omenti

polymaths connect the dots

I’ve been thinking about Steve Jobs and what is special about him lately.  There are a lot of people with his work ethic and devotion, but he has achieved a clarity of thinking that has provided direction.  Some people call it genius, but I don’t like the analogy.  He is undoubtedly very bright, but I know more than a few people where the description genius fits who are very different.  There may be a level of success that is impossible to reach without strong polymath skills.

 

Some of the meetings I’ve had with him show someone who is enormously reflective, curious and broad.  I think those are the keys.  The term polymath seems to fit and perhaps renaissance man, but less so.  I’ve been fortunate enough to have met and worked with people like this and it raises some interesting questions - “can you develop these skills and how much is nature versus nurture?”

 

There is a tendency in the US to put too much faith in pop psychology.  The concept of left and right brained people doesn’t hold water when studied rigorously.  People can learn areas outside of their specialty - radically different areas.  The key, I think, is to jump in and learn them as deeply as you can.  No one is going to be expert in a lot of areas, but there is no reason why you can’t have the equivalent of an undergrad degree’s worth of expertise in a half dozen or more fields in your lifetime. 

 

When you have a bit of understanding of divergent areas there is a fascinating crosstalk - you begin to see the world differently in an intellectual synesthesia.  As Jobs might say you “think different”.  Dots begin to connect and new questions arise that might not come to anyone without your mix of backgrounds.  Pushing further may give answers and puts you in a position to intelligently communicate with real experts in other fields perhaps trading some of your own expertise as part of the bargain.

 

Connecting dots in a novel way is a form of discovery and invention.  It can be a generator of serendipity and let you see farther than those with a narrower vision. It is an enormously efficient mechanism for understanding and using information.

 

You can train yourself and students to acquire this type of life long education.  But remember to dive in deeply and really learn.  Too much of what we call learning is very superficial.  You need time to focus, work hard and reflect on what you’ve learned.  You need to talk with people who do the same.   

 

I wouldn’t claim to be that broad, but a few of the readers of this blog are and I delight in work and conversation with them.  It is worth much more than a paying job.

 

Imagine what companies might be like if people in the C office were reflective polymaths with a passion for the core business of the company.  Not all would be as successful as Steve Jobs, but there might be a good deal more successful business disruption - the stuff where a clear and unique vision is required.  And it goes much deeper than just the leaders.  Organizations with this creative diversity, if managed well, are likely to have serious advantages over the competition.  Not only does it help create vision, but it can bring you to a meaningful conviction of that vision.

 

The good news at places like Apple and Pixar is this sort of person is advanced and this is a serious and disruptive threat to their competition.  

 

Find some time and a reflective mood and make a list of your deep interests - the interests where you could walk into any good university or its equivalent (perhaps it is a sport or a craft) at the junior or senior level and thrive.  Map out how divergent and similar they are.  How divergent are they?  If you have three or four, do you regularly connect the dots?

 

Recognize and nurture your passions and extend your education until you die.

 

There is no reason why we all can’t have a bit of renaissance person - our inner Steve Jobs - in us. 

 

a few thoughts on steve jobs' annoucement

In 1984 I bought my first computer because of a Disney comic from the 1950s.  In it Donald Duck was painting a checkerboard with checkerboard paint.  That had been a fantasy of mine since childhood.  Suddenly there was a computer with software that allowed me to make my dream real.   It was too expensive for me, but it made a fantasy real.  The little 128k Mac was the first computer that really fired my imagination and brought delight.

The next few years didn't disappoint, but then the company wandered after Steve Jobs,  waiting over a decade to get the magic back.   In 2001 my  research group had been working on digital music for several years and part of the effort was a player. We knew micro hard drive based players were going to be the next bit  thing, but we couldn't figure out an interface that would allow you to easily navigation a thousand or more track.  Then the iPod was announced.  Again it seemed too expensive for me, but I drove over 100 miles to one of two Apple Stores in New Jersey to be first in line to buy one.  After using it for an hour I realized it was not an expensive toy but something that added to my life.  A complete delight and it changed the way I interacted with music.  

