RK's Musings

Steal like an Artist

Austin Kleon’s book is essentially a blog post turned in to a book .The basic theme of the book is that in art as in other forms, you have to steal. The word steal has a negative connotation and hence the book differentiates between two kinds of thefts:

Basically theft in this sense means that you are free from the burden of trying to be completely original. Most of the book is common sense stuff but how often do we really follow commonsense ? 

There are some nice visuals in the book. Some of them that I found interesting are :

Very often, ONLY when you have multiple ideas,
that you are capable of coming up with a perfect idea that works

 

It is better to separate your workspace in to analog and digital mode

Paul Graham in one of his essays says that he follows a similar configuration where he uses two computers, one connected to internet and the other offline, so that while working on something that requires concentration, the urge to browse randomly, check email, tweets, blogs is eliminated.

 

As Steve Jobs says, you cannot connect dots going forward.
However, dots you create in fact make you what you are.

 

All you need is a little space and a little time—a place to work, and some time to do it;
a little self-imposed solitude and temporary captivity.

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

— Gustave Flaubert

Psychologist & Netflix prize

Thanks to Ravi, came to know about an old wired article on Netflix prize, where Gavin Potter used fundas from Behavioral economics to crack the problem

A deeper part of Potter's strategy is based on the work of Amos Tversky and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, pioneers of the science now called behavioral economics. This new field incorporates into traditional economics those features of human life that are lost when you think of a person as a rational machine, or as a list of numbers representing cinematic taste.

One such phenomenon is the anchoring effect, a problem endemic to any numerical rating scheme. If a customer watches three movies in a row that merit four stars — say, the Star Wars trilogy — and then sees one that's a bit better — say, Blade Runner — they'll likely give the last movie five stars. But if they started the week with one-star stinkers like the Star Wars prequels, Blade Runner might get only a 4 or even a 3. Anchoring suggests that rating systems need to take account of inertia — a user who has recently given a lot of above-average ratings is likely to continue to do so. Potter finds precisely this phenomenon in the Netflix data; and by being aware of it, he's able to account for its biasing effects and thus more accurately pin down users' true tastes.

Couldn't a pure statistician have also observed the inertia in the ratings? Of course. But there are infinitely many biases, patterns, and anomalies to fish for. And in almost every case, the number-cruncher wouldn't turn up anything. A psychologist, however, can suggest to the statisticians where to point their high-powered mathematical instruments. "It cuts out dead ends," Potter says.

Creativity Now : Summary

This book contains most of the productivity hacks that one comes across in various articles/blogs/books.  In one sense, this book is a laundry list of hacks that one can try out to increase productivity. A big font size for the text and rich images scattered through out the book, makes it a coffee table book.

Some of the hacks that I found interesting are,

• On a daily basis, Try to use pen and paper at least a few minutes to work something out , be it a math problem or a back of the envelope calculation of something or simply draw images that capture whatever you are working on. Writing makes one’s relation to work intensely personal and more so using a pen and paper.
• Keep a Swipe file – Your swipe file should contain good ideas and examples from your field of work or interest and from other fields. This hack is spot on for a programmer. You got to keep a folder that lists the tasks and the most efficient code that you have figured out for the task.
• Force a image or word association with a number and vice-versa. This little hack is very useful for remembering stuff.
• Declare a MAD – Massive Action Day :  Pick a day and focus on only one task. Switch off TV, Mobile, RSS alerts, email alerts, Internet etc. and work on something for 8-10 hours at a stretch.
• Keep an “IDEAS BOX” – Twyla Tharp mentions this as a key to her successful career.
• Make a NOT-TO-DO list. We always seem to know what we need to do and we don’t care or think about what not to do, in a day
• Use time pods – 45 min time period where you focus on only one task. More on the lines of Pomodoro technique where you work on 25 min time slots.

