The Checklist Manifesto

I just finished reading "The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande, a very interesting book.

Gawande, a surgeon, essentially makes the following point. Given the incredible amount of knowledge we have accumulated in some professions, the complexity of certain tasks could be incredibly overwhelming to professionals (e.g., surgeons, airline pilots). Since in many situations these professionals work under pressure, they often forget some very simple yet important steps that later create unforseen problems (e.g., making sure the antibiotics are applied at a particular time before the incision is made into the patient).

Hence, he argues for simple checklists that teams should go through to ensure that important details are not glossed over. In the airline industry, checklists are used religiously. At every step of the flight, or whenever anything goes wrong, there is a checklist for the flight crew to follow. Gawande's main argument is that this principle should be applied in other professions as well, and in particular, in medicine. He describes his experiences launching such a checklist program with the World Health Organization and the impact that it had on reducing complications following surgery.

There are two main challenges this strategy. First, the checklist needs to be short as to not to completely slow down work. Hence, choosing and phrasing the items on the checklist requires significant thought. The second challenge is putting ego aside. For example, surgeons are used to being the kings of the operating room, and do not lightly take comments from nurses or other staff. Well, pilots have gotten over it, and they're not slackers in the ego department.

Gawande also gives examples from the construction industry and from restaurants, where constructing a high-rise or making sure that everything comes together at the right time on a customer's plate can be rather challenging. One main observation he makes from all of these examples is the importance of communication among the team members, in addition to the checklist. It is crucial for members of the team to communicate well with each other and building communication into the workflow is key. In that way, it's less likely that things fall between the cracks leading to additional problems.

To me the book was interesting because it points out that even if we build a huge body of knowledge in a particular domain, applying this knowledge in practice can be equally challenging.

Two Books by Geraldine Brooks

I just finished reading two books by Geraldine Brooks and highly recommend them. Both books are fiction inspired by true historical events. In both cases, Brooks manages to vividly recreate the periods in which the plot is taking place and bring them back to life. The research that goes into her books is really impressive.

The first book is Year of Wonders. It is based on the story of the little village of Eyam in Derbyshire, England in 1666. That was the year plague swept through the village devastating it. The story tells of how the plague entered the village and its effects on its inhabitants through the story of Anna Frith, a housemade at the village's rectory.

The second book, People of the Book, was published just this year. It is based on the story of the Haggadah of Sarajevo. The Haggadah is the story of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, and is read on the eve of Passover (with a lot of food and a minimum of 4 glasses of wine weaved in). The history of this Haggadah goes back to 15th century Spain and has an amazing story of survival through Venice, Vienna and Sarajevo (at least). One of the most interesting aspects of its story is that the acts (often of heroism) to save the Haggadah were typically carried out by non-Jews -- Muslims or Christians, who appreciated the value of the book. The book portrays vividly several periods in history some of which had Christians, Muslims and Jews were living in peace together (Spain, before the inquisition). It's really a great read (regardless of one's religion). And yes, there was even a Halevy involved in this book's history!

The Oxford Murders

Want to read a murder mystery with a mathematical twist? "The Oxford Murders", by Guillermo Martinez is a nice one (apparently, the movie is coming out next year).

A series of murders is happening in Oxford, tangentially involving people in the math department there. Supposedly, there is a mathematical series underlying the murders, and a couple of mathematicians are trying to figure it out before the series goes too far. A very nice and rather quick read.

The Slash Effect

I just finished reading "One Person/Multiple Careers", by Marci Alboher, Author/Speaker/Coach. Like with other books described in this blog, my reading agenda is highly influenced by authors visiting Google (which happens often enough to keep any reader quite busy).

The main contribution of this book is to get you thinking. Slashers are people who have multiple parallel careers. Through numerous examples, the book claims that this is a growing phenomenon in today's culture, and describes the challenges, opportunities and benefits having to do with slash careers. The point that I found most interesting about all of the above is that slashing essentially gives you multiple identities in society. Think of what you answer at a party when people ask you what you are or do. Being a slasher means you can give multiple answers, or choose one you think best suits the situation. But more than that, slashing means you gain some internal balance in life, rather than being tied to one professional identity.

Marci gives examples of lawyers turned writers & coaches (including herself), a teacher with a modeling career, a computer programmer who also directs a theater, a lawyer who's also a Baptist minister, Sanjay Gupta, the CNN health correspondent who also does surgery a few times a month, and the list goes on and on. She discusses how people manage multiple careers, some of the cross-over benefits and life-style benefits they obtain, and she offers practical advice on how to become a slasher. The book essentially revolves around all these examples, and every chapter ends with the highlights of its main points (great for future reference).

