A Mathematician's Lament

A Mathematician's Lament

A good problem is something you don’t know how to solve. That’s what makes it a good puzzle, and a good opportunity. A good problem does not just sit there in isolation, but serves as a springboard to other interesting questions. -Paul Lockhart

Odd Couples: How Ice Skaters and Fireflies Tell Us Something About the Language of the Universe

The universe has always possessed the language it needs to conduct its own affairs. I don’t think it could be otherwise.

Because my daughter participates in competitive figure skating, my wife and I spend a lot of time at the ice rink. Well, to be accurate and fair, my wife spends a lot of time at the ice rink.

Today is different. The recent Thanksgiving holiday activities disrupted regular free skate schedules, so I volunteered to take my daughter this morning to the special free skate sessions that were offered at the rink. Sitting in the upper bleachers where the air is a little warmer, if only marginally so, I watch the disorder on the ice below. Kids and adults are everywhere, all over the ice working off the sumptuousness of recent holiday dinner and desserts and pent up energy from confinement with their relatives. It’s interesting to observe the range of skills present on the ice. As some cling desperately to the walls, others confidently glide and spiral and pirouette with grace. The ice buzzes with activity.

I’ve observed this scene dozens of times before, but suddenly it takes on an otherworldly appearance to me. Sitting high above on my cold perch, I feel a strange detached sensation, imagining myself as something like a Martian scientist observing the behavior of some recently discovered phenomenon on the blue-green planet out there. The icelings with metal blades attached to two of their appendages hurtle around in a cage paved with ice in utter chaos. But there’s something about the chaos that piques my interest. I observe no traffic directing signals, no marked or structured lanes, no apparent communication; yet, each ice-blader seems to adjust its position, speed, and direction to avoid hitting the other ice-bladers. What once appeared as chaos now seems to have a pattern or structure to it. Although I can’t seem to predict where any of the ice-bladers will be over time, I seem to be able to predict something that feels oddly important: no collisions will occur in the time window of my observations. The chaos I observe is not like the random collision-prone molecules in the rarified atmosphere of Mars. Rather, a self-emerging order of collision avoidance becomes apparent. With my dispassionate optical sensors, I can’t say I’m observing a social system of cooperation; however, a system of coordinated communication definitely seems to be occurring by which the entities below me dynamically adjust their physical state without centralized guidance or premeditated design (like that we expect to see in pair skating or synchronized swimming).

Go here to read more.

Economists Are Overconfident. So Are You

HBR blogger, Justin Fox, provides a great explanation in "Economists Are Overconfident. So Are You" for why you need to report insights with graphs, not just numbers or even no numbers at all. Here's the key take-away for you:

They paid too much attention to the averages, and too little to the uncertainties inherent in them, thereby displaying too much confidence.

Hypothesis Driven vs. Data Driven Analytics

We're having an excellent discussion at the LinkedIn discussion group
Advanced Business Analytics, Data Mining and Predictive Modeling on the topic of
"Hypothesis Driven Vs. Data Driven Analysis - Which do you support? Throw it all in the black box (computational) and see what you get or lets define the problem and seek data to analyze (traditional)."

If you have thoughts or guidance on this, you ought to join us or comment here.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with Reverend Bayes

A trip to Vegas, an evil clown, a bizarre coin, and a minister. What could go wrong?

I commented in a footnote of an earlier post that one of my favorite – no, morally obligated – questions to ask when faced with imposing assertions or risky plans is: “How do you know that?” If we could but practice the discipline to ask this question more often with greater courage and rigor, I think it would lead us to less intrusive and ineffective public policy decisions, assertions of power over those we distrust, or costly commitments to action based solely on untested gut feel or intuition alone.

Please, don’t misunderstand me. I think intuition or gut feel plays a very important place in many areas of life, including business, science, mathematics, policy making, cooking, career choices, and a hundred more. In fact, I’m pretty sure that all progress and innovation occurs, in part, because of an initial intuition or hunch that arises in the mind of an interested inquirer. The question, though, is what do we do with such a hunch when we face critical or risky decisions? Do we Farragut ahead without regard to the possible risks, damning the torpedoes, or do we attempt to answer the question, “How do I know that?” and consider the implications of our intuition before we act?