Word Processors Vs. Text editors

For majority, writing something means firing up a word document( MS Office or Open Office) and typing in stuff. Sometimes we don’t pause and think about the way we are actually preparing the document. We write something, we format it using the menu items or hot keys, then we write something, then we format etc. This goes on until we are done with preparing the document. This process is virtually in an auto-pilot mode for most of us. But if we pause and think of it, Should composition and formatting be activities that should done in parallel ? At least I don’t remember writing anything beyond 100-150 words before using some typesetting stuff like changing the font, color,etc. Does my composition become efficient if I don’t club these activities ? Don’t know!

The other day I was talking to someone who believes in “NO MS Word” life. That’s a little extreme, I felt.  He pointed me to an article that has changed his behavior years ago. Worth a read!

Link : Word Processors : Stupid and Inefficient

Visual Thinking

Thinking outside the box :–)

Pomodoro Technique Illustrated : Summary

This is a book on the lines of GTD( Getting Things Done). I tried GTD a looooong time ago and I gave up almost immediately. It surprises me though, that there is actually an outlook plugin for GTD system and a ton of softwares based on GTD. That means there is some section of people who are finding it useful .

Anyways this book is markedly different in its premise. It is based on chunking principle. If you want to do anything , focus on it for a specific period of time, take a break and repeat it !!. 

“Pomodoro”, is an Italian word for Tomato, and the originator of this technique (Francesco Cirillo) found a productivity hack using a kitchen timer that was in the shape of a tomato. Hence the name Pomodoro Technique. Basically the principle goes something like this:

• Set a timer for 25 min on a task and work on it with absolutely no distractions. Each 25 min chunk is called a Pomodoro.
• Take a forced break for 5 min where one is not supposed to think of previous Pomodoro activity or future Pomodoro activity
• Repeat the above steps 3 times after which you can a 15 min break.

Is it really a productive hack ? God Knows!..I read this book (in 2 Pomodoros ) out of sheer curiosity  as this has generated quite some buzz. I guess this technique might be useful for multitaskers who have too many things on their to-do list and want some structure to their juggling act.

29 Ways to Stay Creative

Via Siddharth:

Pomodoro Technique

 

Accidental Genius : Summary

One of my favorite quotes about writing/composition is,

“We write to know about that which we know” - Grace Paley

By writing down the stuff that you have in your mind, you bring some structure in to your thought process and this structure in turn helps you think better.

Most of the times there is an internal editor in our mind which kind of censors our thoughts in forming connections. As everyone knows, the best ideas usually arise by combining themes from seemingly diverse fields. I guess this internal editor hinders us from connecting stuff unless we overwhelm it with some kind of constraint / create a situation where its power becomes shallow. There are many ways to escape from this internal editor.Is it any wonder that some of the best ideas we get are when we are away from work ,be it traveling/ running / playing some sport/ relaxing and thinking freely outside of our work / debating about something with a friend, etc. Internal editor is damn good when we are planning to execute stuff. But to ideate, I guess one must seek activities that are far removed from the work context. What does this book say ? Well firstly, something about the title. The author is a positioning consultant and no wonder the title smells like a marketing ploy. The book is about writing and a particular form of writing called FREEWRITING. What is freewriting ? Freewriting is a certain style of writing that we can use to get all our random/chaotic/semi-structured/exploratory thoughts on paper without our internal editor coming in our way.

The first time I came across this kind of tool was in the context of teaching math to sophomores. During my brief stint as an adjunct faculty, I realized that senior members in the faculty had adopted “writing” in mathematics as a way to teach stuff better. One of the senior lecturers was preparing an assignment for the class with no problems/no equations to solve / nothing to calculate.I was little surprised. I mean, I was used to solving problems in math or may be writing theorems to understand them better. “Writing” in math never meant anything beyond that, until I came to realize that it is a very powerful technique. One of the techniques the faculty was using was “freewriting”. Anyways coming back to the intent of the post, i.e to give a brief summary , the book would appeal to people who write to think. The book motivates a reader to adopt freewriting style to generate ideas. The author is of the staunch belief that freewriting done by following certain principles will help one understand things better / help one explore new ideas . He says

As expansive and impressive as the mind is, it’s also lazy. Left to its own devices, it recycles tired thoughts, takes rutted paths, and steers clear of unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory. You could say that one of its primary jobs is to shut off, even when there’s important thinking to be done.

