I find that scientific textbooks (machine learning, etc) are much more usable as books than as pdf, as I need to often jump from one chapter to another and it needs to be the matter of a split second (or I won't bother to look for the information).
I still don't see how a book with text's "realness" helps. I don't see how flat paper with ink printings is "tactile" enough and not in fact just as abstract as any method of digesting information second or third hand (at a computer terminal, reading a newspaper, attending a lecture, etc.) vs. our evolution's first method of information gathering: experience; you know, going outside, feeling a rock, finding your way through town and mapping it out in your head... I'm 24, but I still remember before the internet became what it is today and even then, reading was considered "boring" by everyone other than nerds because, surprise! it was a pretty abstract activity.
I think the real factor is the preference for paper and the learned habits with reading on it. People simply have learned first to "deep read" with books, so they read/learn easier since they can tap those already familiar (perhaps subconcious) habits without having to figure out new ones. Unfortunately, phone and tablet screens are associated with mindless or at least light reading and aversion, not deep cognition, so perhaps that's why there is some observed deficit in reading on them.
Still, I'm going to accept the "science is not quite settled" part of the article. Obviously there is some deficit ninnsome cases but we don't know why.
Math. Students pretty much don't read their textbooks from algebra through calculus. And it's even sadder when you get a student in PDEs or abstract algebra who acts as if reading their textbook would reveal their illiteracy.
This is probably because you can get through many early math classes just by listening to the lectures.
Taleb seems to be engaged in two vendettas (as is clear from reading the Black Swan): first, economists; second, the French.
One would therefore be well advised to take his notes about the work of a French economist with a pinch of salt.
"The optimal strategy is to go become an academic or a French-style civil servant, the anti-wealth generators."
To pick but one example among many others, Louis Pasteur was French, an academic and (therefore) a civil servant, and arguably contributed to save many lives. Or does that not qualify as wealth generation?
Yes the maths are likely right, but that does mean Taleb is being fair to Piketty.
Economics is not just about the maths, it's about whether the maths being proposed (i.e. the model) are the right tool to understand and explain the observed data (and do predictions / counterfactuals). So the question of interest (is Piketty right or wrong) is not a question of someone's "maths" (either Piketty's or Taleb) being "right" or "wrong". Sorry if you find this obvious -- perhaps I missed the point of your question?
I don't agree that Taleb's math is any more careful than Piketty's. He has his own set of "fat tail" hobby horses to ride, and does a poor job showing how they apply here. The question should not be whether Taleb's math is right or wrong, since it could be right but irrelevant. The question is whether Piketty's math is right or wrong. Neither Taleb, nor Brooks, nor many here, seem to be addressing that.
This is a book for a wide audience. Not the right place for maths. But Piketty is a very respected researcher (at home and internationally), with an excellent grasp of the state of the art in econometric and economic modelling ('math'). Read his papers if you mistrust text and graphs.
I'm aware of who Piketty is. That's why I'm so surprised that he wrote such a voluminous tome with so little point. Last week before I read the book, I assumed it was just vapid reporters misunderstanding him.
If he has a paper which clearly and succinctly summarizes the point book, please point it out. Cause the book doesn't even contain a hint of that.
I haven't said anything about clearly and succinctly though; I do not know if that kind of material exist. I believe the book to be a mix of original material, existing research (as linked above), and most of all the fruit of many years of productive research on these topics.
You are of course free to not buy Piketty's thesis based on his book alone; however, to convincingly build your case to convince others, it looks like you may have to absorb a fairly considerable body of knowledge.
On a more personal note -- while I am an economist by training (doctorate obtained in early 2010s in a top 10 uni), my field was quite far from Piketty's, so I am not in a position to know with any confidence whether he's right or wrong. (I would say though that his position certainly has merit and deserves the attention it is getting.) That being said, I maintain that Taleb shows himself as disconcertingly naive and frankly quite condescending to think that he can dismiss years of research in a few witty disparaging paragraphs. (Possibly without reading the book, almost certainly without reading the research, and very definitely without looking at the raw data.)
On the other hand, Taleb has made a literary career out of busting unsound social science. He has quite a lot of practice at it. So a few disparaging paragraphs is just the surface.
What is really need is a rebuttal/response to Taleb's probability based argument.
You seem to entertain a rather convenient set of beliefs and opinions. I pay a pretty hefty price because I do not share them (and go out of my way to 'do my part').
Am I missing something? I think that "I observe the same problem in Windows as in Linux" DOES allow rejection of the hypothesis "The problem is with Linux only".
My guess is that it is probably not overtly malicious, but that people at Google are just responding to incentives. There are simply more incentives for Google to get things working 100% right in Chrome.
It is not to say that it is ok, though, as it could result in more people switching away from Firefox -- which is not a good thing for the web.
I, an enthusiast Firefox user, had to stop using Hangouts in Firefox because it could get excruciatingly slow (while fine in Chrome). Again, not saying it's Google's fault; it may be the case that with my configuration, Firefox is just generally slower than Chrome for the kind of fancy code that powers Hangouts. But they certainly did not try to make it run well for me, for lack of incentives. Many people (especially lay) would have responded by switching to Chrome. I responded by deactivating gmail chat and switching to Skype.
This is true about incentives, but it's also how pretty much all bad stuff in the real world actually happens, rather than black hatted evil-doers twirling their mustaches (though there's a bit of that too).
Some consider "incentives matter" to be a good two word summary of economics, it would be great if people bore that in mind when dealing with corporations, rather than treating them like local sports teams.
Though I think in this case, Firefox and Google actually have their incentives pretty well aligned, with each other and the general public (generally "make web video better"), it's just a matter of timing.
"I suggest that ‘Big Data’ analyses are no more prone to this kind of problem than any other kind of analysis."
To an extent, large data volumes make it more difficult for the statistician to be as nimble. Trying different algorithms, different specifications, different ways to approach the data is part of the statistical workflow; not everything can be easily parallelized and run on a Hadoop cluster.
There are insights a statistician can quickly obtain (few hours) from a carefully selected random sample of a few million observations, in memory, in a single R or Python process. The same analysis for the complete, multi-terabyte data would be rather more painful or costly to obtain.
Of course data scientists such as Martin Goodson know that (though their bosses do not always) and are used to doing exploratory analysis or prototyping on sample that fit in RAM.
Missing the occasional definite article out is something that seems to be fairly common with second language english speakers.
I decided some time ago that it was worthwhile forcing myself to adjust until it wasn't noticeably painful; there are too many people out there I want to communicate with who do it.
Agreed, people all over the world are going out of their way to post in English so we don't have to constantly go to a translator. If you really do not understand what is being said ask for clarification, otherwise just be appreciative.
Spot on. ESL. Grew up in the U.S as a kid. Took grammar as elective. But I can't perfect my writing (and am too tired to correct it now). Shoot an email to yeukhon@acm.org for a correction, if needed. Just fixed a bit, not sure if the revision is better or worse. Probably missing some "the". Can't edit it now :3
I find that scientific textbooks (machine learning, etc) are much more usable as books than as pdf, as I need to often jump from one chapter to another and it needs to be the matter of a split second (or I won't bother to look for the information).
But perhaps mileage varies.