Verb This Book

[ase]

I started reading The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference yesterday, and got to the second page of the first chapter before I nearly threw it across the bus. There are no graphs in sight! The author starts the chapter by saying, "syphillis in Baltimore increased by 500%" without saying what the numerical increase was. A 1-to-5 increase is not a compelling statistic; a 10,000-to-50,000 increase is. So: do I need to finish this The Tipping Point, or toss it in the "return to used book store" pile post haste?

Comments

Junk it.

[asciilifeform.livejournal.com]

I recommend reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan" instead. It is something like a "thinking person's version" of "The Tipping Point." IMHO, Gladwell is a poser and an intellectual lightweight.

Re: Junk it.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Ad hominem? Harsh, man. Thanks for the heads-up about The Black Swan.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Oh, Gladwell. Yeah.

I did get to the end, and even mildly liked it (enough to pick up Blink), but you have got to approach it from the "oh, cute ideas in ancedotal form which may very well be false, as he doesn't exactly back them up very well" perspective and not actually expect him to tell you anything, oh, rigorous. If you don't want to temporarily repress that part of your brain, toss it.

(I enjoyed Blink a lot more than Tipping Point, probably at least partially because I knew to expect the marked lack of any sort of quantitative rigor by that time.)

[ase.livejournal.com]

Awww, anecdotes masquerading as data! How cute! I think I'll put it aside until I am drunk as a skunk and in a mocking mood.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Ha! Yes, being drunk'd help.