Month: October 2009
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A Philosophy of Happiness
In Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy, six “anxieties of everyday life” are tackled through the work of six philosophers—one for each chapter in the short book. A few years after publication the book was turned into a six-part documentary, Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness. While both the book and the series aren’t rigorous studies…
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Online Dating Statistics: Ideal First Messages
After looking at race and religion, the online dating site OkCupid turns its statistical eye toward the actual content of the messages sent between participants. It’s worth noting that the average response/reply rate is 32%. First up, what to say in a first message: Be literate. Netspeak, bad grammar, and bad spelling are huge turn-offs. The worst…
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Online Dating Statistics: Religion and Race
The online dating website OkCupid has a rather fascinating blog, OkTrends, written by two of the four mathematics majors who founded the site. Still in it’s infancy the blog has a few fascinating posts studying data gleamed from their expansive user base. Starting out with a brief look at their matching algorithm and the control group…
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Online Dating and OkCupid
OkCupid, one of the biggest online dating websites around, has had a bit of an up and down history. Originally called SparkMatch, itself a by-product of the once popular TheSpark, the site was one of the first completely free dating websites that now abound online. Inc. Magazine looks at the history of OkCupid—it’s struggles and…
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The Seven Wastes
One of the principal goals of the Toyota Production System (TPS) is to identify steps that add value (and those which do not) and then design out waste. Muda is one of the three types of waste (the other two being muri and mura) and the one that has been given the most attention since the TPS…
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Mysteries of Evolution and an Evolving Dawkins
It is time to move away from anti-religious sentiment/philosophy and instead appeal to the logic of those who refute the theory of evolution. This appears to be the premise of Richard Dawkins’ latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, where he “traces the scientific investigation of biological change as if it were a crime-scene investigation…
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Scheduling and Non-Hierarchical Management
These two essays have been doing the rounds of late, and for good reason: Paul Graham’s comparison between the schedules of Managers and the schedules of Makers (creatives). The gist? A manager’s day is divided into hour-long blocks of time, makers work in much longer, relatively unconstrained and non-discrete units of time. The problem is…
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Deconstructing Managers
Today and tomorrow I’ll be posting a few links I’ve saved on managing: on being a manager, dealing with managers, and how to be a better one. To begin, a six-part series from Rands in Repose—Deconstructing Managers. There Is Evil, Your Manager’s Job I trust that, like me, you’re an optimist and you believe that…