Download or read book Summary of The Half Life of Facts by Samuel Arbesman written by QuickRead and published by QuickRead.com. This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date. At one point, smoking was healthy. It relieved stress and calmed you down, it was even recommended by doctors! Today, we understand just how deadly the habit can be. And what about red meat? Fat? Red wine? Information regarding the nutritional value of such foods is constantly changing. In other words, we are living in a world where facts are not static, as we gain more knowledge, facts change. And just like the benefits of smoking, your reality is out of date. Throughout The Half-Life of Facts, Samuel Arbesman argues that what we may think of as true today may turn out to be false tomorrow. Through thought-provoking ideas, theories, and mathematical and scientific techniques, The Half-Life of Facts details just how our knowledge changes over time and how facts have a dwindling lifespan. As you read, you’ll learn how the height of Mount Everest is constantly changing, how Popeye contributed to the spread of misinformation, and why it’s important to accept change in our ever-growing world. Do you want more free book summaries like this? Download our app for free at https://www.QuickRead.com/App and get access to hundreds of free book and audiobook summaries. DISCLAIMER: This book summary is meant as a summary and an analysis and not a replacement for the original work. If you like this summary please consider purchasing the original book to get the full experience as the original author intended it to be. If you are the original author of any book on QuickRead and want us to remove it, please contact us at [email protected].
Download or read book The Half Life of Facts written by Samuel Arbesman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New insights from the science of science Facts change all the time. Smoking has gone from doctor recommended to deadly. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that the brontosaurus was a real dinosaur. In short, what we know about the world is constantly changing. Samuel Arbesman shows us how knowledge in most fields evolves systematically and predictably, and how this evolution unfolds in a fascinating way that can have a powerful impact on our lives. He takes us through a wide variety of fields, including those that change quickly, over the course of a few years, or over the span of centuries.
Download or read book Overcomplicated written by Samuel Arbesman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "Overcomplicated," complexity scientist Samuel Arbesman offers a fresh, insightful field guide to living with complex technologies that defy human comprehension. As technology grows more complex, Arbesman argues, its behavior mimics the vagaries of the natural world more than it conforms to a mathematical model. If we are to survive and thrive in this new age, we must abandon our need for governing principles and rules and accept the chaos. By embracing and observing the freak accidents and flukes that disrupt our lives, we can gain valuable clues about how our algorithms really work. What's more, we will become better thinkers, scientists, and innovators as a result.
Download or read book The Great Mental Models Volume 1 written by Shane Parrish and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.
Download or read book Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel written by Virginia Lee Burton and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A modern classic that no child should miss. Since it was first published in 1939, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel has delighted generations of children. Mike and his trusty steam shovel, Mary Anne, dig deep canals for boats to travel through, cut mountain passes for trains, and hollow out cellars for city skyscrapers -- the very symbol of industrial America. But with progress come new machines, and soon the inseparable duo are out of work. Mike believes that Mary Anne can dig as much in a day as one hundred men can dig in a week, and the two have one last chance to prove it and save Mary Anne from the scrap heap. What happens next in the small town of Popperville is a testament to their friendship, and to old-fashioned hard work and ingenuity.
Download or read book Human Frontiers written by Michael Bhaskar and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has the flow of big, world-changing ideas slowed down? A provocative look at what happens next at the frontiers of human knowledge. The history of humanity is the history of big ideas that expand our frontiers—from the wheel to space flight, cave painting to the massively multiplayer game, monotheistic religion to quantum theory. And yet for the past few decades, apart from a rush of new gadgets and the explosion of digital technology, world-changing ideas have been harder to come by. Since the 1970s, big ideas have happened incrementally—recycled, focused in narrow bands of innovation. In this provocative book, Michael Bhaskar looks at why the flow of big, world-changing ideas has slowed, and what this means for the future. Bhaskar argues that the challenge at the frontiers of knowledge has arisen not because we are unimaginative and bad at realizing big ideas but because we have already pushed so far. If we compare the world of our great-great-great-grandparents to ours today, we can see how a series of transformative ideas revolutionized almost everything in just a century and a half. But recently, because of short-termism, risk aversion, and fractious decision making, we have built a cautious, unimaginative world. Bhaskar shows how we can start to expand the frontier again by thinking big—embarking on the next Universal Declaration of Human Rights or Apollo mission—and embracing change.
