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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Why We Sleep

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker. Matthew is a British scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Previously, Matthew was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Matthew is the director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science. His research focuses on the impact of sleep on human health and disease.

I found this to be a very insightful book and it has sharpened how I view my own sleep requirements. It would not be odd to say that many of us have in our younger years pulled all-nighters on a regular basis. We had not idea how damaging this would be in our later life. In fact, I can recall this in some detail over the beginning of my career. In fact, I would say the American culture is shaped around this type of sleep loss.

Matthew has the data to prove that our culture has in fact, robbed our health. In addition, for anyone with medical conditions may in fact be at greater risk due to the lack of sleep impacting their health. Too many Americans do not yet quite understand the severe ramifications. This book will enlighten them and easily demonstrate how powerful eight hours of sleep can shape your life.

Penguin Books UK | How To Improve Your Sleep
The lack of sleep can shorten your life

For many readers perhaps this is the first time they can understand the impacts of neglecting sleep. Shortcomings in our brain functionality is easily at less than 100%. In addition, our body’s physical and mental health including our emotional well being suffers.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: Outnumbered

Outnumbered: From Facebook and Google to Fake News and Filter-bubbles – The Algorithms That Control Our Lives by David Sumpter. He is a professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. David was awarded the UK’s Institute of Mathematics 2015 prize for communicating mathematics to a wider audience in his research How to Model Honeybee Colonies.

Outnumbered: Exploring the Algorithms That Control Our Lives by David Sumpter

As this title implies, the exploitation of algorithms is brought into focus. The timing of reading this book today is almost perfect. The abuse by Facebook and Google continue. The fallout of the Cambridge Analytica scandal also continues. In fact, David’s work is perhaps even more poignant as OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3 has taken the world by storm.

Perhaps now in early 2023 the coming GPT4 will shift the common misconception that AI algorithms are actually more advanced that many considered.
While the world was somewhat confused by the integrity of ChatGPT-3 data, OpenAI’s collaboration integrating Wolfram|Alpha as the Way to Bring Computational Knowledge Superpowers to ChatGPT.
Give it less than six to eight months and this will spin the ChatGPT non-believers into new knots.

However there are certainly many interesting examples that follow revealing when statistical techniques require advanced mathematical knowledge and ultimately requiring more time (and effort) to fully understand and ultimately communicate outcomes effectively to general audience.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: The Art of Statistics

The Art of Statistics: How to Learn from Data by David Spiegelhalter. David is a statistician and chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.

The Art of Statistics: How to Learn from Data by David Spiegelhalter

David’s background is medical statistics. He has served as the president of the Royal Statistical Society and has been knighted for his services to statistics. This book is a certainly amazing read for anyone as David is displaying lessons that provide me new perspectives of risk management.

David presents a generally refreshing approach to statistics that many readers will enjoy. Early chapters certainly enforce long standing knowledge (never use 3D pie charts to compare proportional metrics).

However there are certainly many interesting examples that follow revealing when statistical techniques require advanced mathematical knowledge and ultimately requiring more time (and effort) to fully understand and ultimately communicate outcomes effectively to general audience.

I continuously seek insights to regression. A sample addressing regression analysis further illustrates while this is a powerful tool, it is often misused and results in misleading trends.

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Education Globalization Innovation Reading

Latest Read: A Brief History of Equality

A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty. Thomas is a French economist and Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics. In addition, he is a Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics.

A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty

Thomas previously taught as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a French economist, Thomas documents a global progress regarding equality by tapping into historical data.

This book is certainly addressing wealth redistribution, and is a continuation from his books Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) and Capital and Ideology (2020).

However, the most interesting discoveries for Americans is how Thomas addresses colonialism. This obviously brings America’s slavery into a world view within Chapter 3: The Heritage of Slavery and Colonialism. In fact, we see that Europeans began their colonial rule around 1450–1500 with Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India. This was the initial Portuguese trading post on the coast of Africa. Thomas includes Columbus’s expedition to America. However this all ended in the 1960s with the French defeats in Indochina (Vietnam) and Northern Africa (Algeria). Yet, Thomas certainly brings South African apartheid into focus as these are not so long ago transformations.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: How the World Really Works

How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future by Vaclav Smil. Vaclav a Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg Canada.

How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future by Vaclav Smil

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the 2000 recipient of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology.

In addition, Vaclav was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its 2010 list of FP Top 100 Global Thinkers. In 2013, he was appointed by the Governor General to the Order of Canada. Finally, he was the 2013 EADS Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin.

So, What really makes our modern world work? Vaclav proposes the answers in four grand transitions of civilization: populations, agriculture, energy, and economics. In fact, he outlines how each transition has greatly transformed our world and how our global society functions.

Vaclav is relying upon today’s computing ability to tap into vast amounts of data to tell powerful stories and he succeeds. This book has become a world wide bestseller and certainly is addressing the impact future climate change will have upon our world and global societies. Furthermore, Vaclav is delivering somewhat startling statistics throughout the book.