SilverSpace

Mainly because the new job got real hard real quick; and my pc died- but hey all good really.

More importantly I got loadsa freebies since last time;

• Yoghurt
• Pink Piggy
• Live Arcade game; thanks Belle
• Magazines...
• Deodorant
• Cake!
• Brownies
• OJ
• Free comedy club tickets
• Free breakfast
• One phone number :)
• Various vouchers
• Mask
• Kit Kat

Etc.... Good times.

After losing a couple of posts over the last few days for various reasons (including my slowly dying graphics card) I’ve been moved to use Word 2007 as my way of posting – it’s spellchecking, word counting, AUTO SAVING goodness is something that got me through more essays than I’d care to think of, and it’s a nice touch to be able to use it to directly post to Live Spaces. Yet after doing so only once (and pointing the facility out to good ol’ Denver the Dinosaur), I note that a new way of cracking the nut is in town; Windows Live Writer. Basically this is a small application that allows you to post blogs from a nicer interface. Personally I’ll stick with Word for now but for those without the big daddy of word processing (or an older version) this might be something good.

Today's Freebie: Trebor Mints
Shame Factor: Low
Rating: sitting in bag awaiting the day I’m that hungry

I’ve heard a lot about this book and in typical style avoided it until the hype died down. But finally I picked it up and delved into the into the surprisingly slender volume.

It’s an interesting style of book that speaks to you in what appears a conscientiously trendy style. This is trendy in the same way as that slightly quirky teacher at school. That’s not necessarily a bad thing however as like the best teachers it tries to give context and draw you into its contents rather than simply preach facts and figures. Even so the narrative style is loose, uneven and bluntly more than a little unordered; If you’re expecting the book to start from point A and go to B you’re going to be disappointed; the book sets out it’s stall early and from then on shows it’s ideas in practice.

As such Freaknomics, in essence, is a collection of examples of a theory applied; that one should not just accept common sense or reasonable explanation of trends and events but to look closely at the data given its context and parties’ motivations and more importantly think broadly as to cause. Taken as read that appears to be nothing revolutionary; indeed reading through you could feel a almost Sherlock Holmes style as a topic is whirled through presenting plausible scenarios for events, before discounting them until only the impossible (or perhaps more accurately the inconceivable) remained. Of course as with many things this is of an order of magnitude more interesting when looking at real life.

The topics chosen to illustrate the book were self consciously following the same attention grabbing lines as the style of the book in general; looking at drug dealers, Sumo wrestlers, cheating teachers and nursery schools. For most of these, a little pocket world is fleshed out, with the motivations of its constituents shown as part of the narrative before, in an almost sleuth like fashion, a hypothesis is given and then (at least to an extent) proven. Some of the examples in the book are more compelling than others; certainly the authors appear most enamoured of their idea that violent crime dropped in the nineties due to the introduction of legalise abortion 20 years previously – this is presented as pure fact although bizarrely feels as if it has the least reasoning behind it (although references are given).

More convincingly is the conjecture of how school tests, under the supervision of teachers with heavy incentives for success and penalties for failure (in status, prospects and simple monetary terms) would be tempted to aid their students in an underhand fashion. This starts with a commonplace premise and leads you into a mission to set out to think like a cheat and devise a simple set of rules from that. Those rules form the basis for an analysis which is both simple and brilliant. You can almost feel the eureka like moment of seeing data simply matching the hypothesis.

It is at those moments the book and the theory is at its best; the mantra is simple: question and don’t assume, understand the motivations of those involved directly and those observing and most of all think. And it is in these terms that the books message is both deceptively simple and yet so essentially important.

Bit of a long one today – but I’m still feeling this posting thing out. ;)

Today's Freebie: One Lollypop of unknown flavour
Shame Factor: None
Rating: Happily accepted by previously unhappy looking lady on tube.