Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic on today’s news pages. Some fear that AI will take over the world and replace it in some dystopian society. Others take its evolution in stride. What’s becoming clear is that life will change in a revolutionary way. Ethan Mollick agrees and also points to opportunities individuals can take to use AI to create a better life and a better workplace. Mollick has used AI to teach business…
Much of a career in science revolves around writing challenges. A scientist has to communicate with their colleagues through journals. They have to communicate with funding agencies through requests for proposals. Not to be forgotten, they have to communicate with the wider public. Thus, scientific writing becomes a key element of the game. Likewise, understanding the forms and conventions of scientific writing can give one a professional leg up towards enhanced status in the scientific…
Dick Feynman was a Nobel laureate and professor of theoretical physics at Cornell and Cal Tech. Like many accomplished people, he had a unique reputation and a magnanimous spirit. In the classroom, his students revered him for his interesting stories. This memoir, written towards the end of his life, records his reflections on his life with the same zeal that won his students’ hearts. To be frank, some of his stories tend towards the anti-feminist…
I liked this book a lot. It’s labeled as a part of a “CIO Series,” but that’s really a mislabel. It’s for anyone working with software developers who has to navigate a distinct company culture. It’s especially geared for those who want to mold that culture for good. Software development is a tricky industry. Good people are hard to find, and they often don’t have a stereotypical personality – especially if they’re really talented. Yet…
Claire Keegan’s tightly constructed short stories never cease to enthrall me. This collection poses no exception. Each story takes its own life. They do not take long to read, but oh, they take long to ponder! A couple of these stories are in other collections, but each one provided a treat at the end of a workday. My favorite in this anthology is the last story: “Night of the Quicken Trees.” It tells of two…
We live in an era, the so-called Information Age, where data collection has become incredibly easy. The term “Big Data” gets thrown around casually as computers collect more information on us than we know how to process. Yet wise interpretation of those data is often elusive. We’re overwhelmed with it. Effective visualizations and charts can help us interpret it better, whether to present and persuade or to monitor and manage. Stephen Few, an eloquent minister-turned-data…
Systems thinking is en vogue these days as we increasingly realize how complex the world really is. Too many manage enterprises based on small rules and adages, but neglect to see how the bigger picture works. Then they are surprised when their interventions end up with a different effect. That’s because the rest of the world works systemically through feedback loops. The small game is not the only relevant factor. Before she died, Dartmouth professor…
In the 1980s, a young Hmong child – whose people fought for the Americans during the Vietnam War – had epilepsy after her parents were relocated to California as refugees. Tragically, her parents never adapted to the American medical system, and equally tragically, the American medical system never adapted to them either. The child Lia Lee’s case resulted in a negative outcome, and the Lee family’s difficulty appears utterly humane upon further investigation. In this…
Remote work has been a trend for a long time as Internet technology inundated homes. Working as a developer in health IT, I have often troubleshot issues from home via my laptop for over a decade. Writing software, I’ve interacted with people all over the globe from my kitchen table or personal office for a long time. The recent COVID pandemic forced the wider workplace to catch up with these trends. As the health threat…
The act of research – whether in the natural sciences, social sciences, or humanities – undergirds so much of modern society. The skills help us think and then test those thoughts in light of outside information (data). Without a rigorous set of methods, this act can become mere people pleasing, but with a firm framework, it continues to transform the way the world lives. This book, an educational standard for almost three decades with five…