Freewriting prevents that from happening. It pushes the brain to think longer, deeper, and more unconventionally than it normally would. By giving yourself a handful of liberating freewriting rules to follow, you back your mind into a corner where it can’t help but come up with new thoughts. You could call freewriting a form of forced creativity.

The author states 6 guidelines for freewriting. They are :

1. Try Easy:  A relaxed 90% is more efficient than a vein-bulging 100 percent effort. Hence it is important to have this “Try easy “ mindset before one sets to write
2. Write fast and continuously: The main outcome of this writing is to flush out the thoughts from the subconscious mind and until you really write fast, the logical and rational mind will try to come in between and that defeats the purpose.
3. Work against a time limit: Set a timer and get in to freewriting mode. The limit energizes your writing effort by giving you parameters
4. Write as you think: This becomes important in freewriting as the writing is supposed to help you and writing as you speak is not that useful. You ought to write as you think
5. Go with your thought: More on the lines of improv wisdom where you keep writing stuff and follow the thoughts as they appear in your writing.
6. Redirect your attention: Focus changers help one to redirect the mind to unexplored parts of a situation. A sample list of focus changers are mentioned in the book which can be kept at the back of your mind in your freewriting exercise.

Around these core principles, the book suggests 15 different ideas to refine and improve freewriting ability. The author encourages writing as a mode of thinking. Freethinking is a little different from freewriting where you might get carried away and start thinking about something that is completely different from the initial idea. This in itself is nothing to be worried about. However freethinking is like a rudderless ship. Freewriting on the other hand makes you come back to the central topic of writing after a few digressions. Also the very fact that you have everything written down makes the write-up a fantastic playground to mine for new ideas.

Jason Calacanis interviews Bitcoin guys

Via TP

Democracy is Black

Anup Poudel's video "Democracy is Black" was selected the winner among 2,200 participants from 89 countries around the world. The 1minutes 30 second video explains the meaning of democracy.

 

Stairs : Purple Cow

Upside of Irrationality

Dan Ariely in his book talk  : 

We have an intuitive idea of stuff and we continue to work under the “spell” of our intuitions. But it is wise , despite our internal resistance, to check our intuitions from time to time. Collect data , Do a Survey , Simulate stuff , etc to empirically test your intuition and you will be amazed at the numerous ill conceived intuitions that we keep holding on to.

Chief Detail Officer

Rory Sutherland makes a case for a new job title in the org structure of companies – Chief Detail Officer

 

Zen Shorts

I had never heard of Caldecott Honor & Medal books until yesterday when I came to know that such books contain a lot of ideas for teaching stuff to kids. 

Here is what the wiki says :

The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children published that year. It was named in honor of nineteenth-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott. Together with the Newbery Medal, it is the most prestigious American children's book award

The Caldecott Honor is a citation given by the Association for Library Service to Children of the American Library Association (ALA). The Caldecott Honor is given to worthy runners-up for the Caldecott Medal, a higher honor. Though the Caldecott Honor was initiated in 1971, specially cited runners-up for the Caldecott Medal from previous years were retroactively named Caldecott Honor books.

Caldecott Honor book titled “Zen Shorts” , authored by  Jon J Muth , says  :

 

Solving through pictures

Dan Roam makes a case for solving problems using pictures.

More than you know : Summary - Part 2

Continuing from my last post where I had left the juicy part of the book for this post, here I go :

The last topic contains ideas which I find fascinating. Markets are complex adaptive systems and one can understand it better if you have systems thinking. Peter Senge's Book "The Fifth discipline" had a great impact on my way of thinking and each essay in the last part of the book is a suggestion towards developing such a kind of thinking.

The author points out to the need for diversity in thinking. Reading about how stats is used in baseball to improve a team's performance can teach you a lot than trying to look for cases in your own domain. A healthy discussion with a ecologist can give you more insights about speculation in financial markets than trying to look at indicators from the same field. Google's search engine and the way it used eigen value decomposition can provide you with a far more insight in to the usual factor analysis of stock returns. Research evidence from study of ants, bee-hives can give clues about how markets aggregate information.

Decision markets, and readings like "Wisdom of Crowds", " Wikinomics" can give you insight in to taking positions on a stock or a derivative.
Study of fractals is more meaningful than studying and working on the same old academic finance theories which are based on normal and log normal distributions. Power laws and the ways Power laws are used in fields like economics, psephology and like can help one understand markets better.

The entire point of the essays under this section is to urge you to keep your mind active and open to things happening in fields which might not seem related at the outset. Markets as a system can be understood better by applying ideas and thoughts from other fields.

Take any branch of finance in today's date..It is crying for contributions from other fields..It is being flooded by sociologists, ecologists , psychologists, who know that finance as a discipline can grow only by fusion of ideas from various fields. Case in point , Mandelbrot's fractal finance. Finance literature has virtually nothing on fractal finance as compared to the other kinds of literature. I had a chance meeting with the Mr.Barone Adesi , the person behind closed form solution for american option. I asked him whether he would consider research in fractal finance a viable option for a budding researcher. He said, he had himself worked on it for 2 years and was hopeful that research will pick up in this area.

I remember another faculty giving an analogy of ants in research literature. If you place something that attracts ants and you see to it that there are only 2 possible ways, inevitable one of the ways gets used by ants and the whole path is jam packed, even though an alternate path is available. This is similar to academic literature where it is only by getting references and citations from similar research initiatives , can one publish papers. Coming back to the analogy of Ants, once in a while , a few ants move from the pack and explore new paths and that is how ants as a community survive. Finance has reached a stage where it needs such diverse thinking and one can only hope a few people from academia or a few practitioners will actively stray from the usual path and help us answer some of our questions on

• How do markets aggregate information ?
• What does aggregation mean from market efficiency ?
• Concept of risk remains incomplete
• We don't know how our brains work ?.........................and many more such questions that need to be looked at.
  
  This book reminds me of a set of essays I read a few years ago, "Essays on Derivatives" by Don Chance. Each of the essays revolved around a simple but powerful idea. I get the same feeling after reading this book.This book provides a lot of food for thought. If you want to think on the areas where finance concepts have to be worked on, read this book..Out of 30 ideas, I am certain that atleast a few will interest you.
  
  

More than you know : Summary - 1

This book contains about 30 essays , meaning 30 ideas which can be read, ruminated and possibly applied in real life situations wherever they are applicable. Though the book is about finance, it draws considerable amount of research evidence from Biology, Math, Sociology,etc . At a 10,000 ft view , actually each discipline is nothing but an effort to understand the world using a set of constructs.

I would term Finance as a soft science rather than hard science where the discipline needs to be understood from various eyes . For a number cruncher , it becomes all the more important to realize that numbers,statistics is after all ONLY one part of the story in markets. One must consider market as a complex adaptive animal where numbers is ONLY one part of understanding. The more the mental models one has, the better one is equipped to understand what's going on.

I will try to summarize the key idea from each of the 30 essays from the book.

Part I

1. Process is more important than Outcome in Investing
   Always consider success as a lucky realization unless you backtest it. Just because you make money using some trading rule does not mean that you are going to make it again. There is an undoubtedly a strong relation between good process used to make a decision and a good outcome. Think about it, this applies not only to investing but also to most of the things we do in life. Lets assume that you think that C# is the best language to create something that is needed, but somehow your skills are rusty and you would rather do it with VBA and build the same screens etc. Well, it might be probably good for short term, but can anyone use the tool apart from you? Is it Scalable ? Does it have a wow! element ? Is it extensible ?
   