Jobs and his crew saw the relationship between people and machines deeply.  When you think about these things deeply,  you begin to see things and make connections others miss. It goes well beyond technology, well beyond marketing and well beyond user interfaces and user experiences.  Steve has created teams of people that work well enough together to see the future that is often so simple in retrospect, but too difficult for those of us who are not looking with diverse enough backgrounds to divine.  They make it seem easy.  It isn't and, properly done, it is disruptive.

Apple, under Steve,  has been able to spark several revolutions  - almost enough to wobble the mind.    Perhaps his ultimate achievement has been to build an organization that can do this by deeply understanding technology and people.  I suspect it will continue as Apple has hired and grown people and given them the right organization and institutional culture. They are not just a technology company.  Not having Steve at Apple is certainly a loss, but I believe he has architected an organization that is wired with his DNA.  

I wish Steve and his family peace and hope his condition is not as dire as it seems.  I thank him for showing us that the simplicity that comes from deep understanding can be so powerful.

why are type 2 diabetes is a time bomb

From current WHO data

Yes - I realize BMI is an imperfect indicator, but it is easy to gather and is a good enough proxy for population obesity.  If you are extremely muscular your BMI is artificially high, if you have very little muscle it is artificially low.  It is very possible to be "overweight" and in good physical shape, although it is less likely than being in good shape if your BMI is in the "average" range.

BMI, although simple to measure, has somewhat different ranges for different populations.  For example  people of Asian descent have the onset of overweight at 23.0 rather than 25.0.  We'll use the standard cutoffs commonly used in the US and Europe.

Those definitions are:

     underweight:   BMI less than 18.5

     normal:              BMI between 18.5 and 24.99

     pre-obese:          BMI between 25.0 and 29.99

     obese:                  BMI over 30.0

These days so many are obese that the category is broken down as medical attention is usually warranted. 

     obese class I:     BMI between 30.0 and 34.99

     obese class II:    BMI between 35.0 and 39.99

     obese class III:   BMI over 40.0 

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Some countries like The Netherlands and Denmark partly justify the cost of active transportation - walking and bicycling -  infrastructure through lowed healthcare costs that come from a more physically fit population that is also more in a "normal" weight range.   A form of preventative healthcare.  It would probably make sense in the US, but large enough programs that would make a difference are probably politically and socially impractical.

 

favorite numbers

Some years ago I found myself waiting for someone near Times Square with my thesis advisor.  We had a bit of time to kill when the question came up - "of the people walking by, how many are physicists?"  

There are a few ways to approach the problem, but both of us were experimentalists.  He took a piece of notebook paper out and with a marker wrote a number on it and held it over his head.

 

137

 

Sure enough - a few people stopped to talk and all of them turned out to be physicists or astrophysicists.  137 turns out to an approximation of the inverse of the fine structure constant - a coupling constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction and something central to any quantum electrodynamic calculation.  If you encounter the number - even on a roadside - the first thing that leaps to mind if you are a physicist is this important constant of nature.  

I don't know why anyone would want to attract physicists, but we showed this worked experimentally.  Are there numbers that people might identify people in your profession, sport, or hobby?

People do have favorite numbers and societies have "lucky" and "unlucky" numbers.  Douglas Adams clearly liked 42, but many seem to have a fondness for small integers and in Western societies primes seem to be favored. There is certainly the stigma of numerology, but there are also aesthetic choices and understanding this more deeply would be fascinating.

This morning I heard a piece by Robert Krulwich on NPR (summarized in his blog post) that pointed to a study currently underway to look for patterns in favorite numbers - the sort of thing that those of you who are anthropologists will love.  You can ask to be notified when the results are published next year.

The history of numbers is rich and fascinating - a fascinating work on the subject is The Universal History of Numbers by Georges Ifrah.  I recommend it with a few reservations as it is only a starting place and far from a universal history - some of its entries are disputed.  But it is an excellent entry point to learning about the development of some of the most explosive change civilization has witnessed.

Oh - my favorite number?  If I'm restricted to integers I've always liked 17 and 23, but my all time favorite is the irrational real constant e - namely  2.71828182845904523 ...  