Reverend Thomas Bayes: evil clown fighter.

Fortunately, we have a tool, Bayes’ Theorem (named after the Reverend Thomas Bayes, who left this intellectual gem behind after his death in 1761), to integrate our intuition and systematic inquiry in a logically powerful way. Read more...

Dare to Disagree

I thought this TED talk by Margaret Heffernan was great and complementary to the blog post I wrote: Ain't I Got a Right to be Wrong?

Overcoming the Limits on Job Markets

Kenneth Anderson wrote a provocative post at the Volokh Conspiracy entitled "Limits on Job Market for Scientists and STEM (and Why, in an Alternative Universe Not Consisting of Our Universities, You Should Also Study Humanities)."

This is my contribution to the discussion:

I majored in mechanical engineering, but I spent considerable time in elective courses on philosophy of science and American literature. I believe the combination gave me a rounder view of the world, taught me multiple disciplines of critical analysis, and prepared me to communicate effectively. I also think those integrated, cross disciplinary skills made me broadly employable as I've enjoyed being a teacher, an engineer, a marketeer, a strategist, and a consultant - most of the time in a lucrative manner (well, except the teaching, but I loved being a teacher, even as my waistline got thinner). However, I do think the engineering degree conferred an edge to my employability that a humanities degree alone would not have.

Looking back even further than engineering school, I'd have to say that it was my peculiar constitution, not the probability of employment, that lead me there. I never conceived of being anything but an engineer, and I'm not sure I would be happy pursuing anything else but engineering of some kind.

Today I have two high school boys, both of whom are bright, studious, disciplined, and creative, yet neither of them has a technical bone in their body. Their heads and hearts are firmly oriented to the humanities. While I cringe at the prospect of supporting them financially until they are 40, I also struggle with directing them toward a STEM related field knowing that without a passion or aptitude for it, they likely will not do their best, most creative, valuable work. So many of my colleagues vocally express hatred for their jobs because they were directed there through the employability argument. Their discontent expresses itself beyond words. While the rate of employment and initial salaries in STEM fields may be higher than in the humanities, putting aside the usual cynicism about success, a real interest in a field confers a comparative advantage that ultimately distinguishes career leaders from job seekers.

So now I encourage my boys not only to find their passion, but also to find a problem or unmet need in that field and develop a niche business around that. In other words, by developing an entrepreneurial mindset along with their chosen field of study, they hopefully will find a strategic improvement over the prior probability of finding employment with a humanities degree. My next door neighbor exemplifies these combined attributes. With dual undergraduate degrees in professional writing and Russian and a MBA, she now runs a very successful business writing & PR company. I know of several other examples similar to hers in which, finding themselves at odds with the reigning view of unemployability, they created their own employment, not just for themselves, but many others.

Entrepreneurship seems to be the missing ingredient in practically all the education and career guidance I see. I'm not sure that we necessarily ought to steer young people toward the fields that are currently the most commercially viable, simply because the demand might not sustain across the time horizon required to prepare for it, not everyone's interests and aptitudes will align with it, and being a job seeker is usually not (by my way of thinking, admittedly) the most fulfilling and productive way to live one's life or contribute significantly to culture. Right now I am convinced that learning to be an entrepreneur in whatever field of interest one has provides the greatest opportunity to overcome those prior limitations. Both STEM and humanities oriented education seem woefully absent of this guidance.

Desperately Diving for Pearls of Great Price

You would be shocked to learn how fast you can make it to the bottom of a lake with a cinder block tied to your leg. I know this rate, by my own empirical investigation, to be thirty feet per second, give or take. If you’re in the mind to disconfirm this experimentally determined value, I will tell you how to repeat this experiment for yourself. First, convince yourself there are freshwater pearls in the mussels that live in your grandfather’s lake…

This is an example of the fresh water pearl mussel.  I never found any. If you aren't careful, you might, too.

Read more here.

(Image obtained from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Margaritifera_margaritifera-buiten.jpg)

Summer Reading Titles

I picked up my summer reading last night since summer begins this evening.

• A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss
• The Quantum Universe (And Why Anything That Can Happen, Does) by Brian Cox
• Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization by Adrian Bejan
• In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World by Ian Stewart

Yeah, I'm still a geek.