Download or read book Wonderful Life with the Elements written by Bunpei Yorifuji and published by No Starch Press. This book was released on 2012-09-12 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the brilliant mind of Japanese artist Bunpei Yorifuji comes Wonderful Life with the Elements, an illustrated guide to the periodic table that gives chemistry a friendly face. In this super periodic table, every element is a unique character whose properties are represented visually: heavy elements are fat, man-made elements are robots, and noble gases sport impressive afros. Every detail is significant, from the length of an element's beard to the clothes on its back. You'll also learn about each element's discovery, its common uses, and other vital stats like whether it floats—or explodes—in water. Why bother trudging through a traditional periodic table? In this periodic paradise, the elements are people too. And once you've met them, you'll never forget them.
Download or read book Investing with the Trend written by Gregory L. Morris and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investing with the Trend provides an abundance of evidence for adapting a rules-based approach to investing by offering something most avoid, and that is to answer the “why” one would do it this way. It explains the need to try to participate in the good markets and avoid the bad markets, with cash being considered an asset class. The book is in three primary sections and tries to leave no stone unturned in offering almost 40 years of experience in the markets. Part I – The focus is on much of the misinformation in modern finance, the inappropriate use of Gaussian statistics, the faulty assumptions with Modern Portfolio Theory, and a host of other examples. The author attempts to explain each and offer justification for his often strong opinions. Part II – After a lead chapter on the merits of technical analysis, the author offers detailed research into trend analysis, showing how to identify if a market is trending or not and how to measure it. Further research involves the concept of Drawdown, which the author adamantly states is a better measure of investor risk than the oft used and terribly wrong use of volatility as determined by standard deviation. Part III – This is where he puts it all together and shows the reader all of the steps and details on how to create a rules-based trend following investment strategy. A solid disciplined strategy consists of three parts, a measure of what the market is actually doing, a set of rules and guidelines to tell you how to invest based upon that measurement, and the discipline to follow the strategy
Download or read book The Forgotten Depression written by James Grant and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "By the publisher of the prestigious Grant's Interest Rate Observer, an account of the deep economic slump of 1920-21 that proposes, with respect to federal intervention, "less is more." This is a free-market rejoinder to the Keynesian stimulus applied by Bush and Obama to the 2007-09 recession, in whose aftereffects, Grant asserts, the nation still toils. James Grant tells the story of America's last governmentally-untreated depression; relatively brief and self-correcting, it gave way to the Roaring Twenties. His book appears in the fifth year of a lackluster recovery from the overmedicated downturn of 2007-2009. In 1920-21, Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding met a deep economic slump by seeming to ignore it, implementing policies that most twenty-first century economists would call backward. Confronted with plunging prices, wages, and employment, the government balanced the budget and, through the Federal Reserve, raised interest rates. No "stimulus" was administered, and a powerful, job-filled recovery was under way by late in 1921. In 1929, the economy once again slumped--and kept right on slumping as the Hoover administration adopted the very policies that Wilson and Harding had declined to put in place. Grant argues that well-intended federal intervention, notably the White House-led campaign to prop up industrial wages, helped to turn a bad recession into America's worst depression. He offers the experience of the earlier depression for lessons for today and the future. This is a powerful response to the prevailing notion of how to fight recession. The enterprise system is more resilient than even its friends give it credit for being, Grant demonstrates"--