It is deeply embedded in useful expressions of how science describes nature and is also important in mathematics.  e is part of Euler's Identity - one of the most beautiful relationships in all of math:   .  

some of its early digits are curious making it very easy to remember.

2.7  then 1828 is repeated twice, then 45 90 45 - just like the angles in an isolates right triangle, and then 23 which is a favorite small prime of mine ..

 

education - one small piece

Juliette gave a keynote address to a group of educators in Canada a few days ago and one of the podcasts helping me through today's workout was a WBUR interview of Salman Kahn of the Kahn Academy.  

This seems like a good excuse to talk about education.

Clearly I'm no expert on the subject, but like you I've been around formal and informal systems for most of my life.  I'm an admirer of what Kahn has done and hope it continues to grow, but it is only part of the puzzle just as are approaches like Jaime Escalante's.   I'm more interested in how passion and curiosity are sparked.

My formal K-12 education was fairly vanilla - pubic schools in Montana. Two of my teachers struck me as outstanding at what they did, but neither ignited a passion in me - rather I saw a bit of their passion and learned more about the subjects they were teaching than I would have with other teachers. But the basic nuts and bolts were solid and helped prepare me for college where I found my passion could burn.  I think I had a good K-12 experience, but there was just one more thing that influenced me during those years...

A lifelong  passion did flicker into existence early on - probably when I was eight or nine.  Montana, it turns out, is "Big Sky Country."  During the day there were clouds, storms, rainbows, lighting, wind, the sun and any number of fantastic things to watch. Night was even better as the place could get impressively dark and the milky way was magnificent in the Summer along with meteor showers, auroras and much more.   You would see these things and you had to know why.  

The school and public library had some science books, but not all were accessible to kids.  Some were too easy and others were college textbooks that were way above me.  I needed to find the right level and was having problems finding adults who didn't find me completely annoying.  

Amateur radio was more popular then than it is today.  But even in its prime there was a fundamental education  problem - how to you teach an eleven year old kid electronic and radio skills that are usually associated with the freshman level of college?  Just as important,  how do you deal with the fact that the density of kids who are really interested is low as is that of adults who practice the hobby?

The solution the community came up with became known as elmering.  An elmer is a mentor - someone who would take a kid who had a passionate interest and provide them with books, instruction, usually some old gear to tinker with and a lot of experience that didn't appear in the books.  The idea was that at some point when you were a seasoned adult you would reciprocate and the hobby would perpetuate itself.

The beauty of a functioning student mentor relationship is the right level can be found along with the right encouragement.  There are even times, as I have learned as a mentor, that the roles can flip.

I was lucky enough to have been something of a free range kid.  I managed to get my homework done as well as work around the house and had enough free time to get involved in radio for awhile as well as to just stare up at that amazing sky and wonder. 

The librarian suggested that I write to professors with my questions.  It seemed like a good idea and I sent out dozens of letters scrawled in my twelve year old hand over a period of a few months before anyone answered.  A professor had written back, but rather than directly answering my questions he gave me some new ones to think about along with some hints about how to think about them. I had no idea what a physicist was, let alone a solid state physicist, but here was someone willing to help.

I remember the first letter vividly.  It took me about ten days of thinking and working to get enough that I thought I had it.  I posted my letter and, mirabile dictu,  about six days later the reply came.  It was electrifying - while I had figured out a piece of the question, he carefully pointed out something else.  The problem turned out to be much richer than I had imagined and that struck me as beautiful.  Another week of answering his exercises and then nearly a week of waiting for his reply.

It was education by a sort of internet - one that used physical packets with a three or four day transmission latency.  The lengthy latencies turned out to be perfect.  Quick answers to my questions would have spoiled things and I would never have learned how to focus and concentrate deeply.  An added benefit was the attachments were sometimes chewy and chocolatey.

This extracurricular education went on until I left for college and grew to involve a second professor - an astrophysicist.  I never thought of it as education at the time, but they were teaching me how to ask questions and, more importantly, how to observe.  Why is it that the colors on the second rainbow are inverted?  Why is it that the region between the two rainbows is dark?  Is the light from a rainbow polarized and how would you go about measuring it?  Why do clouds look white and often have boundaries?  How do you measure the speed of light?  How do you find out what stars are made of?  How long will our Sun burn? How will it end? ...