Ain’t I Got a Right to be Wrong?

When the words came tumbling out of my mouth,
I felt it all goin’ south,
But I kept on talkin’
‘Til you started walking.
Now I’m trying to dig my way out.
Ain’t I got a right to be wrong?

I was a whiz kid in college. You know, the kind of kid my professors wanted to whiz on. The reason: I was quick to argue, often too quick. College presented a very competitive environment to me. Rather than learn from others who actually knew better and had something to teach me, I often let myself get caught in the trap of thinking that competitive posturing would advance my career. I know now that never happens in the business environment among mature adults, but in the mind of a sophomore engineering student surrounded by thousands of people all competing for grades and corporate placement, winning seemed like a fine goal to have in mind.  #winning

Read more here...

An Elite Group of Stratospheric Thinkers

Peace. Love. War. Sex. Money. Life. Death. These are some of the most important issues we all deal with in more reflective and philosophical moments.

Oh yeah, and a good shave. Let me explain: I know the answer to this one now.

This is going to be a bit of a departure from my normal posts. It's a little more personal, related to concerns of daily life, and my recent experience with what I think is going to be a great product. But before I get there, let me tell you a little of the background about why I'm writing this.

For years I've pursued a good shave. My combination of medium beard (while it doesn't grow exceptionally fast, it's evenly distributed with follicles of moderate thickness) and skin sensitivity have made this routine the source of quite a bit of frustration since puberty. As the initiated know, the best shave comes from a barber using a straight razor. But who can afford doing that every day or so? And for the DIY-inclinced, have you seen the price of good straight razors? Even DIYers have to admit that the price of a good straight razor just isn't justifiable. So, I've tried electric razors of all kinds. Double blades. triple blades. The latest high tech Gillette 10-blades. You name it. In fact, one time I tried to use a depilatory cream instead of shaving altogether. What I got was a chemical burn on my neck that is still observable 20 years later. I've also tried every kind of shaving cream and aftershave balms you can imagine. All I want is a good shave at an affordable price that doesn't leave my face irritated. (You may be wondering why I don't just go with a beard. I've done that, too, but in addition to being especially abrasive to my wife and always worrying about whether I have food lodged in it, I look a bit like a leprechaun due to my Scot Irish heritage.)

This is where I've settled. I shave in a hot shower using the Schick Xtreme3 with the aloe strip, and I use Dial soap as a shave cream. I'm serious. Dial soap! I wipe the bar of Dial over my face, lather it up with my hands, and chop away. And it works pretty well. Whatever the chemical reaction is of the aloe strip and the glycerin (possibly?) in the Dial soap, it produces the absolute slickest surfactant I've ever seen. Unfortunately, the experience isn't altogether consistent in quality because sometimes the blades come a little dull or the aloe strip isn't imbued with the right amount of aloe.

Then a friend sent me a link a few weeks ago to the newly launched Dollar Shave Club. Their snarky video was enough to make me watch it three or four times. But I was intrigued because here they were claiming "Our Blades Are F***ing Great," and I did not have a particularly good shave that morning. I was in the mood to change - I admit it. After doing a little cost tradeoff analysis, I decided to try The 4X for $6 per month (and no S&H!). I signed up, and began anticipating blades that were f***ing great.

And then depression set in. A week later, I received an email informing me that "the internet arrived" at DSC and they were swamped with so many new orders that they had simply run out of inventory. My shipment would be delayed until May 15, about a month later.

So I waited. And I watched the snarky video again. Well, actually I watched it several more times, as I imagined what it was going to be like using blades that were f***ing great.

The blades finally arrived in the mail on May 21st. The package of four four-bladed razors (with an aloe strip) came with a weighty handle made of metallocene plastic. Enclosed was a little card informing me that I was now a "member of an elite group of stratospheric thinkers" and that I was entitled to a free drink at any bar in the US where I presented the card. (More snarkiness in the follow up - with the appropriate disclaimer, of course.  You will still be in the elite group of stratospheric thinkers.) On the morning of May 22nd, I used a DSC razor according to my routine manner for the first time.

