Archive for October, 2022
Embrace coincidences to shore up your well-being
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on October 19, 2022
Being a believer in the power of positivity, I am always on the lookout for the bright side of life. For example, while out for a very chilly walk this morning, I was delighted to see a dozen or so bluebirds perched along a fence next to the sidewalk. I embraced this happy coincidence!
Professor David Hand, former Chair in Statistics at Imperial College, London, made a case that these little miracles occur daily.* You just need to be pay attention. I got some great reinforcement for collecting coincidences from a report last week by Wall Street Journal columnist Elizabeth Anne Bernstein.** She provided a great example of a fortuitous series of events that led to a wonderful meeting with a friend of her father, who passed away earlier this year.
“Surprising concurrent events can help us reach decisions, soothe us in grief and tighten our connections to others.
Elizabeth Anne Bernstein
Although some people believe in divine causes for coincidences such as Elizabeth’s,*** I think they occur at random and get selectively noticed due to personal biases. In any case, I am happy for anyone who gains comfort from them.
PS For an excellent breakdown of coincidence by serendipity (“happy accidents”) versus synchronicity (an acausal “falling together in time” see this 2021 Psychology Today explanation by Bernard D. Beitman, M.D. of Meaningful Coincidences.
PPS On a related, more humorous note, check out this ‘heads-up’ on the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. Eery!
*See my 2014 blog explaining why Laws of nature lead to rare events that really ought not surprise anyone
**The Hidden Power of Coincidences
***For example, many believed in a heavenly arrangement for the simultaneous deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July 4, 1826—exactly 50 years after each had signed the Declaration of Independence.
Eschew surplusage
Posted by mark in Communication, Uncategorized on October 8, 2022
This is Mark Twain’s humorous advice for jargon-prone writers who fail to “employ a simple and straightforward style.”* In case you’re wondering, “surplusage” means “unnecessary or irrelevant language.” This obscure term is mainly used by the legal profession. Isn’t that ironic?
Here are some promising developments for citizens in English-speaking countries who suffer from surplusage at the hands of their lawyer-riddled governments:
- The Plain Language bill now coming to a final vote by the New Zealand Parliament may make simple-English training mandatory for their public servants.**
- Twelve years ago this month, the USA enacted the Plain Writing Act of 2010 establishing that Government documents issued to the public must be written clearly.
- A recent Labradorian-commissioned comparative study of “ordinary” versus “plain” English showed significant improvements in reading speed, understanding, retention and appreciation.**
- The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to the authors (Martinez, et al) of Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives processing difficulty in legal language (not at all ignoble—lawyers should be held accountable for incomprehensible contracts).
“Contracts contain “startlingly” high proportions of difficult-to-process (“complex psycholinguistic) features including low frequency jargon, centre-embedded clauses, passive voice structures, and non-standard capitalisation.”
Eric Martinez and Edward Gibson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Francis Mollica at the University of Edinburgh
Poor writing is not confined to government or legal communications. Those of us who work in the scientific arena must work mightily to decipher reports intended to provide “accessibly erudite progressive rigor” (the first phrase that came up for me at this Academic B.S. Generator). I found some hope from these studies:
- A randomized, controlled study on thousands of subjects “indicating the detrimental effects of providing too many details on statistical concepts.”***
- A call**** by statistician Karen Grace-Martin to work on reducing four major sources of confusion for terminology rising to a level of “absurdity”:
- “Single terms with multiple meanings,” e.g., alpha and beta used for linear-model coefficients as well as to symbolize risk versus power.
- “Terms with colloquial meanings in English and technical definitions in statistics,” e.g., “error” (supposedly early statisticians got so much criticism from managers about too many errors that they started calling these “residuals).
- “Similar terms with nuanced meanings,” e.g., General Linear Model and Generalized Linear Model (being an engineer-only, I have trouble with this distinction).
- “Multiple terms with one basic meaning,” e.g., a long list of synonyms for “mixed models”.
Down with bureaucratic language, legalese and technical jargon!
*See rules #14 #18 (speaking plainly) in Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses
**The Effectiveness of Plain Language Proven by Data, 2020
***Kerwer, et al, How to Put It Plainly? , 2021.