You learn questions like these can be approached by a kid and later, when re-examined when you have more experience, the same questions have richer answers that tell you a bit more about nature. These answers, if you are lucky, have even richer questions attached.  You learn that watching and learning how to formulate appropriate questions - questions that you can actually answer - is a critical skill. You learn there are amazing surprises. 

Along the way there was a need to improve the tools I had at my disposal.  Some of the mentoring focused on this and, without realizing it, I was learning a fair amount of math.  I didn't really think of it as math at the time - these were just tools that made it easier to sort out what was going on.

There was a strong element of play to all of this.  You would work down a path and find that didn't make sense, but there was no penalty for going back to where you started and trying another path.  You lost a bit of time, but you also learned a bit.  It seemed very different from school where wrong answers were penalized.  

This wasn't rigorous science.  When I was finally in college and grad school some rigor came and the learning was more intense.  But it was an exciting exploration and it gave me a sense of what I wanted to do.

There were some downsides if the kid focuses too much in one area.  I wasn't exactly the most social kid in the world and some of that probably persists to this day. I didn't get involved in a rich variety of extracurricular activities and regret some of that.  In particularly I mostly stayed away from athletic activities which took years for me to realize their importance. But the mentoring did change my life and over scheduling would have been very counterproductive.  Kids need a lot of time for self directed playing, daydreaming and thinking.

Since then I've mentored perhaps a half dozen young people.  Some of this was working with students through a fantastic program the old Bell Labs had and some of it was more informal - just  having a curious kid get in touch about something.¹  

These days the Internet provides a lot in the way of new opportunity, but at the same time I think that some of the basic questions kids have are answered a bit too easily. There is something special about wrestling with an idea and the thrill of finding the answer a week or more later.  The Internet is great - but more is necessary.

I love what Dean Kamen is doing for aspiring engineers and I'm sure there are many opportunities in a variety of areas, but the creaky old postal system turned out to be nearly perfect for this person.

Curiosity and play are among the most powerful tools I know.  I wouldn't claim to know much, but I do know where there is adventure and realize asking questions and hoping to uncover more can last a lifetime.

And if you have never mentored anyone, I strongly recommend it.  When it works well there are few things as rewarding and you get more than you might imagine in return.

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¹ One ninth grader was fascinated by cosmic rays and I showed her how to build a cosmic ray telescope ..  later I wrote up the notes for any teenager who might have a similar interest (three parts).  Oh - she went to Caltech a few years later.

 

 

10,000 hours and storytelling

We seem to love stories.  They pull at our emotions, inspire and awe us, and even create and perpetuate belief structures.  A good story can be a very powerful tool and it need not be true.  With entertainment we realize that we're enjoying fantasy and are cautious as to how deeply be believe the narrative, but a good story teller can spin a compelling tale that is not factual and cause people to fall for it.   

Science, as it is communicated these days, has a natural disadvantage. Few people are trained to understand current scientific results or how science work.  When scientists write or speak to a general audience there is often a mismatch that often renders the subject dry and boring and even unaccessible.  This is a shame as many of the underlying concepts are simple and even beautiful.  Science is not a set of fixed "truths" that are written down somewhere and need to be memorized, but rather is a great hunt for natural truth that is often much stranger than anything we could dream up on our own.  It is much more dynamic and richer than storytelling - the problem is that is difficult to communicate.

I've been fortunate enough to have time working with a movie company that is expert at the art of story telling and have been observing their techniques. They realize what they are doing is only for entertainment and they aren't trying to fool anyone, but one wonders how some of these tools might be applied to engage the imaginations of people and make them more curious and inquisitive.  

A few scientists are skilled public communicators - Carl Sagan was one of the first public voices and Neil deGrasse Tyson is following that path.  If you are interested in this type of communication consider reading Don't Be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson.  I don't agree with everything he says, but it is an eye opener to those of us who are used to communicating what we do to our peers.  Another resource to study are a few excellent popular shows that communicate real science.¹  Sadly there isn't enough of this and until recently there was little incentive for working scientists to communicate directly to the public.