The shave was f***ing great.
(I'm saying that in a hushed whisper now, as I observe a moment of reverent silence.)

The blades were smooth and sharp. The blade head was wide and hugged my face securely as the pivot worked exactly as designed. The aloe strip didn't quite deliver the same surfactant quality as the Schick, but it was good.

I’m also going to save $24/year. Admittedly, that’s not a lot, but I can apply it to my Starbucks addiction. Every little bit counts.

But OMG! The shave was the smoothest I've ever had. Two mornings later, the same blade cartridge delivered the same quality of shave as it did on the first day.

Do I sound like a giddy school girl after her first kiss? I won't shy away from that description, but it may go beyond even that because not two hours after my first shave with a DSC razor, I was thinking, as I drove to a client meeting, I'd like to go back and have another shave. All I wanted was just one more shave. Just one. I could turn around, go back home, and claim that Atlanta traffic was doing its normal thing to excuse my tardiness.

Now, I do have some critical recommendations for DSC (DSC, are you listening?). First, get that supply chain fixed, if you haven't already. You can't let another surprise catch you off guard like it did on your opening day or let customers feel that letdown again of being told that the most amazing razor in the world will be late. Second, figure out what Schick is putting in their aloe strip. I don't care how you find out, who you have to bribe, how you reverse engineer it, or what levels of corporate espionage you have to engage in, get that strip! Your razors will go from being f***ing great to holy mother of cheese and crackers f***ing great.

So, on a scale of 1 to 5, I'm giving DSC a 4. I think eventually they will reach a 5, but the initial delay really was a letdown. I had to discount them –1 to maintain my sense of fairness and objectivity.

If after reading this you are inclined to join an elite group of stratospheric thinkers, click this link and go from there. Honestly, with each signup that occurs through this link, I get a free shipment of blades. But I'm not asking you to be completely altruistic. If you sign up, you can get free blades, too, through your own referral link. See, we all win.

And you will love the shave.

What You Really Need To Succeed…or To Succeed

"Intelligence Is Overrated: What You Really Need To Succeed"

That was the headline from a Forbes editorial. But do you really agree with it?

The problem for me is that the article doesn't define success comprehensively and from whose perspective, except to say, "...executive competence and corporate success. Research carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology shows that 85 percent of your financial success (emphasis added)." In other words, the amount of money you make in life is the criteria it deals with, although the title might leave the discussion open for a broader perspective about success. Even if monetary success is the goal, the desired level of monetary income and accrual might vary greatly from one person to another.  When I read about success, I really want a more rounded consideration.

How should we think about success: success as society views success, as an individual views success, or some hybrid?  Do the criteria in the Forbes article apply across the board for all types of success or just executive competence and corporate success?

Consider this.  Was Steve Jobs successful? What about Paul Erdős? Colonel John Boyd?

The qualities required to satisfy "success" from one perspective may be different from those of another perspective.  I'm not so sure the four criteria (IQ, EQ, MQ, BQ) in the Forbes article are equally relevant as predictors across the different perspectives of success.

In their given fields of endeavor, I would say Jobs, Erdős, and Boyd were all successful, but none of them mastered all four criteria described in the article. Jobs, Erdős, and Boyd were frequently described as lacking emotional intelligence. Some might argue that Jobs lacked both emotional and moral intelligence. Erdős was notorious for his (ab)use of amphetamines and caffeine and limited sleep, showing little regard for his BQ. But they each sought a different kind of success premised in the Forbes article. Personally, I think the characteristics consistent with them were high IQ and dogged, relentless, obsessive pursuit of their goal. I especially don't think the article addressed the latter.

Furthermore, the article didn't really address the idea that there are different levels of success and different strategies to get there related to risk preference and the means of managing it. I think the article most likely addresses the kind of success associated with managing the probability of success/failure to achieve desirably moderate returns versus pursuing higher potential value with a low probability of success.

Of course I'm speculating, but I'd wager that people who master all four criteria in the article usually achieve moderate levels of personal and financial success, and the failure rate among them is low. These are people who finish high school, get a college degree (or more), and become day-to-day leaders and executives.  But they aren't the kind of people who typically change the world in far reaching ways. They do keep the world running, and that's important.  It is one measure of success.