2. Constant see-saw between Investing considered as Business or Profession
   This is the same point which Daniel Kahneman makes about the scale struggle. Money managers consider Investing as a business and work for the immediate goals and immediate returns (quarterly/yearly) but Business operates on a longer scale. I think instead of thinking of it as a Business or Profession, it is best if one can think of it as a Business and Profession. There will always be some assets which can be shorted at a professional scale and always some assets which can be longed at a business scale.
3. Babe Ruth Effect
   Well, this one is pretty well known. Focusing on frequencies and not on the Expected value can kill a risk manager. The same idea as Taleb's Pi Lambda. In Mediocristan, Frequencies are important because payoff is pretty much symmetrical. But in Extremistan, it is important to understand the payoffs are not symmetrical. Infact they are very skewed and following frequentist approach is equivalent to being a sucker.
4. Proper Categorization is the Key (Context based)
   Most often than not, we categorize things and do not check the stationarity of the categories. My best ever read on categorization is an essay by Clay Shirky (Ontology is Overrated). Categorization as a subject has always fascinated me. In this book however the author says theories based on static categorization are not good. Well, we all know it, but how many of us actually keep that in mind when we go about theorizing, categorizing world events.
5. Learn to translate uncertainty to Probability.
   Degrees of Disbelief, Propensities and Frequencies are three ways to get to probability . Academic world is orgasmic about Frequentist world.Successful traders love propensities and uninformed trades live in the world of degrees of disbelief. For a trader who wants to trade by numbers, it is very important that he follows all the three ways depending on the context. For a plain vanilla options, frequentist is not a bad path to take. Well, you can rise over the usual theories known , do your own analysis on whether to follow mixture models, poisson+ gamma , whatever. However propensity based path needs to be taken too based on the context
   
6. There is a Hot Hand in Investing, if not in baseball
   Long streaks of success typically indicate luck imposed on great skill
7. Equity Premium Puzzle
   Loss aversion and Myopia can explain the equity premium puzzle. Somehow I felt that is is the same time scale difference that is being brought out by the author
   
   
   
   Part II : Psychology of Investing
   
8. Link between Stress and Suboptimal portfolio Management
   Essay beats the same point. Money managers operate on Shortening horizons, leading to stress to leading to suboptimal portfolio performance
9. Persuasion
   Robert Caldini's 30 year work is wonderfully summarized in this essay. The construct that there are 6 tendencies that spur a behavioral change : Reciprocation, Consistency , Social Validation, Looking, Authority and Scarcity . Each of these 6 tendencies are important when you need to think about the trading behavior change that can be observed in the market or trading rooms
10. Emotion and Intuition in Decision making
    
11. Guppy Love : Role of Imitation in Markets
    Asymmetric information, Agency costs and Preference for conformity are three things which force traders to confirm. But this also leads to Herding.
12. Beware of Behavioral Finance
    This chapter was like a breath of fresh air in this book. Behavioral Finance follows the reasoning, Individuals are irrational and an aggregation of irrational individuals must lead to an irrational market. However the essay says that " Markets can still be rational when investors are individually irrational". Meaning there is a law of large numbers at play. The very fact that players operate at different time scales, investment styles and investment approaches means that diversity will always ensure collective rationality.. Which means whenever there are imbalances the market corrects itself. Well, Do I agree with this view ? I don't think I am knowledgeable enough to form a view. But as such as a basic premise,I do believe in collective rationality and individual irrationality. But again, it is just a belief with no evidence to back it up
    
13. Essay on Keynes Expectation theory
    Comparison of Markets to "Beauty Contest" and "El Farol Bar". The idea that is conveyed in this essay is about deductive Vs inductive reasoning. Inductive is how we operate and it brings itself with a variety of bias. Deductive is how economics tries to operate , applying general principles to specific. In the case of markets, it ought to have been deductive but looking at market players, it appears inductive.This debate of deductive and inductive reasoning is brought out clearly.
    
