Thursday, July 7, 2005

Freakonomics

I just finished listening to an awesome book called Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt. It is now one of my favourites. Highly recommended. The bad thing is it means I spent 7 hours in my car this week – way too much driving. I only got the CD’s on Monday and I am already finished them.

Stephen is a unique economist that has an interesting way of looking at the world. A lot of it speaks about motivating people and why motivation systems often fail. I can learn some for our compensation systems (although compensation is more of an art than a science). He has a morbid interest in cheating and crime so lots on that. There is even a section on parenting.

He sifts through data and correlates it to try to figure out the cause and effect of what is happening in the world. I used to sit on the board of Angoss Software for about 10 years. They sell advanced data mining tools that do these sorts of correlations. I have always had an interest in it. It is even more interesting at SYNNEX since I deal with such a mass of data. The book is interesting and stimulates thought.

My time tip for tonight is to use the time in your car to learn. I can go through a ton of audio material even in short trips. It passes the time faster and I learn. I often rent audios from audiobook connection in Burlington. I have only ever been there once but have rented probably 50 audio books over the past few years – all by email and phone. I am fortunate enough to have an assistant that arranges most of it (another time tip)

1 comment:

  1. So funny you mentioned that book. Another friend of mine highly recommended it for brain food.

    As for audio CDs - you are like the THIRD person this week to mention it. One of my friends consistently buys audio CDs for long car hauls.

    I'm going to have to see what the big thing is about those...

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