On the other hand, people who pursue the potential value side of the equation tend to be extreme risk takers. Unfortunately, they may frequently fail to understand when they are wrong, so the rate of failure among them is high. They make up for their lack of mastering the latter three criteria with unrelenting obsession, though. So while many of these people might often head down a dead end pathway, when they do get it right, you see world changing kinds of success. They may profit from it with money and fame, or they may not. In some cases, they may not even know about the extent of their contribution (think Nikola Tesla).  The success with this crowd is self-selecting, as you rarely hear about the people who pursue the same strategy and fail to achieve their goals.

As Jobs being the most prominent example, significant commercial areas were affected by his success. Even if you don't use an Apple product, you benefit from the design esthetic he developed, or the advancements he led in other commercial areas, or the resultant competition his success drove. Maybe you wouldn't want his success for yourself, and there's nothing wrong with that.  Jobs, on the other, wanted it at the expense of the ideals you might hold dear. The same could be said for Erdos and Boyd. My thinking here, on a late Sunday night, is that success first needs to be clearly defined for yourself, and the tradeoffs required to get there need to be thoughtfully considered over and over.  But success by our standards shouldn't necessarily preclude our recognition of success by other standards.

Your thoughts?

Do Risk Analysts Dream of Electron Microscopes?

From as early as I can remember, I have always wanted to be a scientist. Indeed, while most kids my age were doing normal, healthy kid things on summer afternoons, like engaging in war games or playing with anatomically disproportionate Barbie dolls, I was usually in my secret lab (which was actually a sewing table my father converted to a “lab bench”) looking through my Bendai microscope or mixing chemicals with my Science Fair Chemcraft chemistry set. I distinctly remember on the playground one day, after being bowled over in a dodge ball game, one of my grade school classmates asking me, “You don’t really like sports, do you?” I responded through bloodied lips, “I like to think of science as my sport.” Of course, that admission advanced my standing in the picking order for the next game, as the best were always saved for last.

Read more...

I knew you wanted to read this today

ESP and the significance of significance

A controversy about experiments in extra-sensory perception throws some light, and maybe some confusion, on the idea of statistical significance. This article discusses a common misinterpretation of the results of significance tests, and investigates some criticisms of significance tests in general.

How Do You Know That? (or A Little Ambiguity on a Wednesday Afternoon)

I'm a crappy friend, and here's why.  When asked a question that a friend of mine deemed important, I turned his questions back to him in the form of additional questions.  Maybe I'm uncomfortable with familiar certitude, or else I'm just content to be a gad fly.

Maybe I'm too much of a coward to give a straight answer.  You can judge for yourself after you read the rest of this post. (You will, won't you?)

To set the context, here's the note (posted with permission).

"Hi Rob,

So, I read this [link from Wikipedia to my daughter] yesterday and asked if she believed it:

Joseph Smith Jr. said that when he was seventeen years of age an angel of God, named Moroni, appeared to him,[10] and said that a collection of ancient writings, engraved on golden plates by ancient prophets, was buried in a nearby hill in Wayne County, New York. The writings described a people whom God had led from Jerusalem to the Western Hemisphere 600 years before Jesus' birth. According to the narrative, Moroni was the last prophet among these people and had buried the record, which God had promised to bring forth in the latter days. Smith stated that he was instructed by Moroni to meet at the hill annually each September 22 to receive further instructions and that four years after the initial visit, in 1827, he was allowed to take the plates and was directed to translate them into English.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon

She said 'no,' so I asked her why she believed a man lived in the belly of a fish for three days and the story of an ark and a talking donkey, etc., but she didn't believe this story.  She thought for a second and said, 'because you didn't teach that to me' (which is a more honest answer than when I ask her why her room isn't clean).  So I asked her if we were sharing the story of Jesus with a non-believer or even someone in a country that was not familiar with the Bible what would make them believe one set of stories and not the other.  She didn't have an answer and I'm not sure I do either.

This has always been one of my sticking points (noted in the article):

For some followers of the Latter Day Saint movement, unresolved issues of the book's historical authenticity and the lack of conclusive archaeological evidence have led them to adopt a compromise position that the Book of Mormon may be the creation of Smith, but that it was nevertheless created through divine inspiration.[36] The position of most members of the Latter Day Saint movement and the official position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) is that the book is an actual and accurate historical record.

