jump to navigation

Does Social Media Need to Go? October 27, 2018

Posted by Peter Varhol in Technology and Culture, Uncategorized.
Tags:
1 comment so far

I have been in tech publishing since 1988.  Fulltime, as an editor, senior editor, executive editor, editor in chief, and editorial director has encompassed, um, perhaps nine years.  I’ve freelanced in the interim.

In that time, I’ve learned something about publishing in general.  Publishing involves a certain responsibility to its readers.  That responsibility, in a nutshell, is to curate content in an honest way, and to present that content as representative of what the publisher stands for.  They stand by what is on their platform.

Social media emphatically does not curate.  Not only that, but it praises the fact that it does not curate.  Instead, it says that it cannot possibly curate, and it requires its users to self-curate.  But, of course, it doesn’t provide a reliable means for users to report their curation.

Facebook and other social media platforms have accepted the mantle of publishers, without accepting the responsibility of being publishers.  It has made them enormously profitable.  In fact, they even use our intimate personal data, and sell it to any buyers.  We seem to be okay with that.

I am emphatically not.  Today, someone has published their murderous intentions on social media, then carried them out.  How can we be okay with this?

Unless you disavow social media right now, I will argue that you are complicit in murder and other heinous crimes.  Are you okay with that?

I Don’t Need a Hero October 23, 2018

Posted by Peter Varhol in Software development, Software platforms, Strategy.
Tags: , ,
add a comment

Apologies to Bonnie Tyler, but we don’t need heroes, as we have defined them in our culture.  “He’s got to be strong, he’s got to be fast, and he’s got to be fresh from the fight.”  Um, no.

Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto, makes it clear that the heroes, those in any profession that create a successful outcome primarily on the strength of their superhuman effort, don’t deserve to be recognized as true heroes.  In fact, we should try to avoid circumstances that appear to require a superhuman effort.

So what are heroes?  We would like to believe that they exist.  Myself, I am enamored with the astronauts of a bygone era, who faced significant uncertainties in pushing the envelope of technology, and accepted that their lives were perpetually in hock.  But, of course, they were the same ones who thought that they were better than those who sacrificed their lives, because they survived.

Today, according to Gawande, the heroes are those who can follow checklists in order to make sure that they don’t forget any step in a complex process.  The checklists themselves can be simple, in that they exist to prompt professionals to remember and execute seemingly simple steps that are often forgotten in the heat of crisis.

In short, Gawande believes in commercial airline pilots, such as Chesley (Sully) Sullenberger, who with his copilot Jeffrey Skiles glided their wounded plane to a ditching in the Hudson River off Midtown Manhattan.  Despite the fact that we all know Sully’s name in the Miracle on the Hudson, it was a team effort by the entire flight crew.  And they were always calm, and in control.

Today, software teams are made up on individuals, not close team members.  Because they rarely work as a team, it’s easy for one or more individuals to step up and fix a problem, without the help of the team.

There are several problems with that approach, however.  First, if an extra effort by one person is successful, the team may not try as hard in the future, knowing that they will be bailed out of difficult situations.  Second, the hero is not replicable; you can’t count on it again and again in those situations.  Third, the hero can’t solve every problem; other members of the team will eventually be needed.

It feels good to be the hero, the one who by virtue of extreme effort fixes a bad situation.  The world loves you.  You feel like you’ve accomplished something significant.  But you’re not at all a hero if your team wasn’t there for you.

Statistics is (are?) For Everyone October 13, 2018

Posted by Peter Varhol in Education, Technology and Culture.
Tags: , , ,
add a comment

I taught statistics, to undergrad and graduate business students for a number of years.  I typically started off the courses by explaining how statistics were real life constructs, and were far more important in understanding the world than anything else they studied.  I especially loved word problems, which I thought were the epitome of real life.  They were analytical problems expressed in ambiguous words, with incomplete information, yet required a single correct answer.

Everyone got a good laugh out of that, and for the rest of the course treated me like the crazy uncle that they kept in the attic.

But the point remains valid, and important to anyone who cares about real life data, because there is a dichotomy between how statistics are taught, and how we might use them.

Yesterday I had a meeting with someone who told me of his teenage son, who studied and knew every conceivable football player, their university, and their statistics.  He pointed out to his son that he should really enjoy his AP Statistics course, because of his interest in football statistics.

But here’s the problem.  Most traditional statistics courses don’t teach like that.  Statistics courses are designed to look at uncertainty and how to manage it.  So we discuss mean, standard deviation, t-test, Chi-Square, ANOVA, and so on, confident that students will form a mental model of how uncertainly plays a central role in any data samples that we analyze.

Let me tell you something.  Students don’t care.  I know from years of experience that most students think statistics is the most useless course they are required to take.  They largely don’t want to be there, and I considered it a success if I were actually able to get them interested enough in the topic to do homework and understand what the answers meant in real life.

Today, of course, practically every decision made revolves around analytics.  But many business professionals still have trouble relating their university statistics classes to the decisions they make on a daily basis.  For these folks, statistics as a discipline, with an innate understanding of sampling, confidence, and uncertainty is divorced from the results they are presented in their analytics engines.

What’s the solution?  Make statistics relevant.  Teach Moneyball, fantasy football statistics, weather probabilities, or anything that makes it real to people who struggle with the math and its meaning.

I’m not a gambler, and I kind of shrug at the beginning of the era of legalized sports gambling.  But statistical inference and probabilities are at the heart of sports gambling.  If the field of statistics wants to remain relevant, it should start here.

Health Care Doesn’t Care October 7, 2018

Posted by Peter Varhol in Uncategorized.
Tags:
add a comment

A couple of incidents last week reminded me that while the U.S. might have the “health” part down pretty well, it is very much lacking in the “care” part.  The first incident surrounded a hospital appointment I have later this week.  Thursday I received an automated text asking me to confirm the appointment.

On the surface, this sounds like a good application of technology.  However, the text told me to respond by 9 PM.  I happened to be several time zones away, active at a conference, and didn’t see the text until after 9 PM EDT.  I responded anyway, and my response was rejected.  And the texts contained no phone number to call to confirm my appointment.  I hope they haven’t cancelled it, as it took me about two months to get this appointment, but I have to wait until Monday when this office is staffed to find out.

Second, Thursday also I received a call from another doctor’s office, and was told that I needed to consult with the doctor before renewing a prescription.  I explained that I was traveling almost every day between now and mid-November (about six weeks).  She repeated that my prescription wouldn’t be renewed until I saw the doctor.  I asked if I could schedule an appointment for mid-November.  No, I was told, that schedule wasn’t available yet.

I’m not unduly concerned, as the condition this prescription treated is much better, and I would only need to take it occasionally.  But here is the problem.  Our health care system is concerned only about itself, not its customers (patients).  The hoops they make their customers jump through are almost entirely for their convenience.  In my stories above, there is no apparent rationale for requiring a response within four hours, and to not provide other contact information is simply criminal.  While I appreciate that a doctor might want to consult on my condition and make adjustments to the prescription, there is no earthly reason why their schedule does not go out six weeks into the future.

And regrettably, there is no alternative for customers except to deal with the system.

Let me also say that I have encountered a number of fine and caring individual health care professionals.  It’s not the individuals that are the problem (for the most part); it is the system.  Now, you may argue that the people are the system, and I might agree with you.  But most of the health care professionals I talk to feel helpless to change it.

Both health care professionals and their customers have to rise up in revolution and take control.  It is the only thing we can do.  Together, we can reinsert the “care” into health care.