I came across a senior professor in Statistics in the hall way. He noticed that I moved my office.

I told him that the new office has a window, and my research productivity increased by 5 times.

He then said:”Wonderful, they should have installed 2 windows for you.”

Hilarious!

I’m doing some literature review for a paper of mine. I came across the following paper:

The Business Executive: The Psychodynamics of a Social Role

By: William E. Henry

The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 54, No. 4, Industrial Sociology (Jan., 1949), pp. 286-291.

(http://www.jstor.org/stable/2770647)

It was written in 1949, and talks about the common characteristics of successful business executives. Typically I do not find these descriptive papers useful, but it is interesting to see how people in 1949 perceive what executives should do to be successful.

The paper listed the following personality patterns that are common for success:

Achievement Desires

Mobility Drive

Idea of Authority

Ability to Organize Unstructured Situations

Decisiveness

Strong Self-Structure

Apprehension and the Fear of Failure

Activity and Aggression

Strong Reality Orientation

Different Interpersonal Relations with respect to Superiors and Subordinates

Broken Tie with his own Parents

Dependency Feelings and Concentration Upon Self

That was a long list, if you check these on people we know, say Steven Jobs, you would probably be amazed how accurate these items can “predict” his success. I’m constantly suspicious of this type of work because they obviously miss the sample of failed cases. It could be the case that people who share these traits fail more, but due to the sample selection problem, we cannot observe them. What if some other factors are driving the success of these people, and they just learned to behave in this way (i.e., behaving in this way does not produce success.)?

This brings back to the argument of my paper: when people assume social roles, they behave according to the perceived traits of these roles. In many situations, the list of characteristics is a result of being successful, not a source of it.

香港是什么都可以做，除了法律不允许的；
新加坡是什么都不能做，除了法律允许的；
台湾是什么都可以做，包括法律不允许的；
大陆是什么都不能做，包括法律允许 的。

I wrote about Marshmallow experiment a while ago.

Now here is a video:

I wonder how this test can pass the human-subject approval. For sure, these kids (except the little girl who ate it immediately) will be harmed and haunted for the life…

I guess there is no point of not buying it now.

This, however, is related to another psychological bias: people compare options in terms of gains/losses with respect to a reference point, not with respect to wealth. I’m happy to buy the iphone because I learned it is a good bargain in HK, not because I believed it delivers that much utility to me (although probably it will).

I think this figure should be on every HK iphone seller’s ad, I bet the effectiveness would give the highest ROI.

I’m here in Singapore for a 2-week summer institute of behavioral economics/finance. Vince Crawford, Matthew Rabin, Ted O’Donoghue and Terry Odean are the speakers.

Some keywords that surface frequently in the discussions are “bounded rationality”, “market efficiency”, “human bias”, “anomalies” etc.

This reminds me of a joke:
An economics professor and a student were strolling through the campus.
“Look,” the student cried, “there’s a $100 bill on the ground!”
“No, you are mistaken,” the professor replied. “That cannot be. If there were actually a $100 bill, someone would have picked it up.”

That is probably the most famous joke about economists. The professor is certainly a believer of Market Efficiency.

Next watch the video:

What makes all passers-by to ignore the wallet? Are lay-people suddenly believers of market efficiency?

XX and WW are old enough for me to conduct scientific research on them now.

Today I did the famous marshmallow experiment: I gave them each a piece of gummy bear vitamin in the morning, and I told them if they can defer eating the gummy bear till noon, I’ll give one more piece.

According to the theory, kids with good impulse control would defer the consumption.� They generally show good academic performance in a later stage of their lives.� So I’m eager to see how my kids perform in this test.

To my delight, both kids chose to wait.� To examine whether their actions are consistent with their choices, I put the gummy bears on the table and said, I’ll leave them here, and you can take them any time you want, at noon, if I still see them, I’ll put one more for each of you.

Then XX immediately said: “Dad, I change my mind, I’m going to eat it now.” Hmm, that’s not what I expected, XX is quite smart and not bad in self control, if one of them would choose immediate consumption, she should not be the one.� She then said:”If I leave it here, mommy can eat it secretly. WW can also steal it.” Well, from my experience, these are indeed not impossible scenarios.� When I think about XX’s decision making process, I guess she outdid those kids with self-control, she could take potential risks into her consideration and make corresponding decisions.� Given the existence of the risks, it is indeed her best strategy to eat the gummy bear immediately. Getting one bird in the hand is indeed better than having two in the bush!

First letter was from our university president, explaining that in light of the recent financial crisis, we have to follow the new budget plan and reduce the salary by 5.4%.

Second letter was from my daughter’s school, explaining that in light of the recent financial crisis, they have to follow the new budget plan and increase the tuition by 5%.

What an ironic world.

Before tweaking MySQL: it used 5% of the CPU and 250MB of the memory.

After tweaking, it uses 94.3% of the CPU and 2.33GB of the memory.

I could increase the memory use even more if I needed it.

Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen (also spelled as Qian Xuesen) passed away yesterday.

To me, he is as legendary as John Nash. A movie based on his life would also be highly appropriate named “A Beautiful Mind”.

Interestingly, both Nash and Tsien were affiliated with MIT.� It was 2008 when I last visited Hang Zhou, the hometown of Tsien, I visited the memorial museum (called Qian King Temple) dedicated to Tsien’s ancestor Qian Liu.� I found Tsien’s Certificate of Master of Science, conferred in December, 1936.� The design hasn’t changed a bit for so many years.� It looks exactly the same as my certificate which I got in 2006, almost 70 years after Tsien got his. I cannot express how proud I was while looking at that certificate.

Tsien is a very typical Chinese scientist, smart, hard-working and humble. He kept a very low profile despite his great achievements.�� Great achievements comes with great social responsibility, he sets a great example for anyone who cares to call himself/herself a scientist.