Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

[P]ublic education in science has been withering in recent years. At the same time, activities of superstition and ignorance have been growing, and antiscience and pseudoscience cases have become frequent. Therefore, effective measures must be applied as soon as possible... Read more →

Climate Change Skeptics Need to Have Facts

I have a business colleague who is a climate change skeptic. Here's a set of resource to address this skepticism https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/16/qa-brian-cox-brings-graphs-malcolm-roberts - Cox produced a graph of global surface temperatures of the past century and immediately debunked the myth, pointing... Read more →

Climate Science from Scientist or Climate Science from Radical Talk Show Host

There are still voices of climate science denial. I had a conversation of sorts with a colleague about actual science sources of climate science. He was quoting an opinion of a person funded by Alex Jones. Here's a very short... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere." I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?... Read more →

Quote of the Day

"Science runs on the premise that experiments, and all the uncertainty involved in them, should be open for scrutiny." Editorial: Politics versus reality, Nature 434, 257 (17 March 2005) † When there are claims made about anything, in any domain,... Read more →

Modeling the Future Using Empirical Data from the Past

This is a quote from Twitter today that says Various projective practices upon trending have been used to forecast progress ... These have proven useful. However, these do not replace the importance of empiricism. In complex environments, what will happen... Read more →

Antifragile, Macro and Micro Economics and the Misuse of Terms (Again)

The Buzz Word Anti-fragile is tossed around lately by #NoEstimates advocates claiming that making estimate creates fragility to the work. Let's start with a definition of anti-fragile ... Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to... Read more →

Book of the Month

I got a book management application for Christmas from our daughter. Book Buddy. Going through the ~1,000 books in the house (I'm the son of a University Librarian) I came across this book. I got this book from my High... Read more →

Feynman Lectures Now Online

The Feynman Lectures were a staple of my education, including having Feynman come to UC Irvine a speak to the Student Physics Society on his current work in Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). The 3 volume set is still in our library.... Read more →

Estimating Probabilistic Outcomes? Of Course We Can!

At a client site in Sacramento, CA off and on since last December. Driving back to hotel tonight, there was a radio show on the current Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (Version 3). A former Colorado neighbor is an earthquake... Read more →

The Actual Science in Management Science

Planning for an uncertain future calls for a shift in information management — from single numbers to probability distributions — in order to correct the "flaw of averages." This, in turn, gives rise to the prospect of a Chief Probability... Read more →

Populist versus Technical View of Problems

On a Twitter discussions and email exchanges, there is a notion of populist books versus technical books used to address issues and problems encountered in our project management domains. My recent book Performance-Based Project Management® is a populist book. There... Read more →

A Paradigm Realization

We attended a performance of Gustav Holst's The Planets at CU Boulder this week. Its was a combined media show, with music from the CU Orchestra (undergrad and grad music students) and a visual presentation of planetary pictures from the... Read more →

Statistics, Bad Statistics, and Damn Lies

It is popular to use the quote Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics to counter some statement about a probabilistic behaviour. The origin of this phrase remains unknown, but it is popularly attributed to Sir Charles Dilke. Another likely false attribution... Read more →

Analogies, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

There have several rounds of how to use analogies and how not to use analogies in the past few years. These involved notions like agile is an untended garden. Actually an untended garden and called a weed patch. Or we... Read more →

Learning Is Now More Important Than Knowledge

When I encounter a "subject matter expert," I've now learned to assess if this person is a "knowledge holder," or a "learning individual." This is what informed that "learning." This came to my from a friend and neighbor who is... Read more →

Why as a nation we have trouble with fact based discussions

When we get into discussions about policy, spending money, especially government money, and the outcomes from that spend, we as a nation are ill equipped to handle the facts. Not because the facts tell us thing we don't want to... Read more →

Quote of the Day

I've been in the same room with Feynman, when he was visiting UC Irvine and spoke for our Society for Physics Students where he described the then emerging Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) theory he was working on. Read more →

The Higgs and its reason for being here

The question is why is there a Higgs Boson is commonly asked in our group of engineers and business neighbors. There are lots of good explanations. One is provided by the PhD Comics guys. Recently there was a question from... Read more →

How to Build a Black Hole

I know this odd, but I was asked the other day, around the Higgs Boson news how does a Black Hole work? I needed an answer that was beyond the populist one of the gravity is so strong nothing can... Read more →