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Book Reviews

Book Review: “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants” by Malcolm Gladwell

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Malcolm Gladwell had another hit book here. I wasn’t sure I wanted to read a bible story (spent too many years studying Bible when I was young). But Gladwell’s interesting angle on this simple Bible story got me interested. I listened to the audiobook spoken by Gladwell himself, which was simply delightful. He’s a real master story teller.

At first, I was confused by what the theme of the book was all about. OK. Goliath wasn’t as strong and formidable and David wasn’t really as disadvantaged as we were led to believe from the way Bible story was told. Then what’s the rest of book all about…

There are 3 parts to the book:
One the first part, Gladwell highlights the advantages of disadvantages and disadvantages of the advantages. Gladwell painstakingly told many stories including Vivek Ranadive’s Redwood City Basketball team who played full-court press due to lack of talents and won lots of games. David vs. Goliath. Was David really in a disadvantaged position or is it the other way around?

One the 2nd part, Gladwell touches on the theory of desirable difficulties. Are difficulties like dyslexic, losing parents in childhood desirable? He covered several stories about that.

One the last part, Gladwell drills into the limitation of power or legitimacy of power. California’s 3-strike law, Northern Ireland, and Andre Trocme’s stories were described and used for his arguments.

This is an encouraging book for those disadvantaged (dyslexic or others). You may want want to find a way to turn it into your advantage and bring down the seemingly favored competitor. For those in power (Goliath), you may want to find ways to legitimize your power and don’t abuse the power.

Overall, this is an excellent and interesting book that I highly recommend.

A short summary of the book is here:

Part I: The advantages of disadvantages (and the Disadvantages of Advantages)
1. Vivek Ranadive’s Rewoood City Basketball Team playing full-court press game against more talented teams and won most of the games.

2. Teresa DeBrito’s class size. Gladwell introduces the inverted U-shape curve for academic achievement vs. class size and parenting difficult vs. wealth. Too small the class size makes it hard to student to achieve academic excellence – difficult class discussion, and no diversity. Too much wealth makes parenting difficult too – hard to teach value of money, lose desire to excel. It’s a non-linear relationship.

3. Caroline Sacks:
The French Impressionists decided to have their own arts show instead competing for Salon, which does not value Impressionist. It paid to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond. Caroline Sacks joined Brown University to become a small fish in a big pond of excellent Biologists. She ended up dropping out of the science major. She suffers from “relative deprivation.” The big pond takes very bright students and demoralizes them. Same thing applies to affirmative action.

Part II: The theory of Desirable Difficulty
4. David Boies: A dyslexic who turned his disadvantage into an advantage using his listening skill to become a famous trial lawyer. People tend to practice “capitalization learning” (keep doing what you’re good at) instead of “compensation learning” (compensating for you’re poor at like listening instead of reading for a dyslexic.) Being disagreeable may help you innovate like IKEA’s founder Ingvar Kamprad. Being accustomed to failure helps, like Gary Cohn’s story of how he started in the options business by faking it in a taxi ride to the Airport with the key decision maker. Cohn became the president of Goldman Sachs.

5. Emil “Jay” Freireich: Jay was a brilliant physician who became a successful one taking care of childhood leukemia patients because of his “remote miss” as a child losing his father to suicide and a tough childhood growing up. Just like the Londoners during World War II, the “remote misses” who survived German’s bombing turned out to be tougher, more courageous, and more optimistic than the others. “The conquering of fear produces exhilaration.” In the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr.’s ally, Fred Shttlesworth, who encountered 3 remote consecutive remote misses who became more courageous each time.

6. Wyatt Walker: One of Martin Luther King Jr. right hand person, Wyatt Walker, used trickery to get a photo of a boy being attacked by the police dog and generated the momentum behind he civil rights movement getting bystanders to “join” the movement during commute time home in the afternoon. The story underlines how underdogs may resort to trickery to their advantage.

Part III: The Limit of Power:
7. Rosemary Lawlor. Gladwell told the story of North Ireland and how it became a sore point for England. By using the “principles of legitimacy,” namely, 1) people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice, 2) the law has to be predictable, 3) the authority has to be fair. “Getting criminals and insurgents to behave turns out be dependent on legitimacy as getting children to behave in the classroom.” The success story of police offer named Joanne Jaffe in Brownsville, NY in reducing incidences of robbery, reinforces the importance to establish the legitimacy of the authority.