Being a somewhat formal guy on occasion (perhaps one of my slashes?) I found myself looking for a definition of a slash. Marci seems to focus on aspects of life that are part of your career (it doesn't actually matter whether you derive much income from it, otherwise most of the poets and actors would not have made it into the book). But, for example, does a hobby count as a slash? Does it depend on how much time one spends on the hobby? In fact, many jobs are composed of multiple slashes (e.g., professors spend half of their time teaching, half their time doing research, and the other halves raising research funding and sitting on committees).

Clearly, parenting is the most common form of parallel activity adults engage in. The book contains a chapter on parenting and how parenting and slashing share many challenges. The book even claims that a slash life can prepare you better for parenting (though clearly, some of the slashes may take a back seat for a while).

However, my search for a formal definition of slashing is missing the point. As I stated at the outset, the point of this book is to make you think about all the aspects of your life whether they count as slashes or not. Personally, the most common slash combination I've encountered (and personally experienced) is the professor/entrepreneur combo, and I can speak at length about the benefits and challenges there.

Finally, one point that was not addressed in the book is multiple careers that happen in sequence, rather than in parallel. Perhaps I'll take the opportunity to coin a new term: the double backslash, (for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of using the Latex word processor, I should explain that a double backslash creates a new line in the text). I would think that slashing and double backslashing share many of the challenges and benefits.

In summary, this book is a rather quick read (you can skip parts, but pay attention to the boldfaced sentences). I found myself reflecting on my slash/double blackslash riddled career and wondering what other slashes may come into my life at some point.

The J Curve

I've decided to start writing short summaries of (some) books I read. Please do not expect literary pieces here -- this is not my attempt to sneak into the book review section of the New York Times, nor is it an attempt to make up for a few missed book reports in grade school.

Had I started this two years ago, I would have definitely blogged about "The World is Flat" by Tom Friedman. Too late now. But I think this book should be required reading for anyone interested in data management (either in research or industry). Just read that book and imagine all the data management services we need to invent to support the flattening of the world. Of course, the book has other merits too.

The J Curve by Ian Bremmer, is essentially a framework for discussing the stability and openness of countries and how you can understand political events in the context of moving on the curve. You need to imagine the letter J rotated about 45 degrees clockwise to get the full effect. The X axis of the J curve is the degree of openness of a country (e.g., travel restrictions, freedom of the media, economic openness, the presence of independent political institutions). The Y axis is the degree of stability of the country (i.e., whether certain events would cause great chaos or not). If you're on the top left of the curve, you're closed but stable (e.g., North Korea). If you're on the top right, you're open and stable (e.g., USA, western Europe). If you're China, you pose an interesting challenge to the curve (more on that in a moment).

One of the main points the book makes is that for countries to go from the left to the right they will have to first go down the curve and therefore suffer some considerable instability. The world can help these countries by raising the entire curve, i.e, make the depths of the curve stable enough so countries will survive the transition. (In practice, that observation lets Bremmer criticize many of the policies the USA has taken w.r.t. some countries).

The book goes through a few examples of countries in each part of the curve. It starts with North Korea, Cuba and Saddam's Iraq as examples of stable but closed. It discusses Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia as countries that have the potential of sliding down the curve from the left. He shows South Africa as an example of a country that made it through the transition successfully and Yugoslavia as one that didn't. He takes Turkey, Israel and India as examples of countries founded on the right hand side of the curve and who have maintained it that way (though they do face challenges going forward). Finally, there is a chapter on China, where Bremmer argues that despite its economic openness, China is still on the left side of the curve.

What I liked most about this book are the brief yet insightful summaries of the relevant history of each of the countries discussed. The summaries give you the background for why things are the way they are now and let you understand better the challenges facing the countries. I'm finding that it's easier for me now to put current news into context, and in fact, that the curve does give a pretty good framework for thinking about today's world events.

That being said, the chapter on the country I am most familiar with, Israel, was a bit disappointing, so perhaps people from other countries would say the same about their respective chapters. I enjoyed reading about all the complexities in Yugoslavia, though I wished he would have spent a page or two describing some of the main events of the war there (he stopped just before it saying it would be too complicated).

In discussing the book with Donald Kossmann, he wonders whether corporations can also be classified according to their openness. For example, a company who has a very closed set of programmatic interfaces to their products (and I won't name the names he mentioned) may be considered a North Korea of countries. An interesting thought to develop.

In summary, I would definitely recommend this book. If you're an expert on world affairs and attended all your history classes in school, you may find less of a payoff from reading it.

I'm moving on now to Wikinomics.