Download or read book The O Henry Prize Stories 100th Anniversary Edition 2019 written by Laura Furman and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now celebrating its centenary, this prestigious annual anthology gathers the twenty best new short stories published in the previous year. An Anchor Books Original. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2019--continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence--contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. The winning writers are an impressive mix of celebrated names and new, emerging voices. Their stories evoke lives both near and distant, in settings ranging from Jamaica, Houston, and Hawaii to a Turkish coal mine and a drought-ridden Northwestern farm, and feature an engaging array of characters, including Laotian refugees, a Colombian kidnap victim, an eccentric Irish schoolteacher, a woman haunted by a house that cleans itself, and a strangely long-lived rabbit. The uniformly breathtaking stories are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines. List of 2019 winners: Tessa Hadley John Keeble Moira McCavana Rachel Kondo Sarah Shun-lien Bynum Stephanie Reents Alexia Arthurs Valerie O’Riordan Patricia Engel Kenan Orhan Sarah Hall Bryan Washington Isabella Hammad Weike Wang Caoilinn Hughes Souvankham Thammavongsa Liza Ward Doua Thao Alexander MacLeod John Edgar Wideman Prize Jurors 2019: Lynn Freed, Elizabeth Strout, Lara Vapynar
Download or read book Nullius in Verba written by Mike Sutton and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-07-20 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Second edition (abridged and updated) Vol.1. First paperback edition. The world's leading experts (including Charles Darwin, Alfred Wallace and Richard Dawkins) agree that Patrick Matthew, not Darwin or Wallace, originated the full theory of evolution by natural selection. However, Darwin convinced the world that neither he nor any other naturalist had read it before he and Wallace replicated it and claimed it as their own. Darwin told several lies about the scientific readership of Mathew's book. Independently verifiable facts in this book prove it. Darwin's lies concealed what he had twice been told in writing about the pre-1858 readership of Patrick Matthew's prior-published theory. This discovery of Darwin's proven sly dishonesty is a powerful addition to Sutton's original bombshell discovery of the "New Data" that several highly influential naturalists, who Darwin and Wallace knew, in fact did read and then cite Matthew's (1831) book containing his original breakthrough before Darwin and Wallace (1858) and Darwin (1859) replicated it without citing Matthew. This book uncovers the world's most sensational case of plagiarising science fraud by glory theft. The Latin phrase "Nullius in Verba" has been the motto of Britain's famous Royal Society - one of the oldest learned societies in the world - since the 17th century. It means that we should not accept that something is true based solely on anyone's word regardless of his or her authority or stature. Sutton has brought his considerable expertise in understanding what causes crimes of intellectual and property theft to the area of scientific discovery theft. He has unearthed compelling new evidence of the Royal Society's egregious failure to faithfully follow its own oldest and most fundamental tenet resulting in the greatest scientific fraud in history. Just as new DNA analysis is changing traditional forensic science, Sutton has pioneered the use of newly available "big data" analysis of the literature to expose science fraud. His biggest catch so far, Charles Darwin - the same Charles Darwin credited with discovering the theory of natural selection. In his book "Nullius in Verba: Darwin's Greatest Secret," Sutton reveals in compelling and convincing detail a huge cache of independently verifiable facts that, contrary to what is said in an untold number of documentaries, books and scholarly works, the theory of macroevolution by natural selection was not independently discovered by Charles Darwin, or Alfred Wallace. Avoiding any religious and philosophical entanglements, Sutton's sharp objective eye of the criminal investigator and academic creates a vivid and authentic depiction of the times, the characters, and the cover-up that endured for over 130 years - until now. More than the clues and facts, Sutton brings to life the colorful personalities, professional rivalries, gargantuan egos, and scramble for notoriety and its riches of the people involved. This behind-the-scenes portrayal will be fascinating to anyone who loves a true-life detective story, where in this case, the victim was the truth. It will be very surprising if Darwin's claim to have independently discovered the theory of natural selection will survive Sutton's tireless investigative research and fact-driven discovery paradigm puncturing evidence.
