Light weight chick lit set in the Lloyd’s market with an interesting description of marine broking escapades but often wooden dialogue and indistinguiLight weight chick lit set in the Lloyd’s market with an interesting description of marine broking escapades but often wooden dialogue and indistinguishable characters among the non-stereotypes....more
The book has almost no descriptions of landscape but plenty of bizarre characters and violent or disturbing vignette’s and so has a strong bleakness bThe book has almost no descriptions of landscape but plenty of bizarre characters and violent or disturbing vignette’s and so has a strong bleakness but with an undercurrent of knowing humour – the Coen brothers could film it without the need for any adaption. On one level a good read – as its easy reading, fast paced and tightly written but on another it has a fundamental unpleasantness which the reader is meant to find funny....more
Simply a compilation of a series of articles mainly by Walsh on Lance. Striking issues are: the reminder that Walsh first raised his concerns in 1999 Simply a compilation of a series of articles mainly by Walsh on Lance. Striking issues are: the reminder that Walsh first raised his concerns in 1999 around how Armstrong could dominate in a tour where doping and dopers were still rife, his (at the time indirect) association with Ferrari and his vilification of Bassons; the relatively limited number of sources (Betty Andreu, O'Reilly, Swart) until Landis then Hamilton and then the full USDA investigation came out; the personal nature of the attacks by Armstrong on Walsh and his victims. ...more
Interesting book by The Undercover Economist. The style is a little unusual, Hartford draws on lots of examples but goes into them in a lot of detail Interesting book by The Undercover Economist. The style is a little unusual, Hartford draws on lots of examples but goes into them in a lot of detail (including clearly having interviewed many of the protagonists) so that at times the individual chapters seem more about the examples/interviewees than the actual theme.
The book’s central theme is that an adaptive/evolutionary approach which embraces safe failure is the only real way to achieve lasting success. Specifically Hartford argues against the standard view of a successful organisation: a charismatic/powerful leader with a strong big picture overview (perhaps using technology to achieve this); a supportive team with (his) shared vision surrounding him; clear reporting lines – with information following the top to be analysed with instructions coming back down. He argues that in many cases this leads to group think and to genuine feedback being suppressed or even if it gets through being out of date and context. Instead he argues that what is needed: a decentralised organisation with the ability (ideally even the imperative) to try new things/experiment; for failure to be survivable – this implies creating safe spaces to experiment, big enough to make a difference but small enough to not bring down the whole enterprise – he also explores the concept of decoupling (and how lack of this caused Piper Alpha, the LMX Spiral and the Financial crisis); a mechanism to identify success and failure – he emphasises the “worm’s eye view” feedback which is immediate, local and in context as well as mechanisms which allow e.g. market forces to determine success (he argues strongly that a carbon tax is a lot better way of dealing with climate change than top down planning)....more
Paul Lohman, an ex-teacher and his brother Serge (opposition leader and likely next Dutch prime minister) meet with their wives in an expensive restauPaul Lohman, an ex-teacher and his brother Serge (opposition leader and likely next Dutch prime minister) meet with their wives in an expensive restaurant and over dinner (the chapters set out over the different courses) discuss a major issue with their children than has previously been unspoken even within couples but which all of them know: that their two fifteen year old sons committed a notorious crime: the assault and eventual murder of a homeless lady.
An unpleasant book – largely ruined by the preposterous genetic explanation (which if set in the future may have been plausible but not 15 years ago).
Easy to read account of the spice trade concentrated on the Banda Islands and even more specifically the Nutmeg Island of Run – the only one of the IsEasy to read account of the spice trade concentrated on the Banda Islands and even more specifically the Nutmeg Island of Run – the only one of the Islands officially possessed by England. The overall theme of the book is the battle (literally) between the Dutch VOC and the English East India Company in the first half of the 17th Century, with the Dutch more focused/united and more ruthless taking control over the more amateurish English (albeit that just as the English company was due to be wound up it was rebuilt as a limited stock traded company and refocused on India). The centrepiece/culmination of the story is the heroic but doomed attempt by Nathaniel Courthorpe to defend Run against overwhelming odds; Milton’s argument is that ultimately King James retaliated for the seizure of Run and other abuses in the area by later seizing New Netherlands/Manhattan and that in the Treaty of Breda the decision to allow both sides to retain illegal possessions effectively lead to Run being swapped for New York....more
The book’s central thesis is that fragility is the state of losing from uncertainty, robustness is the state of being neutral to uncertainty but that The book’s central thesis is that fragility is the state of losing from uncertainty, robustness is the state of being neutral to uncertainty but that anti-fragility is the state of gaining form volatility. Antifragility is related to convex reward functions and Jensen’s inequality (so that although one may not be able to predict a variable one can manage one’s response to that variable to be convex. Antifragility also gains from randomness, errors, uncertainty, stressors and time. In Taleb’s views examples of fragile systems include: larger entities (businesses, banks, nations as opposed to city states or federations); newer and manmade inventions as opposed to nature which has evolved (hence using trial and error – a key strategy) anti-fragility and has empirically passed the fragility test of time; employees as opposed to the self-employed, safely employed with leisure time or independently wealthy; leveraged firms, governments or individuals. Other ideas are: barbell strategies with concentration on extremes – one safe, one speculative; an aversion to Iatrogenic – i.e. harm done by the healer - in medicine and government planning Taleb prefers intervention to be limited to critical circumstances; an aversion to academics rather than practitioners and to those without “skin in the game”.