    
    
    
    Part III: Innovation and Competitive Strategy
    
    
    
    
    I had a very strong tendency to skip over these essays for the simple reason that I have grown indifferent to the words strategy, competition, innovation etc. These are words, I remember , back in B school days, I was so fond of. It seemed as though using these words and thinking on these lines was leading to productive thinking. Over a period of time, I have realized that these are just fillers in conversations when you don't have clear thinking. In fact all the buzz words that I learnt at B school, I have consciously tried to avoid over the past few years. These words look good in case studies and HBR articles ... that's all there is to it. If you have to do anything productive, I think it is better to ignore these words and think in simple terms.
    With this kind of strong aversion towards such words, I was in no mood to go over these essays on strategy. But then I gave in, thinking that I might get at least some simple & meaningful thoughts from the next 7 essays. What did I find ?
14. blah-blah-blah-blah
15. blah-blah-blah-blah
16. blah-blah-blah-blah
17. blah-blah-blah-blah
18. blah-blah-blah-blah
19. blah-blah-blah-blah
20. blah-blah-blah-blah
21. blah-blah-blah-blah
    
    
    As expected the entire part on strategy was like reading some old Bschool case..It bored me to death!! The only thing that I found was somewhat educative was about fitness landscapes. Again you can term it as old wine in new bottle. The other possible idea which deserves a mention is the analogy of chess players and traders
    -- Don't look too far ahead
    -- Develop options and continuously revise them based on the changing conditions
    -- Know your competition
    -- Seek Small advantages
    Again the above points are cliched, but the essay is a little better as it brings about nice chess analogies using these points.
    
    
    Part IV: Complexity Theory
    
    
    
    This part of the book rocks!
    
    Will summarize the last part of the book in my next post
    

Stumbling on Happiness : Summary

Stumbling on Happiness, is one of those books which I decided to read, mainly to take a break from the usual type of books that I read.

Last weekend I went to Boston to meet my friend Anoop as I was leaving US for good. As always, the 4.5 hr journey from NY to Boston gives any one a wonderful time to read. Generally, I tend to always remember distinctly some specific facts about books. About this book, I came across this book for the first time in 2006 while working at Fidelity. I remember it browsing through at South Station, Boston. My first impression was that it was some sort of a self-help book. After glancing through the contents a few pages, it did not smell of a self-help book. However I was too busy with my project and work at Fidelity that I did not find time to read this book. Anways , One fine day, I found myself strolling at Borders (near Penn Station, NY)when this book was screaming "Pick me up" from one of the aisles. So, made an impulse purchase knowing that the same book from amazon would cost me 40% cheaper.

After I purchased this book, somehow I did not find time for reading the book , probably thanks to my arb research. Boston visit provided me with one such opportunity to read the book.
Not to be over dramatic, but this book has made a definite impact in the way I think/ thought I think

Indeed, if you have even the slightest curiosity about human condition, you ought to read this book. Would it benefit you in your professional life? I don't know.
Would it give you "Ten tips to become happy", No.
Would it give you a recipe to live a happy life? No.
Would it tell you about the reasons you are unhappy? No
....... Well, I can go on and on. However this book does not belong to such category of books. The reason one should read this book is to not let your mind fool you in to believing something , especially believing stuff which you think might make you happy ?

Let me summarize this beautiful book in terms of broad themes it talks about.

This book is a scientific take on the errors we make when we try to imagine our futures. Book strongly argues that our errors are lawful, regular and systematic. A cognizance of nature of errors is very valuable and in that sense this book is an awesome read.

Subjectivity

In the initial part on "Happiness", the author delves on a scientific take on the subject and explores interesting aspects. There are 2 main arguments which the author makes on happiness. Happiness experienced by one person is dependent on specific context, life events, circumstances and can never be compared. Much to the chagrin of the scientific minds who want to compare happiness based on some scales, author says that such scales are meaningless. The second argument that the author makes is that , law of large numbers is the saving grace to deal scientifically with a subject like happiness, in spite of its extreme personal stampish trait attributed to happiness.