Colleen and I have been trying to apply some of the techniques in our energy primer - it is not clear if we will be successful, but the goal is to maintain enough accuracy and clarity of ideas while being a bit entertaining - hopefully just enough to spark a bit of imagination.  A tall order indeed

But back to the post's title...

Recently I saw another reference to the need to practice a field for 10,000 hours in order to become an expert.  The concept was popularized by an author who happens to be a skilled and entertaining story teller, but I find much of what he writes to be terribly frustrating.  He has a tendency to cherry-pick rather obscure and weak studies to support a fundamentally flawed thesis and his books are widely read resulting in the propagation of flimsy ideas.  

The core study used to support the 10,000 hours is necessary for expertise idea turns out to be flawed and discredited.  In the past week an excellent blog on the Science of Sport published a two part article (part 1 and part 2) that tackles the genes vs training argument in sport and the author has a nice introductory take down of the 10,000 hour myth.  The article is a nice illustration of some thinking that goes past accepting story telling and getting into some of the deeper issues.²

Another myth that keeps coming up is the relationship between height and earning power.  Anecdotally this seems true - after all, many business leaders tend to be tall. But it turns out some of the studies have some deep flaws and don't look at deeper issues and many have been misreported by the press.

A friend became very interested in these studies and spent some time reading them more critically.  Jheri is working her way through an undergraduate degree, but has a beautiful natural curiosity and skepticism.  She noted some serious sampling problems with some of the studies as well as mistakenly linking correlation with causation. Sometimes the later mistake was made - and amplified - by the press who misread the work.  Correlation does not imply causation and making that link is at the root of much of pseudoscience.

Jheri recommended a book that has a nice beginner's guide on critical thinking.  John Schwartz is a New York Times science and legal reporter who penned a book aimed at teenagers who are struggling with being somehow "different" and trying to fit in with the crowd.  His technique is to illustrate his points with his own story as a shorter than average male.  One of the chapters focuses on critical thinking and I would recommend it as a first step in the subject.  If you know a teenager who is a bit different (or thinks they are), buy them the book but read it yourself first.  Short: Walking Tall When You're Not Tall At All ..  A client of mine was bemoaning the fact that many of her staff were weak when it came to critical thinking and I gave the book to her.  She was delighted.

This type of informed skepticism and willingness to go in deeper is an essential skill for information workers.  Adding staff who have solid expertise in the natural sciences to business teams is a great way to sort through the mine fields.  At the very least anyone working with information should have a basic understanding of logic, statistics and probability.  

This is a very important area and I suspect I'll revisit it frequently - there are so many areas where critical thinking and skepticism is necessary.  

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¹ Oddly enough some of the best science programs are on the radio.  There is great focus on mental imagery and that may be important to draw in the audience.  My favorite is Quirks and Quarks - heard weekly on CBC Radio and over the Internet and as a podcast.  Other excellent programs include Science Friday and Science Talk.  RadioLab is an example of great story telling, often on scientific subjects.  These shows can't be very deep, but they can communicate the excitement and beauty of the subject and frequently show current scientific thought.

² Elite level performance in sport often ties body type to the sport. While this is frequently not true at amateur and K-12 sports, the advantage of certain body types becomes apparent when both skill and physical gifts are necessary.  

Most of us are far from elite athletes and I believe it is important to enjoy whatever sport you participate in and doubly important for children, but there is a level where gymnasts need to have low moments of inertia - they need to be short, and basketball players need to be tall.  It is possible to have a star basketball player in high school who is short, but the chances of finding someone under six feet - or six foot six - as an NBA center are vanishingly small. 

There are differences in other sports.  Distance runners tend not to be tall and the same is true for cyclists.  Swimmers tend to have long torsos, short legs and very long arms.  and so on ...   It would be fascinating to create an average silhouette for the medal winners in each Olympic sport and arrange them on a long chart by height - gymnasts on one end and basketball players on the other.

