(adj.) describing something that should be done outside of the present discussion, generally deployed in the context of a larger group meeting in which the participants are gathered around a conference table, as in “We’ll need to do some off-table work to develop the focus group themes further”; implies that once the session breaks up activity will continue in another location with a subset of those present; similar to parking lot, which refers to topics that are deferred for later discussion, but without the implication that those items are of lesser importance
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How learning changes your thinking
Mind what you know
Posted on November 30, 2019
Mental maps
Having been built up over hundreds of years into its current dense and meandering tangle, London’s road network shows few signs of the regularity that characterizes its counterparts in younger countries. Prior to the advent of cheap map technology, anyone wanting to explore unfamiliar neighborhoods would need a detailed atlas to find addresses or landmarks. Finding the desired spot was akin to playing Where’s Waldo, given the thicket of alleys and courts and lanes laid out with no obvious organizing principle.1
One group was notably unfazed by this challenge. London’s black cab drivers developed a well-deserved reputation for their ability to navigate to any points in the metro area with ease, with no reference to guide them. This was not accidental, as to earn their license each had to pass a legendarily grueling test that came to be known simply as the “Knowledge,” a requirement first instituted in the era of horse-drawn carriages.
Prospective cabbies study the layout of London for years, memorizing tens of thousands of streets and establishments. During this period they pore over maps for hours and wind their way through the streets on scooters, committing what they see to memory. They are required to visualize paths between restaurants or theaters or shops, or any other random point of interest a rider might choose that’s within a quarter mile of 320 predefined routes. Read more…
- Or Where’s Wally for the non-American reader, which is the original name of the series, incidentally created by a Brit. ↩
- There is no permanent failure, as test takers can persist in the series until they pass or quit trying. Perhaps some metaphor for life is baked in there. ↩
- Note there’s an official City of London, which is a small historic part of what the world generally knows as London. Through various amalgamations it has become mostly symbolic as a political entity. Cabbies study the bigger conurbation. ↩
- The Knowledge doesn’t come cheap, as black cabs are usually more expensive than their ridesharing counterparts. ↩
- Although in their role as anonymous confidants, drivers might still need to soothe the occasional rider. ↩
- A plot device of the Pixar movie Wall-E, in which humans have become sedentary and gluttonous consumers chained to entertainment that meets their every need, rendering them into passive blobs. ↩
- No doubt most of the agita among London’s taxi drivers stems from the costly years of investment they put into learning the Knowledge and the erosion of their path to recouping it. ↩
tie a bow on it
Posted on November 25, 2019
to perform the finishing steps needed to indicate completeness, which might be symbolic, cosmetic, or perfunctory, as in: “Hey Jim, let’s tie a bow on the presentation slides so we can call it a night”; from the notion that decoratively tying a package with ribbon would be the final step in preparing a gift before delivering it to the recipient, this phrase can express an eagerness to be done with some item of work that might otherwise consume attention for a prolonged time
The collective action problem and true costs
See the big picture
Posted on November 21, 2019
List price
Observers who dig even a little into government policy in areas like tariffs or taxes might note some peculiar features. Regulations are often crafted to provide benefits to a favored constituency, while the corresponding costs are borne by the broader population in some opaque way that individuals can’t discern. As a result everyone ends up paying slightly more for healthcare, or cars, or chocolate bars, while the folks who sell those things get some economic protection.
Yet the sum of those costs can far exceed the gains being captured by the target group. For example, tariffs on certain raw materials like sugar might end up saving a few existing jobs, but at a total annual cost that’s much higher than the salaries of the workers being protected. In effect they impose an implicit tax of $100 so that someone can receive a benefit worth $50. Why not instead just give the beneficiaries $50 directly, have the rest keep the remaining $50 in their pockets, and in the process let everyone be better off?1 Read more…
- The current state is not Pareto-optimal, since there are ways for all sides to simultaneously improve their position. ↩
- Actually it was more of a purchase of Chrysler, leading to the contemporary joke: “How do you say DaimlerChrysler in German? Daimler.” ↩
- Not the complete picture, as the stock market crash would have had something to do with it. The demerged Chrysler eventually fell into bankruptcy. ↩
- Or maybe two, depending on founder Adam Neumann’s wife Rebekah’s complicity in all that went down. ↩
- Don’t shed a tear for WeWork’s billionaire backers, as they’re definitely rich enough to bear the consequences. ↩
- The wannabe conference-room-Jesus ended up with at least three commas for his troubles. #WeDontNeedToWork. ↩
- The executive search firm Egon Zehnder has a business model that attempts to head off self-dealing by giving all staff of the same tenure the same lockstep compensation. ↩
- Part of the reason why the vaunted Swiss model of local participatory governance works is you’re less likely to advance a pet project if you have to personally explain it to Lukas and Hans afterwards. ↩
digestible
Posted on November 15, 2019
to be broken up into smaller, easier to comprehend components, used in the context of analyses or messages that might be overwhelming if due thought is not applied beforehand, as in: “Before we share the report let’s break it down into more digestible sections”; something that is easily digestible can be quickly grasped by the intended audience, and so is not a characteristic of messages intended to obfuscate; similar to granular; pushes in the opposite direction of chunk up, which is used where something has been reduced to an overly-mashed slurry that needs more substance
Revealing your hidden value
Change the customer
Posted on November 13, 2019
It’s what’s inside that counts
Most users pay little attention to the innards of their digital devices, focusing entirely on sleek external lines and sharp screens and understanding little to nothing of the circuit boards packed with components that make them work. For the typical computer these include a main processor, storage, and short-term memory, plus several chips that allow for communication. These are masterpieces of engineering, reflecting decades of accumulated advances, but few care about that. They just want the product to perform as expected. The technical wizardry enabling it isn’t important.1
For Intel, this was a problem.
