Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This book was great for highlighting counter-intuitive phenomena. For example, humans are incapable of generating a random sequence of coin-flip outcomes. We alternate between heads and tails way too often whereas, probabilistically, we should sometimes observe long streaks of one or the other. My take away message was threefold. One, don't underestimate the role of randomness in explaining phenomena. Two, be aware that a large number of unlikely things happen all the time due to randomness and the shear number of things that are happening. Three, just because something is rare doesn't mean it's not important--you have to consider the potential severity of a possible outcome as well as its probability of occurring.
The Definitive Book of Body Language by Allan and Barbara Pease
I'm going to save this one for a full post.
The Art of Speed Reading People: How To Size People Up and Speak Their Language by Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron
See my previous post. I decided not to continue reading it after all. Maybe I'll pick it up again later. However, I did ask my dad all the questions to figure out his personality type and read him his profile: "ISTJs are pretty much hopeless. They are overly harsh and bossy. They're impossible to get along with so you should just avoid them altogether. And they smell bad." You should have seen the look on his face! I got him good!
The Walking Dead, Volumes 1-6 by Robert Kirkman
I heard good things about these graphic novels a while ago but I resisted--zombie stories don't generally get me too excited. However, it's hard to resist picking up a few new graphic novels at Borders over Christmas break. And thank goodness for that because these are great. They're actually quite light on the typical zombies-hunt-humans horror stuff. The thing that's so interesting about these stories is that the focus is generally on the ordinary: overprotective fathers, power struggles, sex, loneliness, fundamental morals, etc.
Y: The Last Man, Volumes 1-3 by Brian K. Vaughan
All of a sudden, every male of every species dies. Except one young man and his pet monkey. Cool premise? You bet. Good story to match? Yup. What's going to happen to the human race? I don't know but I'm going to keep reading to find out. (So far, not as interesting, deep, or original as The Walking Dead but good nonetheless.)
This book was great for highlighting counter-intuitive phenomena. For example, humans are incapable of generating a random sequence of coin-flip outcomes. We alternate between heads and tails way too often whereas, probabilistically, we should sometimes observe long streaks of one or the other. My take away message was threefold. One, don't underestimate the role of randomness in explaining phenomena. Two, be aware that a large number of unlikely things happen all the time due to randomness and the shear number of things that are happening. Three, just because something is rare doesn't mean it's not important--you have to consider the potential severity of a possible outcome as well as its probability of occurring.
The Definitive Book of Body Language by Allan and Barbara Pease
I'm going to save this one for a full post.
The Art of Speed Reading People: How To Size People Up and Speak Their Language by Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron
See my previous post. I decided not to continue reading it after all. Maybe I'll pick it up again later. However, I did ask my dad all the questions to figure out his personality type and read him his profile: "ISTJs are pretty much hopeless. They are overly harsh and bossy. They're impossible to get along with so you should just avoid them altogether. And they smell bad." You should have seen the look on his face! I got him good!
The Walking Dead, Volumes 1-6 by Robert Kirkman
I heard good things about these graphic novels a while ago but I resisted--zombie stories don't generally get me too excited. However, it's hard to resist picking up a few new graphic novels at Borders over Christmas break. And thank goodness for that because these are great. They're actually quite light on the typical zombies-hunt-humans horror stuff. The thing that's so interesting about these stories is that the focus is generally on the ordinary: overprotective fathers, power struggles, sex, loneliness, fundamental morals, etc.
Y: The Last Man, Volumes 1-3 by Brian K. Vaughan
All of a sudden, every male of every species dies. Except one young man and his pet monkey. Cool premise? You bet. Good story to match? Yup. What's going to happen to the human race? I don't know but I'm going to keep reading to find out. (So far, not as interesting, deep, or original as The Walking Dead but good nonetheless.)
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