Confessions of a researchaholic

I heard from a podcast/blog about this book offering important lessons for finance, so I borrowed the annotated digital version from the local library and read it via hoopla.

In a nutshell, the book is a fable (or a collection of individual but connected fables) where having partial information about the future can be more perilous than having no information at all, as one may misinterpret the information, take actions with unintended consequences, or just be psychologically paralyzed by the uncertainty and eventuality.

From the perspective of CS/ML, the book is also a cautionary tale about the dangers of over-fitting, as the characters in the book are trying to fit the information they have to their own actions and narratives (or vice versa).
And the danger of partial information applies not just to the future but also to the present and the past, as we often have to make decisions based on incomplete information.

This book introduces metaphors as ways for us to think about one concept (often abstract or more difficult to understand) in terms of another (often concrete or more familiar, grounded in our experiences), e.g., “argument is war” and “time is money”, highlights their importance in how we think, communicate, and act, and then discusses the relationships of metaphors with respect to objectivism and subjectivism (basically as a middle way that covers issues that both are trying to address).
The most interesting part to me is the end of the book where the authors discuss how metaphors can influence how we understand each other and ourselves, art, culture (ritual), and politics.

I bought this book in year 2004 but did not finish reading it until now.
Overall, it is an excellent overview of the main developments in graphic design, including styles, technologies, and people.
In long run I will probably remember more of the many beautiful image examples than the detailed text descriptions.

The book focuses mainly on static layouts and touches upon animations and interactive interfaces in the end, which, together with recent generative technologies, will probably be worth another book in the future.

Some interesting aspects I found in the 2022 Silicon Valley Index:

• The total population declined due to net emigration.
• Asian now constitutes 39% of the population, more than white (29%), Hispanic (24%), black (2%), and the others (6%).
• The median income ($138100) is about the twice the US value ($67300).
• Apple and Alphabet employed 12% of the total work force.
• Despite a relatively low household poverty rate of 5%, nearly 33% of all households do not earn enough money to meet their most basic needs without public or private/informal assistance.
• Non-residential development approvals hit an all-time high in FY 2020-21, with more than 21.5 million square feet of space approved.

This is an excellent practical guide to information visualization, with three main parts: a theoretical background including a brief history, perceptual mechanisms, and types of visualizations; a workflow part of chart design and prototype; and finally how to present and read charts. The book concludes with the observation of upcoming interactive visualizations enabled by computer programs beyond traditional static charts for print mediums.

In addition to the technical content, the book has beautiful layout and examples, with pointers for further readings.

This is an excellent book about the principles for drawing secondary dynamic effects, including fluid, fire, smoke, steam, explosion, magic, and solid props.
A hierarchical, coarse-to-fine process applies not only to static drawings but also dynamic animations in the form of coarse energy flows controlling fine visual details.
However, this is not a tutorial book, and one will need (a lot of) practice to really learn (I am currently following this).

The book touches upon digital assistance for manual animation, an exciting and important research direction that also fits my hobby.

Gist: the author, with a journalism and psychology background, decided to pick-up poker from scratch as a way to learn how to deal with randomness in life and focus on what we can control. The poker part serves as the training platform and medium of investigation for the author, and even without knowing anything about poker, I found this participatory journalism highly entertaining and yet educational at the same time.

At the end of the book, the author said that she plan to continue with poker instead of ending it after completing the journalism project.
I wonder if this is the best use of one’s time and talent; poker is a zero-sum game and contributes even less to the world than finance, which also moves things around but at leas can claim to increase market efficiency.
As a research scientist and product engineer, I would much prefer to be able to create things and solve problems, with even more opportunities (and necessities) to deal with external randomness and internal control.

This is a fascinating collection of short articles about how people build and interact with our environments. Initially I wondered why the book used illustrations instead of photographs, but as I read on I realized that this choice better fits with the design of the book, set in beautiful yellow-black color scheme and typography.