I got my high school buddy to write a book about my boss… what could go wrong? They were at Town Hall Seattle a few weeks ago, and I think nothing did: http://townhallseattle.org/event/jeremy-smith-and-christopher-murray/
Is there a recording online somewhere?
Comments Off on A post on a talk on the book Epic Measures
Filed under global health
Good advice from Density Estimation for Statistics and Data Analysis by Bernard. W. Silverman:
Filed under statistics
Congratulations, Dan! Hurrah for young professors getting their books out into the world. My book will be out one day, too, but of considerably less general interest.
Comments Off on New book ‘Captive Nation’
Filed under general
Here is a new book on Bayesian stats that Kyle forwarded on to me: Principles of Uncertainty. Chapter 11 looks unique, on “multiparty problems”, and a pdf of the whole thing is available from the book website for download.
Comments Off on New Stats Books
Filed under statistics
I’m supposed to be writing a lot right now. Papers, grants, documentation, there’s lots to write (blogs don’t count). But I’ve been a little bit blocked, so I’ve been reading instead. Since I spend so much time reading things where the idea is paramount and the prose is barely functional, I thought I’d mix it up and read some things that are well written just because they are well written. Maybe I’ll get inspiration from authors who put words together well.
On that note, I just finished up Slumberland, the latest novel by Paul Beatty. I like the idea that great writing is happening currently, and not just something in the “classics” section of the library.
Beatty writes epics about Black superheros, so there was no reason for me to expect math to make an appearance in his latest story. Its about an American deejay who moves to pre-unification Berlin with the perfect beat. That makes the math content here the exact opposite of what I complained about after I saw Salt last summer, where screenwriters made Angelina Jolie math-phobic for no reason.
It was quite a pleasant surprise when early on in the book, following some laugh-out-loud funny dialogue that I won’t even hint at here, the surprising results of a math test come out:
The scores were posted outside the classroom in descending order. It was the first computer printout I’d ever seen. There was something affirming about seeing my name and score—FERGUSON W. SOWELL: 100/100—at the top of the list in what was then a futuristic telex font. I felt official. I was real.
Thank you, Paul Beatty, for making your superhero a math whiz on the side.
Comments Off on Reading Time
Filed under education
Healthy Algorithms 