The author then goes to talk about three shortcomings of Imagination,which is used to think about future

Realism: Imagination works so quickly, quietly and effectively that we are insufficiently skeptical of its products

Mind remembers only parts of information of events. It tries to recreate the tapestry of events by filling in details and leaving out details. This process creates a strange narration of past by the mind, a narration which needs to be looked at with some skepticism. We expect the future to unfold with the details we have imagined and we fail to be critically aware of this mind trick.
It is very important to recognize that mind creates this synthetic past and future. Take away - Be aware of Synthetic happiness.

Presentism: Imagined futures often look so much like the actual present

This part says " Our imagination is heavily biased with the current state of thinking " . We find it difficult to disassociate our present feelings with our imagination of the future. This creates problems when we make decisions etc that we think bring happiness in our future lives.

Rationalization: We have hard time telling how we will think about the future when we actually get there

Context, Recency and Frequency play a big role in our future imagination. In most of the cases, we cook up facts and theories to make us believe things about future. But we have no clue whether those theories hold good, whether those theories make sense and ultimately whether our concept of happiness based on rationalization makes sense in the long run.

Corrigibility

• We remember endings and hence this effects the way in which we recollect the feelings
• We have theories about how we must have felt and that decides our ability to remember our feelings
• We remember specific things/ unusual events and base out experiences on it, rather than the complete event.

Takeaway is that the ability to recollect exact feelings is error prone and it is very very important to keep this in mind.

Is there a remedy to these shortcomings of our imagination ? Yes, there is one . However it is little difficult to put in to practice as we increasingly think we are unique, different from others, etc etc. We fail to comprehend or fail to choose to comprehend that it is easy to find surrogators who are facing our simulated situation currently. Since our imagination of the future is limited, we can at least find a surrogate who is currently facing a situation that we are imagining and look at how happy he/she is. This , according to the author, can cut down the bias we create when we imagine about the future.

This book makes one think about one's own imagination, biases that we carry on, reevaluate the way in which we have/are taking decisions. One takeaway for me is that I will keep in mind these bias while trading/speculating. I intend to keep a detailed log of trading results and my thinking behind those decisions. In that way, at least I can go back and retrace some of the thinking , with out these bias creeping in.

This book has so many important insights that it will delight any kind of reader!

For those who are time strapped / attention strapped, here are a few video links. ( These links might in turn motivate you to read the book)
Video Links
Dan Gilbert at Ted -1
Dan Gilbert at Ted -2
Dan Gilbert at Poptech - 1
Dan Gilbert at Poptech - 2

Pascal's triangle and Manhattan streets!

I guess this illustration serves as one of the best ways of explaining pascal's triangle to a kid.
If you at A, each intersections of street and avenue has a number which tells you the # of ways to reach that intersection.

By the way, the above model is exactly what is taught in binomial tree option pricing in most of MBA courses around the world!

Purple Cow : Ambient

Ambient - Design at its best

Data doesn’t have to be dry. We’re used to seeing online information delivered as boring numbers, dense charts, or incomprehensible tables. This is dramatically different from the way we think about the analog world. We know if the pond is frozen from the color of the water. We can tell the status of the gas in our car by glancing at a simple gauge. The smile on a friend’s face is all we need to know a lot of complicated data about whether we’re doing something right or not.

So Ambient is trying to bridge that gap by creating a series of analog devices that measure digital data. The first is the Ambient Orb, which receives signals to change color. It can be red, blue, or green, or somewhere in between.

Logging onto Ambient’s Web site, one types in the serial number of the Orb and tell it what to track. It can show tomorrow’s weather or the status of the stock market. If the Dow is up, the Orb glows green… in a bear market, it’s red, red, red. ..And yes, Ambient sold out their entire production run last Christmas, with more goodies to come.

Norm Entrepreneurship !!

Ever heard of the term Norm Entrepreneurship !! Business that fills the gap of social norms!
Here is an example ...

Via Tyler Cowen :

One of the hottest bars in the Chinese city of Nanjing sports only a sofa, a few tables, and tissue paper - a lot of tissue paper. The AFP news service reports that the city’s first "cry bar," where customers can sit and cry for $6 per hour, is growing in popularity. Owner Luo Jun says he opened the bar when clients of his last business said they often wanted to cry but didn’t know when or where it would be appropriate to do so.

