Reading 2017

Books

 

0. Curse of Cash by Kenneth Rogoff

Why: The authors premise is that paper currency is the root cause of many evils and advanced country governments should do away with it as much as possible and limit currency to smaller denomination and coins. The book is divided into three sections. the first section talks about the evolution of paper currency, currency circulation, currency demand in underground economy, the concept of seignorage and the need to do away with most of the paper currency. The second section discusses in detail the idea of negative interest rates. The third section talks about the global implications to phasing out paper currency and how the governments will look at digital currencies and he doesn’t have good news for Crypto currency lovers.

Quoting from the book "With all due respect to promising security advances offered by public ledger technology and the ingenious algorithms embodied in some of the new “currencies,” the view that Bitcoin— or any other cryptocurrency— is going to replace the dollar anytime soon is quite naive. As currency innovators have learned over the millennia, it is hard to stay on top of the government indefinitely in a game where the latter can keep adjusting the rules until it wins. If the private sector comes up with a much better way of doing things, the government will eventually adapt and regulate as necessary to eventually win out. Even if (for argument’s sake), cryptocurrency technology proved unstoppable, the winner (say, Bitcoin 3.0) would only end up being a precursor to a government controlled “Bencoin” (after Benjamin Franklin, who now adorns the US $100 bill)."

I would say a provoking book, and people are free to agree or disgaree with Mr Rogoff. Afterall, he has been the Chief Economist of the IMF. He also happens to be a Chess Grandmaster :-)

1. 'When Breath Becomes Air' by Paul Kalanithi
Why:This book is the most moving book I have read . :-( 

I know many won't get through this book.It impacts you at different levels . The prose is just beautiful . For me , It just reminds us how vulnerable we are and helps appreciate better, what(ever) we have .

2. The Phoenix Project - A Novel about IT, Devops, and helping Your Business Win - by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford

Why: Wanted a non-technical read on DevOps. 

3. 'A Man for All Markets' by Edward O Thorp

Why: If you are interested in logical thinking and if you want to be rational in an irrational world , if you are interested in investing and want to learn from a person who not only had his skin in the game , but was also extremely successful in wealth generation, do read this book.

4. The Little Book that beats the market by Joel Greenblatt

Why: It is the book on value investing and a must read for any value investor

5. " The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy " by sharon bertsch mcgrayne

Why:This book provides an excellent introduction to the history behind the evolution of Bayes Theorem. People's struggles to just use the theory, the opposition it had to face, the famous personalities, prominent role played by Bayes in cracking the Enigma code, for e.g. and lot such information is available in the book. We understand how much opposition it had to undergo before reaching a position of pre-eminence that it enjoys today. 

This is how the book ends "Talking of religion, I am reminded of a strip of cartoons about Bayesians that appeared some time ago. They showed a series of monks. One was looking lost, one was dressed as a soldier, one was holding a guide book and one had his tongue stuck out. They were, respectively, a vague prior, a uniform prior, an informative prior and, of course, an improper prior ..." :-)

6. Tell me the odds - A 15 page introduction to Bayes Theorem

Why: Because i wanted to brush up on Bayes and found this book to be good and more importantly free on Amazon.

7. The Lessons of History by Will Durant

Why: Good knowledge of history is very important for good decision making. This is a condensed work from the authors books and is eminently readable. The kind of book that if you start underlining the important paragraphs, you end up doing it for the whole book. i would call this one of the most important books read in recent times.

8. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by by Alexander Osterwalder (Author),‎ Yves Pigneur (Author)

Why: I was given this book when i worked on a business model for a hackathon. I read the book , found it extremely useful and used it in my presentation. It covers everything about a business model that you have to know of. May be this needs a separate blog post :-)

Books Started and planned to be finished in 2018 ( Hopefully)

1. The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science (Hardcover) by Marcus du Sautoy
2. The Island of Knowledge by Marcelo Gleiser
3. The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor by Howard Marks
4. Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio

Articles

1        

2  1.Scientists, Stop Thinking Explaining Science Will Fix Things http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...

An interesting conversation on how to communicate science to the so called non-scientific people. conversations on this can be found here - https://www.facebook.com/lalgudi/po...

2. Simple math is why Elon Musk’s companies keep doing what others don’t even consider possible

For me the key take aways are realizing the 'limits of incremental innovations' and the need to go back to the basics to bring newer perspectives to the problems that we face and not being constrained by the status-quo.

And this article starts with #Feynman, "Feynman didn’t mean all human knowledge must be distilled into an introductory college course. His point was that we need to build our grasp of science and technology from the ground up if we are to master it, not to mention reimagine how it works."

3. A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World

Inspiring story of a person who took to mathematics quite late and famous for his proof of rota conjecture. at the age of 34, he now is a member of the IAS Princeton, New Jersey.

He is also a fields medal contender.

A poor maths test at elementary school that made him lose interest in maths and try his hand at poetry, a failed attempt which made him look at journalism as a career and how a chance meeting with a 1970 fields medal winner from Japan changed his life for ever is well narrated.

The more interesting part is the comments section where a reader identified a mistake in the article. :-)

4. After 100 Years of Debate, Hitting Absolute Zero Has Been Declared Mathematically Impossible http://www.sciencealert.com/after-a...

Cooling to absolute zero mathematically impossible. Third law of #Thermodynamics on firm footing now.

When i read in school that diamond burns at 690 C, my question was whether we will get diamond if we cool carbon to -690 C. The answer was a No and that reaching colder temperatures wasn't easy. It was only later that i learnt the concept of absolute zero.

5.Why religion is not going away and science will not destroy it https://aeon.co/ideas/why-religion-...

"Religion is not going away any time soon, and science will not destroy it. If anything, it is science that is subject to increasing threats to its authority and social legitimacy. Given this, science needs all the friends it can get. Its advocates would be well advised to stop fabricating an enemy out of religion, or insisting that the only path to a secure future lies in a marriage of science and secularism."

6. The FBI’s Hunt for Two Missing Piglets Reveals the Federal Cover-Up of Barbaric Factory Farms https://theintercept.com/2017/10/05...

The hypocrisy of treating certain animals as pets and certain other animals as food and the ill treatment meted out to intelligent animals.

Warning: Article contains images that are disturbing, but i would still suggest you read to understand the perils of industrial farming of animals.

7. DeepMind’s AlphaZero crushes chess https://chess24.com/en/read/news/de...

“The DeepMind team had managed to prove that a generic version of their algorithm, with no specific knowledge other than the rules of the game, could train itself for four hours at chess, two hours in shogi (Japanese chess) or eight hours in Go and then beat the reigning computer champions – i.e. the strongest known players of those games. In chess it wasn’t just a beating, but sheer demolition.”

8. Seeking the Lost Art of Growing Old with Intention https://www.outsideonline.com/22678...

The story of Bernd Heinrich who is 77 years old and the author of 21 books.

This paragraph should provide an idea about the person "When I began adding up Bernd’s septuagenarian streak, I realized that here was a rare man—a throwback. We live in an age that affords little time and space for communing with nature. We’re busy. Our days are fragmented. But Bernd has dug in his heels against this collective drift. He has recognized where he wants to be in old age and settled in, with purpose.".

Books referred to or went back for selective reading

• .     Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• .     Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
•       Bharathiar Kavidaigal
•      Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance