Books | Designing Better Futures

Checklists, hedge funds and human behaviour

By nick@gogerty.com, on January 28th, 2010%

Checklists are not sexy, but their results are. I just finished the Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. I am sold and you should be as well. Checklists save lives, make money and make life less stressful.

Outperformance seems to be associated with repeat process and efficient group communication. Checklists allow for managing individual and team processes for better outcomes. The book gives →…read more

The book Volatility Trading has lessons about risk for many

By ngogerty, on December 30th, 2009%

Volatility Trading is a good tool for learning about the ins and out of volatility. Volatility Trading is accessible and informative in the same style as Ernest Chan's book, Quantitative Trading.

Both Quantitative Trading and Volatility Trading offer tutorials from helpful practitioner teachers. There is a mix of quantified academic rigor in the form of teaching about the tools of the →…read more

Twitter is glance

By nick@gogerty.com, on December 19th, 2009%

Twitter? Here is a video articulating in a funny way that Twitter has not only jumped the shark, but jumped the Fail Whale as well.

I would pose a counter argument to the Twitter fail whale, but first one has to understand what twitter is and what it does.

Twitter is the technical expression →…read more

TED junkie and progress for the Bottom of the Pyramid

By ngogerty, on December 10th, 2009%

There is a great book about growing economies and finding new markets by serving the poor. It is called the Bottom of the Pyramid. I read and reviewed it in 2006 and was hooked.

The thesis is that the poorest people are a huge market and they need services and will pay for them. People who live on less then $10 →…read more

Thinking in Prime Numbers

By ngogerty, on December 10th, 2009%

Visualizing relationships, be they mathematical, cultural or physical is a powerful skill. Here is a great site about an interesting quest for visualizing prime numbers.

I am a big fan of Phi, the Golden Ratio. One of the best books on this is Mario Livio's The Golden Ratio. Livio is a serious mathematician, historian and story teller who brings alive →…read more

Shit book hints at one key to human development

By ngogerty, on October 24th, 2009%

Excreta, turds, poo, shit, etc. are all terms for something that induces disgust in most. This response is innate and indeed wired into use at a visceral level and a key to survival.

All we need to know about shit, is that we want to be away from it. Sadly many can't get away from it, they end →…read more

A nutritious way to learn about economics & politics.

By ngogerty, on September 19th, 2009%

The best way to invest is to arm oneself with information
and perspective. Sadly many make the mistake of developing the wrong taste for
financial information, preferring junk food to more quality fare. True financial acumen comes from cultivating a
proper palate for economic information.

Being a financial information connoisseur isn’t about being
a snob or an effete aesthete as many contemporary observers would →…read more

Anthropology & Economics: Economics you won't see on CNBC

By ngogerty, on August 18th, 2009%

Political economy is the study of the macro functional outcome of how our species organizes itself in its various groupings. It is easy in the CNBC whizbang world to get caught up in bombastic posturing and the banalities of some host with a suit and an opinion trying to get you to watch for just one extra 30 second ad.

Economics →…read more

Flaw of Averages a useful book and tool

By ngogerty, on August 9th, 2009%

Sam Savage's latest offering Flaw of Averages is a useful book and set of thought tools he calls mindles. If you have a PHd in statistics or mathematics, your job or role rarely begins and ends with you. Often your models will need to be explained to people. More importantly the places where the models could or would go wrong need →…read more

Taking things for Granted

By nick@gogerty.com, on August 4th, 2009%

I have often referred to a type of financial risk as "oxygen" risk. Oxygen risk is anything so common and familiar that it is taken for granted. In that vein I offer something to watch that is both interesting and important, a video about clean water technology. Most of the readers of this blog will take little interest in this, but →…read more

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