Last week, Russ Roberts (of ever excellent Econtalk) wrote a blog post about economics and engineering. I was surprised by how much I disagreed, though not in the way you might expect.  His point: looking at the economy isn’t anything like an engineering problem. The economy is complex and emergent while... [Read More]

The deluge of end-of-year related media seems to take two forms: recaps of the past year and predictions for the future. (Interestingly, there aren’t a lot of year-end reports along the lines of ‘and here’s what I’m doing RIGHT NOW’) Many predictions involve technology: will 2014 be the year of... [Read More]

Today a friend suggested that I type “why” into Matlab. You should too. Not only had I never tried it, but it never crossed my mind that it was something that one should try.  I’ve never wondered “what happens when I type ‘why’ in Matlab?” That’s the value of person-to-person... [Read More]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IGJ2jMZ-gaI What would somebody from 1863 think if you told them that in the future, we would think nothing of watching a moving image of  a real man actually pouring a gallon of a metal more precious than gold down an ant hill without getting up from our desks? He... [Read More]

I wrote a post on the lab blog about what I see as the Documentation Dilemma. How much time should you spend making sure every piece of your work is individually useful vs. pushing on to a final product?