Thus, I'm asking if you have any thoughts on this."

No one is really questioning the Mormon church here.  My friend's question is related to his own unresolved issues, not those of you who wear the special undergarments.

My crappy response?  Here it is...

"First of all, I think you need to realize that you’re asking your daughter to do something very dangerous.  In the end, she may not believe what you believe.  Can you handle that, knowing that you started her on that road of inquiry and questioning?

Second, what do you hope to achieve by asking your daughter to take on this line of questioning?  Do you want her to have a more secure rationale of the stories she believes in by faith in you (which she more or less admitted to, and with honesty, as you point out)?  Or do you want your daughter to learn to live life on more courageous and rational terms; i.e., not driven by others’ forcible dictates or emotional manipulations against her own interests, or not driven by her own casual acceptance of poor thinking (which, in our own way, we all suffer from)?

Finally, I’m not going to answer your question directly. I’m going to turn the questions back on you. How do you establish that any belief is worthy of protracted attention and possibly worthy of bringing others to a similar level of attention? It seems to me that before you give your daughter some guidance in this regard, you ought to have given some measure of consideration to the following.

1. What are the criteria that you use to judge the veracity of a claim?
2. How do you determine that a belief should be significant to you?
3. How do you determine that a belief should be significant to others?
4. How do you determine that you have an obligation to communicate to others about it?
5. How do you determine that your beliefs are worthy enough to impose some obligation on others?

I hope you can live with some ambiguity on a Wednesday afternoon. :)

Best regards,
Rob"

I don't think I exactly gave a straight, supportive answer.

The romantic ideal I possess of a stalwart friend is one who would give reassuring answers.  Clear answers.  None of that ambiguous, oblique stuff that makes you lie awake at night staring at the ceiling.  Like I said, I'm a crappy friend.

So while I might want to be a good friend and fall short, above all I want to be an honest friend when it matters.  (Yeah, I qualify that.  I'll leave it up to you to ponder when a little dishonesty might be helpful.)  Looking back on it, I have to say that one of the most important lessons I gained from engineering school was to realize I have the moral authority to ask: "How do you know that?"

And so I ask, dear reader, how do YOU know that?

In the context of this thread, I don't care if you believe in Joseph Smith and the story of Maroni.  For that matter, I don't care if you believe in Scientology, Buddha, Jesus, or Mohammed. Global warming or not, evolution or special creation, secret societies that malevolently run the planet or that government is just always inept. I don't care.

I don't care if you believe in a gold standard, a bimetallic standard, or a fiat currency.

I don't care if you believe that you should never get involved in a land war in Asia or that you should never go in against a Sicilian when death in on the line.

I. Don't. Care.

What I do care about is this: If we believe that our beliefs are worthy enough to affect others, I want to know - how do we know that?  Let's start right there.

How a 1979 MG Midget Taught Me to Love Risk Analysis

At the tender age of 17 I sold my soul to a 1979 MG Midget. Or, at least I sold my body into indentured servitude to it. I spent my entire earnings from two prior summer jobs and my part time job after school to acquire this little gem. Fire engine red. Black racing stripes. Mag wheels. And, yes, a sixty-five BHP engine. As cool as that sounds and as anyone who has ever owned a British Leyland product already knows, I spent a lot of time tinkering with the car to keep it running, often at the most inconvenient of times.

Read more here.

Figuring Out the Truth - Rules of Thumb to Live By

One of the great benefits of empowered social networking these days is the opportunity to meet (virtually, of course) fantastic people.  While Facebook has been great for keeping up with friends from high school, college, and more non-vocational social circles, and Twitter has been fun for following the latest snarky comments from people I never meet but might like to, LinkedIn has been great for actually expanding the circle of people I meet with more vocational interests.  Recently, Mary Ritenour and I met in a discussion forum as we both detected that someone on the interwebs was wrong (I tell you, they were totally wrong!).  A sort of emergent tag team arose between us in which we attempted to help bring a few entrenched mindsets to, at least, the realization of the existence of an alternate viewpoint.  No one yelled, "Uncle!" in the end, but the exchange proved largely exciting and challenging while maintaing a sense of reasoned decorum and respect.  On the internet!  I know!  I'm speechless, too.