Download or read book Smarter Than You Think written by Clive Thompson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-09-12 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory and timely look at how technology boosts our cognitive abilities—making us smarter, more productive, and more creative than ever It’s undeniable—technology is changing the way we think. But is it for the better? Amid a chorus of doomsayers, Clive Thompson delivers a resounding “yes.” In Smarter Than You Think, Thompson shows that every technological innovation—from the written word to the printing press to the telegraph—has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But, as in the past, we adapt—learning to use the new and retaining what is good of the old. Smarter Than You Think embraces and extols this transformation, presenting an exciting vision of the present and the future.
Download or read book Thinking in Bets written by Annie Duke and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Wall Street Journal bestseller, now in paperback. Poker champion turned decision strategist Annie Duke teaches you how to get comfortable with uncertainty and make better decisions. Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there's always information hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making? Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. For most people, it's difficult to say "I'm not sure" in a world that values and, even, rewards the appearance of certainty. But professional poker players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don't always lead to great outcomes, and bad decisions don't always lead to bad outcomes. By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don't, you'll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making. You'll become more confident, calm, compassionate, and successful in the long run.
Download or read book How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming written by Mike Brown and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-01-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The solar system most of us grew up with included nine planets, with Mercury closest to the sun and Pluto at the outer edge. Then, in 2005, astronomer Mike Brown made the discovery of a lifetime: a tenth planet, Eris, slightly bigger than Pluto. But instead of adding one more planet to our solar system, Brown’s find ignited a firestorm of controversy that culminated in the demotion of Pluto from real planet to the newly coined category of “dwarf” planet. Suddenly Brown was receiving hate mail from schoolchildren and being bombarded by TV reporters—all because of the discovery he had spent years searching for and a lifetime dreaming about. A heartfelt and personal journey filled with both humor and drama, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming is the book for anyone, young or old, who has ever imagined exploring the universe—and who among us hasn’t?
Download or read book An Economist Gets Lunch written by Tyler Cowen and published by Plume. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading economist, “who may very well turn out to be this decade’s Thomas Friedman” (Wall Street Journal), illuminates the state of American food today. Tyler Cowen, one of the most influential economists of the last decade, wants you to know that just about everything you’ve heard about how to get good food is wrong. Drawing on a provocative range of examples from around the globe, Cowen reveals why airplane food is bad, but airport food is improving, why restaurants full of happy, attractive people usually serve mediocre meals, and why American food has improved as Americans drink more wine. At a time when obesity is on the rise and forty-four million Americans receive food stamps, An Economist Gets Lunch will revolutionize the way we eat today—and show us how we’re going to feed the world tomorrow.
Download or read book Black Hole Survival Guide written by Janna Levin and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space—an authoritative and accessible guide to the most alluring and challenging phenomena of contemporary science. "[Levin will] take you on a safe black hole trip, an exciting travel story enjoyed from your chair’s event horizon.” —Boston Globe Through her writing, astrophysicist Janna Levin has focused on making the science she studies not just comprehensible but also, and perhaps more important, intriguing to the nonscientist. In this book, she helps us to understand and find delight in the black hole—perhaps the most opaque theoretical construct ever imagined by physicists—illustrated with original artwork by American painter and photographer Lia Halloran. Levin takes us on an evocative exploration of black holes, provoking us to imagine the visceral experience of a black hole encounter. She reveals the influence of black holes as they populate the universe, sculpt galaxies, and even infuse the whole expanse of reality that we inhabit. Lively, engaging, and utterly unique, Black Hole Survival Guide is not just informative—it is, as well, a wonderful read from first to last.
Download or read book Getting What You Came For written by Robert Peters and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is graduate school right for you? Should you get a master's or a Ph.D.? How can you choose the best possible school? This classic guide helps students answer these vital questions and much more. It will also help graduate students finish in less time, for less money, and with less trouble. Based on interviews with career counselors, graduate students, and professors, Getting What You Came For is packed with real-life experiences. It has all the advice a student will need not only to survive but to thrive in graduate school, including: instructions on applying to school and for financial aid; how to excel on qualifying exams; how to manage academic politics—including hostile professors; and how to write and defend a top-notch thesis. Most important, it shows you how to land a job when you graduate.
