Dan Ariely is always worth reading and I picked up The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty over the Christmas break and it did not disappoint. The key findings of Ariely’s work in this area are summarised in the following diagram, which lists some of the factors and forces that are shown through experimental studies to shape dishonesty, both … More Ariely’s Mental Model on Dishonesty
There are many gems in the book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement For a Complex World, written by General Stanley McChrystal and co-authors based on McChrystal’s experience leading the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting Al-Qaeda. One that stuck with me is a small section called The Need-To-Know Fallacy. … More The Need-To-Know Fallacy
Many of my most successful data science projects happen by accident. You know, the little skunkworks that arose from a serendipitous hallway conversation where an important and urgent business problem meets a half-baked analytical idea. With a suitable dash of data and the right mix of office politics and corporate kung fu, a baby data-science … More Agile Data Science: On Opportunism
I put together this simple mapping of corporate leaders as a half-joke last week. I think there’s something in it for everyone. (I’m an ex-consultant so naturally I think anything that requires more than two dimensions is unnecessarily complicating things. That’s another half-joke. :P) Joke aside, there is a serious dimension to the post. Much … More Organisational Psychopaths
The June 30 Quarterly Report from Platinum Asset Management’s European Fund contains some great insights and here’s an excerpt that I find particularly interesting. “Consider for a moment our own experience, as Australians, participating in this economy over the last thirty-odd years: We have enjoyed a period of unprecedented economic stability. We have not experienced … More How it Feels to Live in a Current Account Surplus / Deficit Economy
With movies like Toy Story, Up, Finding Nemo, and Wall-E, Pixar has left an indelible mark on the world, enriching our personal lives with characters that speak to us at a deeply emotional level. With the publication of the book Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull, Pixar now stand a chance to change our professional lives for the better, … More Pixar on Management
To be a good scientist and investor, Charlie Munger counsels that we must “Invert, always invert.” It is in this spirit that I picked up the book Small Data: The Tiny Clues that Uncover Huge Trends by Martin Lindstrom earlier this year from Amazon. After spending the last several years evangelising Big Data up and … More Small Data: The Yin to Big Data’s Yang
My Irrational Life
Updates on my research and expository papers, discussion of open problems, and other maths-related topics. By Terence Tao
