Category: Education

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Education Reading

Latest Read: The Color of Law

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. Richard is a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Poliy Institute, Senior Fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Senior Fellow at the Haas Institute at Berkeley.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

This book is simply a must read in order to understand our historical application of de jure segregation. This is certainly almost never discussed, certainly not in public as a history of American segregation since the 1900s. Above all, this book will (and should) shock you to understand, perhaps for the first time a well hidden history of America.

The Color of Law documents de jure segregation actually promoted several discriminatory patterns that continue to this day. As a result, readers can fully understand, how legacy Federal, State, and Local laws empowered segregation. This is never an easy subject to study.

In fact, through extremely well documented research, Richard addresses that de facto segregation is myth. We should fully understand this in the context of de jure segregation:

myth | miTH | noun

A traditional story that focus on an early history of a people or explaining social phenomenon.
A widely held but false belief.

De jure segregation actually created government-segregated public housing, schools and neighborhoods. At the same time, this resulted in the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: The Formula

The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. He is a former physics professor at the University of Notre Dame. Today Albert is the Director of Northeastern University’s Center for Complex Network Research (CCNR) associate member of the Center of Cancer Systems Biology (CCSB) at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and visiting professor at the Center for Network Science at Central European University.

The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by Albert-László Barabási

He introduced in 1999 the concept of scale-free networks and proposed the Barabási–Albert model to explain their widespread emergence in natural, technological and social systems, from the cellular telephone to the World Wide Web or online communities.

Surprising to realize 13 years ago I was reading his book Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means. Link certainly proved very thought provoking. It has aged well since 2008. Based upon that experience I quickly read his followup Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do in 2010.

Albert addresses how you can now quantify success. This will differ obviously across markets adn professions, but the ties linking them together are quite interesting. There is a building block of his expertise in networks.

He devotes a chapter for each of his defined universal laws of success.

Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success.

In athletics networks will not help you. If you win the US Open Tennis championship it will not matter who you know. Your success will drive instant recognition.

Yet, one focus of Chapter 1 is the Red Barron who remains the most famous World War I fighter pilot. Yet, René Fonck a French pilot actually scored more kills. However grocery stores today have Red Barron pizza. There are Red Barron 3D computer games. Even Charlie Brown, the most famous children’s cartoon holds the Red Barron as a character for Snoopy. Performance truly drives success.

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Education Flat World Globalization Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: The Premonition

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis. A tough, certainly insightful look at men and women who understood and directly confronted the pandemic at the beginning. At the same time, they ran into bureaucratic roadblocks. Their efforts to save the country is the story of this book.

the premonition a pandemic story

For instance, as early as January 2020, Dr. Charity Dean, the assistant director of the California Department of Public Health in 2020. She certainly understood the coming pandemic and began warning California State officials. Surprisingly, Charity Dean was even prohibited from publishing the word “pandemic” in her research reports. Furthermore, as stunning as it may seem, her boss and the state locker her out of planning meetings.

Dr. Carter Mecher, senior medical advisor to the Veterans Administration initially helped craft the Bush Administration’s pandemic response plan. As a result, at the very beginning stages in January 2020, he observed similarities to the 1918 Influenza flu. Indeed, Carter was the early advocate to shut down schools to reduce spread. Tragically, he lost his own mother to COVID.

At the same time, Joe DeRisi PhD, a biochemist at UC San Francisco was involved in the development of the ViroChip. This is used to rapidly identify viruses in bodily fluids. He led a team to develop a very early COVID-19 testing facility at the outbreak of pandemic.

Dr. Richard Hatchett an epidemiologist was another who warned early on about the coming pandemic. He also contributed to the Bush era pandemic response plan. This book is a sobering reality of what could have been. These medical professionals were stopped by the same system they were trying to save. Michael certainly makes it very clear the US does not have a healthcare system.

Tipping point ignored

Surprisingly, President George W. Bush read The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. As a result, he triggered a plan to confront the next pandemic with Rajeev Venkayya, Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher. This plan continued through the Obama Administration, but stopped under Trump.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Noise

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by noted authors Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein. Noise is simply random, unpredictable decision making that cannot be explained. At the same time, is not accountable. This is very perplexing today.

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein

At the same time, this is not easy to fully understand. Here is a good outline provided by the book:

Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients — or that two judges in the same courthouse give different sentences to people who have committed the same crime.
Suppose that different food inspectors give different ratings to indistinguishable restaurants — or that when a company is handling customer complaints, the resolution depends on who happens to be handling the particular complaint.
Now imagine that the same doctor, the same judge, the same inspector, or the same company official makes different decisions, depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.

As a result, it is amazing to understand how and why people from all walks of life make really bad judgements. The fact that it can be quantified and even controlled offers us hope. However, based upon our crazy world today it only offers hope.

How many times have you found yourself impacted by Noise?

Sections that certainly stick most with organizations is within their hiring process. The authors really hit a home run here. Based upon their research and insights, this is worth the price of admission alone. Issues like prejudice are actually bias. When assessing decisions that go wrong, noise is the standard deviation of errors, while bias is the mean itself.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: Humble Pi

Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors by Matt Parker. Matt has written another great book addressing how our world revolves around math. My son and I are still working our way through Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension.

Humble Pi by Matt Parker

Above all, I have found his books certainly offer impactful stories that you will laugh out loud. At the same time, you will question at times, question how we as a species survive on this planet with such low expectations of understanding math in the real world.

The topics Matt addresses are very wide-ranging. What is also appealing is learning that many objects that we use daily in life are based around math. But do not worry if you were bad at math in grade school like me. You will really enjoy this book.

Matt is certainly upfront across all of Chapter 2 Engineering Mistakes. Matt documents many math errors when bridges across England and America was designed with mathematical flaws.

At first glance bridges certainly can appear structurally sound. However, the slightest mathematical engineering oversight results in tragedy.

In 1940 the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse was attributed to the flat metal sides of the bridge’s design. The bridge’s design was sleek and inexpensive. Yet it was lacking mesh metal and was perfect for “catching the wind” as they say.

Are we blinded by math?

Matt also teaches that we often believe we have “smart people in the room” developing products, however we somehow miss the easy stuff. An important lesson to grasp throughout his book. I am reminded of Ozan Varol’s excellent book Think Like a Rocket Scientist regarding those oversights.

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