracle of The Kurds, By: Stephen Mansfield

Make Your Opponent Feel…

Keep People Guessing By?

I hope you have a great weekend.

-Sterling