Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips As much as we might wish otherwise, reality applies to us, too. I was recently speaking with a group of people age 13 to 60. My question was: How far back can you remember? The near-unanimous answer was, “age three.” Some people could vaguely remember some things that happened when they were [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips Contrary to the Lake Wobegon Effect, the average fill-in-the-blank-noun-for-a-person is average. Something I recently realized: The average fill-in-the-blank-noun-for-a-person is average. Here are some examples: The average doctor is average The average teacher is average The average writer is average The average engineer is average and so on. This all contradicts the Lake [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips Organizations tend to highlight their differences. The differences set them apart in the marketplace. Concentrating on the differences also can dim thinking. Perhaps it is good enough to merely be good enough. In my experience, organizations tend to highlight what makes them different from all other organizations. They concentrate on the differences. [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips Quick, read the following and agree or disagree: Smart people are wrong more often than stupid people. I believe the above is true. It seems that smart people read, study, think, and propose ideas more often than stupid people. Stupid people seem to sit around and choose-your-own-stupid-activity (e.g. watch TV, surf the [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips The digital devices we have can dominate our lives. That still doesn’t change a simple fact – this is an analog world inhabited by analog people. We live in a digital world. Cell phones, Internet, digital cameras, digital video camcorders – all digital. At its heart, the digital world comprises only two [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips I had an enjoyable evening yesterday. My son was working on a programming project for a freshman-level computer science class (college). I – after being asked – jumped into the problem. Several observations. (1) Computer science professors aren’t any better at creating meaningful programming assignments than they were 30 years ago. (2) [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips In part 1 of this post, I covered the mathematics and truth table of implication. Implication shows that If I accept something that I know is FALSE, I can prove anything else that I know is FALSE For example, if I accept that “1=2″, I can prove that “2=3″. I know that [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips This is dangerous – I am splitting a blog post into two parts. Hang in there with me. People are not always logical. That bothers logical engineers like me to no end. There is a mathematical and logical method to prove the non-logical behavior of people. That math helps me understand the [...]

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