 

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The first image was from a presentation of COBE mission results where the observed microwave background glow of the Universe was found to nearly perfectly fit the idea that the Universe was initially very hot everywhere.  The error bars are too small to draw and this is one of the most startling beautiful examples of experimental results agreeing with theory.  The comic strip xkcd has a nice tshirt, which is fun to wear if you visit Caltech.  The experiment was so important that the principals were sprinkled with Swedish holy water in 2006

Of course the issue is how to communicate the beauty of nature and the experiment to the public - the only people who "get" this graph immediately are the physics and astrophysics set.

The second image shows two beach volleyball players separated in height by over a foot (6'7 and 5'6).  It turns out winning female beach volleyball teams average close to six feet tall.  Only having two players means there is a need for height and speed - six feet is a good compromise.  In this case the taller player (Colleen) has a lot of height, but is slow to accelerate due to her long moments of inertia.  The shorter player lacks height and reach at the net - which is bad for blocking, but is wicked fast - a nationally ranked sprinter.  There are multiple paths to putting together a team.

 

 

 

 

exploring the difference in rod and cone based night vision

It is currently wonderful to be out at night in much of the Northern Hemisphere and there is much to appreciate.  Here is a some fun you can have exploring your own night vision

When you try to see in near darkness, any bright light will destroy your night vision for awhile and you have to wait in a dark area for it to recover.  This is why sailors wore eye patches when cannons became an important weapon - they could keep one eye dark adapted above deck and would remove the patch in the dim light below.  This turned out to be much safer than lighting a match to find the powder bag-)  I sometimes wear an eye patch around home when I'm going to be observing outside after dark.  It allows me to work in low light conditions without using a light - an old habit I picked up from my amateur astronomy days as a teenager

Here is the neat stuff.    Your eyes sense light through two main photoreceptors - rods and cones.  Both contain pigments that require time to chemically regenerate after they have been exposed to light.  A bit of light hits a pigment, some chemistry happens and a signal is sent out to the brain.  The problem is a lot of light can cause so much chemistry to happen that it takes a while before it is sensitive to light again.

The pigment in the rods is very efficient for very low light levels.  They need twenty to thirty minutes to recover after being light saturated (the term is "bleaching") ... .   When you go out on a dark night your rods are mostly bleached from bright indoor light and it takes up to that time before your eyes adapt to the darkness

The cones, where your color vision originates, have three pigment variations.  Their chemistry is different and they only need eight or nine minutes to recover from bright light.

The photosensitivity of your cones is much less than the rods, so when you are dark adapted, most of your vision is colorless.  But before that happens your cones are ready to go and your low light level color vision is at its best.  This is the best way to see the color in bright night time stars and planets -- the red of Mars, the yellow of Saturn, the brilliant gold and blue of the double star Albireo in Cygnus, and the orangish-red of Betelgeuse in Orion  (the tip of the upper left arm).  As your rods recover the colors fade and, assuming the night sky is clear and dark, hundreds of stars come into view.  The effect is dramatic.

It is mostly too bright to do this in cites and suburbia, but try it when you are in a dark spot.  If you try it with an eye patch to check out the differences between a dark adapted eye and one that is still adapting perhaps you can make people wonder if you're a pirate.

This may seen removed from technology and business, but our connection to machines and other people is often mediated by interfaces.  How we perceive and interact with them is a subset of the overall user experience and failure to get it right can cause serious dissonances.  Engineering often amounts to a best effort to optimize a complex set of requirements but all too frequently some of these human factors are not known by those charged with creating the software and machines.  And, of course, this extends beyond interfaces. 

 

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Speaking of the night sky, the Perseid meteor shower is almost on us. The normal peak falls on August 12, but this year the moon will wash out all but the brightest meteors.  You can still enjoy it as the shower builds up over several days.  In early August the sky will be moon-free from midnight to dawn with the moon eroding that window as time moves on.  The best time may be the few hours before dawn on August 8 through 10, but even if the shower is not as nice as it sometimes is, it is still an excellent excuse to lay out on your back watching the night sky on a warm Summer evening.