On a large number of ‘best of’ or ‘books that changed my life’ lists I always spot Gödel, Escher, Bach (GEB), the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter.
When my copy arrived at my door recently I was taken aback by this tome and realised that it was going to be a dense read that will need—and hopefully reward—all of my attention. As with similar books, I will undertake background research and reading first so that I can fully appreciate all the concepts contained within.
This is when I found MIT’s ’special programme’ specifically based on the book. While it doesn’t provide a wealth of useful, supplementary material (much like the Wikipedia entry), it does mention some good Bach pieces to accompany your reading.
Need help in visualising four dimensions? Étienne Ghys has now created a series of videos for ‘teaching’ others how to visualise objects in the fourth dimension (the spatial, not temporal, fourth dimension).
How on earth can we visualize such a thing? [The] challenge in visualizing four dimensions is very similar to the one that would be faced by a perfectly flat creature who lived in two dimensions and tried to visualize three, like the inhabitants of Edwin Abbott’s Flatland or the lizards in the page in Escher’s Reptiles. A cube or a sphere would be nearly unimaginable for the two-dimensional lizards, since they are unable to rise out of the plane.
At 24 I firmly believe that I’m still young enough to completely change my professional ‘direction’ and for it to have no discernible effect on my future earning power. As such I always have these fantastic ideas that one day soon I will go back to university and complement my CS degree with another degree in a field that has fascinated me for years: cognitive neuroscience.
Here are some links I’ve been clicking on a lot recently:
Browsing the MIT OpenCourseWare’s Laboratory in Cognitive Science entry, I came across a paper on giving effective scientific talks.
- Prepare your material carefully and logically
- Practice your talk
- Don’t put in too much material
- Avoid equations
- Have only a few conclusion points
- Talk to the audience not to the screen
- Avoid making distracting sounds
- Polish your graphics
- Use large letters (no fonts smaller than 16 pts)
- Keep the graphic simple
- Use color
- Use cartoons
- Use humor if possible
- Be personable in taking questions
- First, repeat the question
- If you don’t know the answer then say “I don’t know, I will have to look into that”
- If the questioner disagrees with you and it looks like there will be an argument then defuse the situation
- Never insult the questioner
The DFL blog rounds up the Beijing Olympics with some great data visualisations on last place finishes and some wise words on how the Olympic spirit has changed.
It’s part of a larger problem: media coverage can be so overwhelmingly focused on the home team that the big picture is missed. Events in which your country has no chance are ignored. Gold medallists from other countries are only shown to explain why your country’s competitor came in 12th. And you’ll almost never hear someone else’s anthem played at the podium.
I was surprised to spend so much time blogging about the ugly nationalistic side of the Olympics in this round of DFL. The 2008 version of this blog has been the angry DFL, wherein I fulminate against the media, national Olympic committees, the IOC, and the general public for their obsession with medals and their tendency to blame athletes for failing to bring back the shiny knick-knacks and making their whole country look bad.