Book about prediction by the author of the 538 political blog, which became particularly famous in the 2012 presidential election (after the book was Book about prediction by the author of the 538 political blog, which became particularly famous in the 2012 presidential election (after the book was written) due to the author's high confidence in an Obama victory due to polling evidence in marginals. The author was prior to 538 spread over two jobs - online poker (until it was made illegal in US - see below) and baseball stat evaluation (where he developed his own site which he sold to a professional site for which he then worked).
The book's central themes are the importance of Bayesian stats (as opposed to Fisher type confidence intervals based only on data) as the optimal blend of expertise and data and the difficulty of distinguishing the true signal from underlying noise which can either obscure the signal or create false ones. He continues various areas in turn - all of which have their own forecasting issues, which are often very different leading to his third point the difficulty of drawing hard and fast rules around prediction. Generally an interesting book – more a compendium of ideas and so lacking the really big idea/takeaway – which seems deliberate due to the last point.
In respect of the financial crisis, he identifies various failures of prediction (housing bubble, rating agencies, failure to see how it would cause a global financial crisis, failure to realise how big and deep recession would be) which he largely ascribes to over-confidence and inability to forecast out of sample events.
In political forecasting he claims his ability think probabilistically, revisit and alter past forecasts and look for data consensus means he outperforms what is a poor level of competition (biased and unscientific political pundits).
For baseball again he initially competed against simple rules of thumb but sees the real skill in continuing to combine the best of stats with properly incorporated qualitative information to continue to look for edges.
Weather forecasting he sees as largely a success story especially when you account for bias (for example to over-predict bad weather as that is less catastrophic an error) and allowing for chaos theory which makes precise long range forecasts difficult.
Earthquake forecasting by contrast has had almost no success (here he talks about over fitting).
For economic forecasting there are lots of challenges (Uncertainty principle type ideas such as Goodhart’s law, self-fulfilling prophecies so that talk of a recession causes one, natural biases of commentators including either not wanting to go away from herd or being deliberately provocative) not least the sheer noisiness of economic data.
For infectious diseases he discusses self-cancelling prophecies (epidemic warnings change behaviour in a good way) and although it’s a challenging area he believes practitioners in this field (perhaps due to their Hippocratic oaths) are more thoughtful about their predictions.
In chess he discusses in detail the psychology of Kasparov’s defeat by a computer – an error it made in a losing position convinced him it could think more deeply than it could as well as where humans are better or worse than computers and how blended programmes are very strong.
For Poker he takes the view that the Poker players are very natural Bayesians, adjusting their knowledge both as cards appear and also assessing chance of different hands by an intuitive posterior analysis based on how they think their opponents would act with different hands. He also takes the view that he standard of opponents is key to if you can make money.
For stock picking he discussed the efficient market hypothesis (especially with transaction costs) and the psychology of bubbles.
For climate change he discusses healthy scepticism and also his conclusion that scientists are a lot more seekers after the truth than politicians.
For terrorist attacks he discussed power laws to extrapolate to major attacks (which actually dominate costs and deaths) and the importance of lateral and imaginative thinking around threats....more
Interesting and entertaining book which seems to capture Watson/Holmes well and also contains lots of allusions to other Holmes adventures as well as Interesting and entertaining book which seems to capture Watson/Holmes well and also contains lots of allusions to other Holmes adventures as well as including all of the famous side characters. The plot itself is much more sensationalist and unpleasant than a normal Holmes book although it also allows Horowitz to allow Watson/Holmes to speculate on the underclass in London (for example Holmes going to court and jail causes Watson to ruminate on what happens to the criminals in his stories after the crime is solves and Watson’s stories stop; Holmes is shaken by the fate of Ross and wonders if he has been cavalier in his use of the Irregulars)
What is perhaps most interesting about the book is that the only really likeable character is Barry Fairbrother and we also see how in lots of ways itWhat is perhaps most interesting about the book is that the only really likeable character is Barry Fairbrother and we also see how in lots of ways it was only him that pulled the community together and that when he dies the worse side of people’s characters and interactions come out (for example Fairbrother: managed the Mollisons with humour; rescued Colin Wall from his OCD fantasies and managed his relationship with Fats; integrated Krystal, Sukhvinder and Parminder into the wider community; was the only adult who through his lack of pretension and self-consciousness was not despised by the teenagers but liked by them as well as causing them to like each other; we can speculate may have guided Gavin better in managing his relationship with Faye)
Overall at times a very bleak read but nevertheless an interesting and engrossing one.
Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer
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Books:
2012
(85)
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