Will Pate's Blog » Reading

Readings

willpate — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:03:14 +0000

Here is some of what I have been reading since December 6th:

Trials and Errors: Why Science Is Failing Us
"searching for correlations is a terrible way of dealing with the primary subject of much modern research: those complex networks at the center of life. While correlations help us track the relationship between independent measurements, such as the link between smoking and cancer, they are much less effective at making sense of systems in which the variables cannot be isolated."
To Know, but Not Understand: Science and Big Data
"the massive amounts of data necessary to deal with complex phenomena exceed any single brain's ability to grasp, yet networked science rolls on"
SpeakerFile
Great Toronto-based startup: "Speakerfile is the better way for keynote speakers & public speakers to find speaking engagements."

Readings

willpate — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:34:11 +0000

Here is some of what I have been reading since August 3rd:

How to Create a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend
Noah Kagan is brilliant, and every startup entrepreneur should read this article.
Evolutionary Psychology Applied to Marketing & Cosumer Behavior | Evolvify
“…it really astonished me in reading consumer behavior textbooks, advertising textbooks, and course syllabi from business schools that people were still using Myers-Briggs, they were still talking about Jungian archetypes. They were still using all of this psychology that’s been out of date for at least 30 or 40 years as if it’s still valid and as if we can’t do any better”
Keynotopia
If you're comfortable in PowerPoint, you now have the tools to prototype mobile and web apps
The Start-Up Act: Blueprint for an Innovation Recovery – Brink Lindsey – Business – The Atlantic
"The proposals contained in the Startup Act represent a kind of 'greatest hits' collection picked from a far broader set of promising reform ideas."
Consumers Find Ways to Spend Less and Find Happiness
A Richter Scale for Markets
Econophysics is the study of markets through the lens of physics, particularly earthquakes.

Readings

willpate — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:01:00 +0000

Here is some of what I have been reading since July 12th:

How Reframers Unleash Innovation in Their Companies (And Beyond) – Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, Prasad Kaipa, Simone Ahuja – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review
"A select group of smart leaders are reframing their mental models — i.e., radically shifting their perception of the world — to conjure up disruptive business model innovations that could rewrite the rules of the game in your industry."
The Neuroscience of Leadership
Interesting article from Strategy+Business magazine
Phys Ed: The Men Who Stare at Screens – Well Blog – NYTimes.com
Yikes, too close to home. "The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting."
When it comes to research, we live in interesting times
"Those of us who tell ourselves we are curious about the world are actually swimming in 'evidence' that has been filtered again and again in favour of interestingness."
The Tenacious Buzz of Malaria
Innovative mosquitos & their malarial parasites, and our own underestimating have made malaria responsible for 1/2 of human deaths in history

Readings

willpate — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:04:00 +0000

Here is some of what I have been reading since June 22nd:

Why Canada needs a Great Reset
Richard Florida makes a great case for why and how "Canada should be taking advantage of its enviable economic condition — its stable banks, rising housing prices, great cities, high levels of education and abundant natural resources — to lay the groundwork for an improved economic future."
The dark side of the new theories of success
"Maybe we don't have to become magnitudes more frenetic than we already are—just a whole lot more focused…"
In Praise of Tough Criticism
I prefer receiving it myself, but not everyone does…"We need to grow thicker critical skin. Why? Because critical behavior that always results in a chorus of affirmation is nothing more than conformity; because allowing views to persist that need to be challenged is nothing less than critical mediocrity; and because failure to tell our colleagues what we truly think about their work is simple dishonesty."
Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?
Have "a simple, clear, succinct strategy statement that everyone can internalize and use as a guiding light for making difficult choices."
Profitable sweet spot
A sublime use of overlapping circles

Readings

willpate — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:00:01 +0000

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty
"In the 1990s, Paul Romer revolutionized economics. In the aughts, he became rich as a software entrepreneur. Now he’s trying to help the poorest countries grow rich – by convincing them to establish foreign-run 'charter cities' within their borders."
The Blame Game: Will Maths Apologize to Finance?
French mathematicians defend themselves: “The models worked perfectly well, even during the heart of the 2008 crisis. Each morning they predicted the amount that we would be losing during the day with great accuracy."
Why We're So Bad at Managing Risk
" the oil industry would do well to take two lessons from the aeronautics community. First: anything mechanical can and will break — and that includes back-up systems. Count on it. Second: expect the unexpected. And plan accordingly."
Twitter in 1935
Recession 2.0 – Why Canada Won't Escape This Time
Government debt-to-GDP is at 82.5% and we have "the most overextended households among the top 20 developed nations"
The Problem with Derivatives, Quants, and Risk Management Today
An interesting interview with the man who trains more quants than anyone else on the planet, Paul Wilmott

Readings

willpate — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:00:00 +0000

The Regulation Crisis
Surowiecki: "…acceptance of a law’s legitimacy is the key factor in getting people to obey it. So reforming the system isn’t about writing a host of new rules; it’s about elevating the status of regulation and regulators."
Your Brain on Computers: Attached to Technology and Paying a Price
"These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement – a dopamine squirt – that researchers say can be addictive…Mr. Nass at Stanford thinks the ultimate risk of heavy technology use is that it diminishes empathy by limiting how much people engage with one another, even in the same room."
Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley Research
The always brilliant Mary Meeker's most recent presentation – June 7th, 2010.
In most forms a waste of time
"14 compulsory forms demand 270 separate pieces of information. Each of those items of information has to be supplied, on average, 2.7 times. For each PhD student, academics lose 580 minutes of precious time on form-filling…for just one faculty, the value of this time would have funded about 11 full-time PhD students to completion, or paid for a professor for two years."
Riding the Dragon
Former Morgan Stanley analyst: "Powerful interest groups have paralyzed China’s macro-economic policy, with ominous long-term consequences. Local governments consider high land prices their lifeline…China’s macro policies have been reduced to psychotherapy, relying on sound bites and small technical moves to scare speculators. In the meantime, inflation continues to pick up momentum."
Transistor merges man and machine
"…embedded devices could relay information about the inner workings of disease-related proteins inside the cell membrane, and eventually lead to new ways to read, and even influence, brain or nerve cells."

Readings

willpate — Thu, 20 May 2010 03:00:11 +0000

Here is some of what I have been reading since May 4th:

STCI hosting $25k Boston startup competition
A little about what we have been up to lately at Spencer Trask Collaborative Innovations (STCI)
China Doesn’t Need Us Anymore?
Niall Ferguson says "they see this as a marriage on the rocks and they are actively looking, if not for another partner, then certainly for a divorce from this somewhat unreliable and spendthrift American spouse"
Have we forgotten how to concentrate?
A little story on Continuous partial attention, low-information diets and how to increase concentration
The Levy flight
How attention in people is similar to animal foraging behavior
How the city hurts your brain

Readings

willpate — Tue, 04 May 2010 03:02:58 +0000

Here is some of what I have been reading since April 19th:

Nassim Taleb on Black Swans, Fragility, and Mistakes
IBM Picks Entrepreneurs Brains
"Throughout the year, IBM will be running one-day SmartCamp programs in Paris (Sept. 16), Tel Aviv (June 24), Silicon Valley (Sept. 8), Boston (June 3), Stockholm (May 20) and London (July 21). Five applicants from each location will win a chance to attend the program, which includes face-time with 25 mentors, who are potential investors."
Reducing debt-To-GDP is requires GDP growth
Not many countries have done it, and the few that have grew their GDP to do it
Using collective intelligence to detect the start of a recession?
Mere references to the word "recession" worked for the last 4 recessions when searching the Washington Post & NYTimes, or Google Trends
Did the SEC Bait Goldman Sachs?
Insight from a former white collar criminal on what tactics and treatment Goldman Sachs can expect from SEC "pit bull" Richard E. Simpson.

Readings

willpate — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:06:31 +0000

Here is some of what I have been reading since April 17th:

Acts of kindness spread surprisingly easily
"When people benefit from kindness they pay it forward by helping others who were not originally involved, and this creates a cascade of cooperation that influences dozens more in a social network."
Brief meditative exercise helps cognition
"new research now suggests that the mind may be easier to cognitively train than we previously believed. Psychologists studying the effects of a meditation technique known as "mindfulness " found that meditation-trained participants showed a significant improvement in their critical cognitive skills…after only four days of training for only 20 minutes each day."
Memristor emulates neural learning
One more step to the singularity: electronic circuits that can learn similar to hos synapses of the brain work
Investing Insights From a Top Fund Manager
From Morningstar's domestic stock manager of the decade and manager of the year for 2009: "In investing, there are really two ways to go: to predict or to react to what happens. My prediction abilities are zero. So I go the other way: When what I don’t know happens, I make sure to be in a position with enough cash to take advantage of it."
How to find gold in SEC filings
"In 10-Ks and 10-Qs, look for the list of the company's risk factors and look at the financials. See whether there are significant differences from what the company reports in its press release."

Readings

willpate — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 04:01:34 +0000

Here is some of what I have been reading since April 12th:

Hussman Funds: Extend and Pretend
"Given the current state of valuations, and the likelihood of several years of additional credit deleveraging, it seems that economic conditions, valuations, and the typical duration of secular bear markets converge on the likelihood of several more years of interesting but unrewarding market volatility."
Simple Demographics Shows Major Economic Trends
"It turns out that population pyramids are something you can trade, buying the good ones and shorting the bad ones."
A solution to the consumer spending mystery?
"It's a theory: Americans are refusing to pay their mortgages and using the cash windfall for a spending spree"
Optimism Bias in Equity Analysts
"all that data is no match for a deep-seated bias, which leads us to accentuate the positive and downplay the prospect of potential losses"
Policymaking the Darwinist way
"Politicians and their expert advisers need evolutionary theory for the best of reasons: it provides new tools for making humane decisions on everyone’s behalf. "
Laurentian Neuroscience Professor Finds Quantum Telepathic Link?
Same guy that invented the God Helmet. "If you flash a light in one person’s eye, even though they’re in a chamber that’s closed up, the person in the other room that’s receiving just the magnetic field now, they’re not aware of the light flashing or not, they will show similar changes in frequency in the room. And we think that’s tremendous because that maybe the first macro demonstration of a quantum connection or so-called quantum entanglement."
US military warns of massive oil shortages by 2015
"Shortfall could reach 10m barrels a day…cost of crude oil is predicted to top $100 a barrel"