The company was an early leader in the design of central processing units, which coordinate a computer’s activities and are largely responsible for overall performance. Yet when deciding to buy the average user didn’t comprehend clock speeds or data throughput, nor were they particularly concerned with the brand name printed on a chip they would likely never see.
They just wanted a system that worked, and brands like Commodore and Compaq built strong identities for providing the newest and best products. As long as no one knew where the processors came from, Intel would remain at risk of being swapped out for a competitor’s product, or maybe having to haggle down margins to stay in the machines if their partners started feeling combative. Read more…
- For example, there are several “buses” inside a computer, but these transport data and not people. As with their wheeled counterparts, speed matters a lot for getting you where you want to go. ↩
- Depending on your exposure to television you might still remember it. Just think of those five synth notes that played when the Intel logo appeared. ↩
- Because Intel was unable to trademark numbers used to brand its processors, the 586 that would naturally have superseded the 486 was replaced by a coined word incorporating the Greek “penta” (five). ↩
- It was big enough that in parodist Weird Al Yankovic’s hands the song “It’s All About the Benjamins” became “It’s All About the Pentiums.” ↩
- If you’re wondering what Donald Trump thinks about the topic du jour, just remember a tweetstorm is probably brewing. ↩
The power of ridiculous persistence
It all adds up
Posted on November 6, 2019
Twin prime day
One challenge of certain problems in pure mathematics is that their discussions quickly stray beyond what most people can even comprehend, let alone add to. The starting premise may be elegant and easily described, while the next steps involve a jumble of symbols and intertwined theories that geniuses spend their careers trying to unpack. Some of them frustrate the best minds in the field for generations.
The twin prime conjecture is one such problem, and it was consuming the waking hours of an unassuming and unheralded mathematician by the name of Yitang Zhang.1
Zhang was a lecturer in mathematics at a university in New Hampshire, having landed there via a circuitous route after his upbringing in China. This included a few stops bumping around outside of academia, working in accounting and even helping with a colleague’s Subway sandwich shop while he struggled to find a relevant posting. Outside of his formal teaching responsibilities, he was privately grappling with a way to tackle the twin prime problem. Read more…
- And some of his sleeping hours as well, since he probably dreamed about prime numbers. ↩
- Somewhere down the line these ideas may find their way into cryptographic algorithms to hack current systems or create new ones. ↩
- The location of his breakthrough supports the idea that getting out into nature can help your thinking. ↩
- Building on his work others have since reduced the boundary to 246, where it remains for the moment, awaiting the next breakthrough. ↩
- Next time on Buzzfeed: “Take this quiz and we’ll tell you which unproven theorem in algebraic geometry you are!” ↩
- Interestingly the current CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, reportedly also has an extraordinary memory for numbers. ↩
solve
Posted on November 5, 2019
(noun) the solution or thing sought as an output of some process, combined with a failed attempt to sound smart, as in “The one thing we need this project to tell us is our total addressable market, that’s the main solve”; like unlock, watch-out, and ask, this jargon follows the common pattern of taking a verb and employing it as a bare noun that encapsulates its connotations of action without describing them explicitly; generally used when the path to achieving an objective is convoluted or yet to be clarified
all over the shop
Posted on November 4, 2019
(British) to be scattered or discombobulated to an extent that indicates the situation is out of control or the subject lacks confidence in the right direction to take, as in “We tried talking to the operations team about how to fix the defect rates, but they were just all over the shop”; someone behaving in such fashion would be well advised to get a handle on the situation post haste to avoid being relieved of their responsibilities; contrast with bull in a china shop, which refers to frenetic or agitated behavior that creates significant collateral damage, characterizing someone as “all over the shop” indicates disorder without the same sense of destructiveness
Getting your time frame right
Good governance
Posted on October 30, 2019
No parking zone
Like other major cities, Chicago has several areas with a dense and vital mix of urban features that attract lots of people. Combine this high demand with compact geography and the natural result is scarce on-street parking. This was managed by adding meters to charge for these spaces, both monetizing and regulating a limited resource. The system collectively generated tens of millions of dollars annually from normal fees plus the fines charged to drivers who overstay their allotted time, wittingly or not.1
In the mid-2000s the size and perpetual nature of this revenue stream proved too tempting for a government facing extreme financial pressures. With a history of politically beneficial but economically unsound decisions, leadership had dug a structural hole in the budget that could not plausibly be filled with increased taxes or other typical maneuvers.
So when the agents of financialization came calling, key Chicago leaders were very receptive to their pitch. Like lottery winners receiving regular payouts or recipients of structured legal settlements who want their money now, the city was offered a deal converting the next 75 years of total parking meter revenue into a single lump sum, which could be used to address immediate needs.2 Read more…
- If you’re a thrill-seeker you can always not pay and roll the dice on whether you’ll be caught. ↩
- Kind of the principle behind payday lending, in which you can give up a lot in the future for a little benefit now. ↩
- One salubrious side effect of pricing being more correctly priced is that spaces are now generally more available, a consequence that could be easily predicted by anyone who scored at least a C in Econ 101. ↩
- Or cash out some of their stock options at the higher price. ↩
- And if they do, it’s usually the plot of some apocalyptic story involving zombies. ↩
- Non-discounted cash flows, but inflation has not been massive in the past 11 years, so whichever way you slice it these investors are making bank. ↩
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