Nieboer.org

I've just installed jsMath - a nifty little tool for displaying math on web pages - on this website. It takes up quite a bit of space on the server, but it is by far the easiest way of displaying mathematical expressions in the LaTeX format. The implementation of the easy/load.js script worked out of the box for me; I'd recommend it to anyone who publishes mathematical content on the web. Here's a demo (double-click on the expression to see the LaTeX source): \[ \omega = \sum_{i}x_{i}\]

Laboratory experiments only get so interesting; if you want go a little further, you need to test your theories in the field. And when it comes to social science, what could be more engaging that using yourself as an experimental subject? Journalist and author AJ Jacobs has done exactly this for his book 'The Guinea Pig Diaries' (just released as a paperback titled 'My Experimental Life'). There's a little taster on the Guardian site in the form of lengthy extract. The extract describes Jacobs' attempts at uni-tasking (as opposed to multi-tasking) his way through life. He takes the principles of uni-tasking pretty far, which makes for a more entertaining read, but he makes some valuable observations on productivity along the way.

Jacobs reports that uni-tasking is a productivity booster; this rings true for me. Every time you stop yourself drifting towards a 'quick' browse of your favourite web sites, you win back at least 5-10 minutes of productive time. I've always thought that many of today's 'time savers' (consider all the things you can do from your web browser that would have required an in-person visit in the past) force the mind to go into multi-tasking mode, thereby making for a double-edged sword in terms of net productivity. This is why I signed up for Tim Ferriss' low information diet and haven't looked back since.

One of the funniest internet fads has to be the popularity of the Three Wolf Moon t-shirt on Amazon. Spurred on by a single sarcastic review in November 2008, a herd of digital citizens quickly formed to buy and subsequently mock the garment, which is shown below:

The way the herd buying behaviour works for the shirt conforms closely to the information cascades theory of Bikhchandani et al (1992): a person receives a signal about the apparent merits of the 'buy' decision (reads the Amazon reviews), then decides to buy and announces this in public (i.e. writes his own review). Others follow.

It seems that producers of mock-worthy goods have a special edge in trying to start a internet sales herd: buyers have an incentive to share their purchase decision (something the information cascades theory takes for granted). Shirt owners do not only get to share laughs with their friends, they also get to share laughs with like-minded individuals on the web by posting a funny review. Buying the shirt is only half of the 'product experience' - or as one reviewer puts it:

When I first saw this review I thought, "Why would anyone want to write three longish paragraphs about a wolf shirt??!?" But then I read it.

Now, if you'll excuse me - I have some web shopping to do.

Am reading a fun little book on mass behaviour, unambiguously titled Herd (the irony here is that the book itself is part of a herd of monosyllabic popular science titles like Blink and Nudge). Let me elaborate on 'fun' and 'little' later by posting a review of the book in the next couple of weeks. As a teaser, here's one of the chapter mottoes:

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

- Oscar Wilde

Just thought it'd be a fitting end of year post for the blog.

According to a New York times article (link via MR), experts' credibility is positively impacted by the degree to which they come across as tentative in their recommendations. For novices, the opposite is true: a more confident judgement is deemed more trustworthy than a cautious one.

The study was done by asking students to evaluate a local Italian restaurant based on one of four reviews: two written by a food critic, two by an amateur food lover. For each reviewer type, there were two review versions: one tentative, the other strictly positive. It turned out the students lent more credibility to the expert's tentative piece than his positive piece, but reversed these preferences when judging the novice's reviews.

Whether these findings extend to a domain other than dining is unclear. One could argue that people think that food critics are over-rated anyway, since the general public can easily access and interpret information in a food critic's area of expertise (i.e. go to a restaurant and eat there). Nevertheless, the research findings raise some interesting questions regarding the role of experts in groups, and perhaps even herding settings. Going by these results, it seems rather simple to assume that an expert is simply a person with superior in-game information - the food critic and the amateur food lover had the same information set, after all. Maybe the difference between the expert and the novice is how they process the information they hold?