In our sidebar conversation, Mary and I got into a discussion about reasoning, persistence of belief systems in the face of disconfirming evidence, and bias - not just of others, but our own.  It was through the thread of this conversation that Mary told me about an exchange she had with a friend who confided that she was having difficulty making sense of the claims from experts in important complex issues.  Mary's friend's complaint went something like this: "This underscores my frustration with science/technology and politics. As a non-scientist, I can and do follow the debate, but how can I understand the problem when both sides produce different sets of facts and thus generate conflicting theories and computer generated futures?"  Obviously there seems to be a true desire here to understand and yet a frustration and lack of tools to sort through "competing facts."

Mary then suggested the following to me, which I thought was pretty good. "It occurred to me that perhaps the greatest need is...demonstrations of HOW to think through issues, without advocating a position."  I think she's on to something here.  "If we truly practice what we preach (of freedom of thought, of individual’s right to self determination) then we should demonstrate HOW to think, rather than just provide more facts. It changes the game. It provides respect to the searchers, and tools for them to use in their search for the truth. If the logic and truth of our beliefs are not discoverable by those means then what hope is there?"

The following are what Mary eventually suggested to her friend.  I loved its crunchy goodness so much I wanted to share it with you.  While you read it, I'm going to refill my coffee.  I'll be right back.

Mary Ritenour's "Figuring Out the Truth" Ten Rules of Thumb:

• Work to strip out the emotional reactions; try to be as factual and data driven as possible.  Go to original sources for data whenever possible.

• Expect complexity.  Don’t settle for simplistic solutions or claims. Life and life’s issues are, for the most part, not one-dimensional. That does not mean that you should avoid decisions, but recognize that nearly all of life’s choices come with not insignificant trade-offs.

• Credible experts are the ones that are transparent about their information, acknowledge when their opinions change, willingly share their thinking processes, and invite debate as a way to improve EVERYONE’s understanding of an issue.

• Never let anyone tell you what to think or how to feel about an issue. You have the right to form your own opinion, to do your own fact gathering, consult your own experts (and hold those experts to your "Rules of Thumb" standards!).

• You have the right to change your opinion as you become aware of additional information. Indeed, learning and developing more depth of understanding is part of my definition of maturity.

• The behavior of those advocating a position can tell you something about their own commitment/belief in what they are advocating. Someone who tells me that fast food is toxic, but eats at McDonald’s every day has no credibility with me. 

• Be wary of "emergency" or "crisis" claims." The sky is rarely truly falling, and those who insist on immediate action usually want you to act before thinking for a reason. ("Experts" have been predicting awful calamities since the first hominid saw the first meteor – the accuracy rate of these predictions nears zero.) Reserve the right to take your time to think through your options.

• Learn enough about statistics, logic (especially fallacies of reasoning), basic research, and risk analysis to be BS inoculated. This includes learning to ask questions like "How did you arrive at that conclusion?" "Where did you get your data?" "What assumptions did you use in gathering/analyzing that data?"  "What is your ultimate objective/goal?"  "How do you know that?"

• People act in ways that they perceive are in their best interest. That "best interest" includes being socially acceptable in their circle of friends, feeling as though they are part of some larger good (recycling, etc) or simply the pleasure of "doing good."  To more clearly understand someone's choices, you need to understand the options they had to choose from (or that they thought they had to choose from) – the context of their decision is important to understand. Without understanding that context, their decisions may not make any sense to you.  Your reaction to them may appear hostile, which just impedes the process toward understanding each other.

• Those who insist you be either "for" or "against" their position are not advocating a position on an issue so much as asserting a dogma. If they don’t have enough respect for you to hear your opinions and questions, or searching for some alternate "none of the above" solution, it speaks poorly of their own reasoning skills and quality of their proposed solutions.

Pretty good, huh?  I knew you would enjoy it.  Now, let's go live it.

In the meantime, there are two books within this vein that I would like to recommend to you.  Go check them out.

1. Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
2. Thinking, Fast and Slow