Cannes Festival Winner

Indian version missing !

I have always felt that an Indian version of payscale.com would work.It has to. There is so much of discussion on "who makes what", that I will completely surprised if customized concept would not work.. Here's another new company in the same space.Glassdoor.com

It is just a matter of time when some Indian entrepreneur will pick it up and go for a concept arbitrage

Another Search Engine ?

Via Gigaom

Does the World Need Another Way to Search?

Twitter Idea

How did Jack Dorsey get the idea for Twitter ?

Link : twttr ( From the horse's mouth  ) :

On May 31st, 2000, I signed up with a new service called LiveJournal. I was user 4,136 which entitled me a permanent account and street cred in some alternate geeky universe which I have not yet visited. I was living in the Sunshine Biscuit Factory in Oakland California and starting a company to dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services from the web.

One night in July of that year I had an idea to make a more "live" LiveJournal. Real-time, up-to-date, from the road. Akin to updating your AIM status from wherever you are, and sharing it.

For the next 5 years, I thought about this concept and tried to silently introduce it into my various projects. It slipped into my dispatch work. It slipped into my networks of medical devices. It slipped into an idea for a frictionless service market. It was everywhere I looked: a wonderful abstraction which was easy to implement and understand.

The 6th year; the idea has finally solidified (thanks to the massively creative environment my employer Odeo provides) and taken a novel form. We're calling it twttr (though this original rendering calls it stat.us; I love the word.ed domains, e.g. gu.st). It's evolved a lot in the past few months. From an excited discussion and persuasion on the South Park playground to a recently approved application for a SMS shortcode. I'm happy this idea has taken root; I hope it thrives.

Some things are worth the wait.

Purple Cow : Guerilla Mail

Haven't we all registered at some site or the other to just check out the service ? And every time, we shuddered to give our email address .

Here's one fantastic service...Just go , create a temporary email and use it for the registration and then it becomes obsolete in 15 min.

GuerrillaMail - Disposable Temporary E-Mail Address

Guerrilla Mail provides you with disposable e-mail addresses which expire after 15 Minutes. You can read and reply to e-mails that are sent to the temporary e-mail address within the given time frame

Communication

One of the popular hospitals in Bangalore is Narayana Hrudayala founded by Dr. Devi Shetty.This hospital is known for cardiac and neuro surgerical treatments. The one thing that strikes markedly different from other hospitals is a special counter for ppl who communicate in bengali. The hospital is said to attract many patients from bengal, Bangladesh etc. A simple act of creating a separate front desk with bengali speaking personnel is sometimes all it takes for a hospital to show it is looking at a bigger picture. Now Dr. Shetty is building a hospital for the Arab world. Sometimes all it takes to build a great enterprise is effective communication.

Limbo - Bid Low and Win !!

In India, where mobile population is reaching 160 million, I think there is definitely a scope for a entertainment service like this. I think there are companies in India which would want to give away goods for free for brand promotion.
Check this cool site which has become a craze in US

Limbo 41414

Welcome to Limbo 41414

We launched Limbo 41414 in October 2005 for one simple reason - to help people get more fun out of their cell phones.

It's really quite simple;  It's a text-message based game where you compete against other (real live) players to find and retain the lowest, unique bid™.

Why play? Well, first of all it's really fun - just read what other players are saying. And you can win some pretty amazing stuff. Stuff that you've always wanted like new cars and expensive trips. Plus you get instant feedback, you can connect with other players AND you always win because you earn Loot for every SMS bid, which you can trade for things like T-shirts, CDs and ringtones.

How's this possible? We've created partnerships with big companies who give away stuff in sweepstakes all the time. We've just given them a fun, new way to reach people - through their mobiles phones. At the same time, we give you - the mobile user - a way to get more fun from your phone. And, it's on your terms! We don't buy or sell phone lists, and we don't spam. We just count on your interest in the prize.