8. Wilma Derksen:
Mike Reynolds, the father of Kimber Reynolds, started the 3-strike law campaign in California and won after losing her daughter to a couple of crystal-meth addicts with a long crime history. Did the 3-strike law help bring down the crime rate in California? Or is it similar to what British did in Northern Ireland? Gladwell discussed the inverted U-curve (diminished return). The arguments for the 3-strike law are: 1) raising the cost of committing a crime, 2) the extra year a criminal is behind bars is another year he can’t commit a crime. But they can be rebutted with 1) criminals without a stake in the society really didn’t have a cost to consider. 2) people don’t usually commit crime past a certain age in the mid 20’s. And the extra time puts a social toll on the family and the young children – the collateral damage. The magic number is 2% of the neighborhood goes to prison, the U-curve of the crime rate starts to reverse.

Wilma Derksen was a young mother, who lost her daughter Candace to a sex criminal but chose not to follow the path of losing their health, sanity, and their marriage if they allowed their daughter’s murder to consume them. She chose to forgive, understands the limitation of power and embrace the advantage of disadvantages.

9. Andre Trocme
Andre Trocme’s story is one with defiance and courage. In the time of German occupancy of France in 1940’s, he lived in Le Chambon, a village near Italy and Swiss border. As the “marginal and disadvantaged,” he took on hiding Jews from the government in defiance of the power/law because it’s in their nature after being persecuted for over a century due to their religion.

Book Reviews, Engineering, Geeky

Book Review: “Think Bayes” by Allen Downey

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I vaguely remember ever learned about Bayes’ Theorem in college. Until I read this book I never thought there are so many applications of Bayes’ Theorem in our daily life. The drug companies uses it to get FDA approvals on drugs. The food companies applies the theorem to “prove” certain foods are good for us. In a way, the theorem allows us to change our perception of certain events’ probability of occurring. I can imagine more applications than the ones he outlines in the book. By the way, the pdf format of this book can be freely downloaded here, thanks to the author’s generosity.

Because of this book and his Youtube videos, I got interested in re-learning Python as a practical/useful programming language. It opened my eyes to the wonderful world of Python and its ecosystem.

The book gets pretty technical fast after the first chapter which piqued my interest with his Cookie, M&M, and Monte Hall problems. At the end I don’t know if it’s really necessary to know all the various applications in prediction and simulation, but it could come in handy for people who work in the statistical field.

The key thing to remember is that Bayes Theorem gives a way to update or arrive at the posterior probability of a prior/known hypothesis, H, after learning some new piece of data. The equation is simple: P(H|D)=P(H)*P(D|H)/P(D)
As it turn out, the most difficult part is P(D) or the normalizing factor, which is the probability of seeing the data under any hypotheses at all.

Overall, all the concepts presented by the author make sense to me. I’m not sure I can actually implement and devise the models when the actual problem arrives. But at least I can recognize the Bayesian problem when I see one and know where to find help.

Chapter Summary:
1. Bayes’s Theorem was derived easily and discussed. He introduced the probability calculator of getting a heart attack.

2. Computational Statistics: The author provides a set of Python codes/tools to calculate the result quickly. I had to re-take a Python refresher course before getting any further. But the tools are powerful and help me understand the subject better. All the codes and downloadable from thinkbayes.com website. It took me a while to figure out Monte Hall’s problem – one of those paradox that’s hard to sink in.

3. Estimation: This chapter estimates the posterior probability upon rolling of a multi-face die (4-/6-/8-/12-/20-sides die) and successive rolling of dice (more data points changes the probability distribution), and probability of the number of locomotive given the observation of one locomotive number. This is when you really need to have the computer do the work for you. The intuitive part is that the more information you have, the better your estimation is going to be, as some data points would be ruled out. For example, finding 6 eliminates the 4-sided die.

4. More Estimation: In this chapter, the author covers the “biased” Euro coin problem. The interesting phenomenon is that the prior hypothesis makes little difference (provided you don’t rule things out with 0 probability), the posterior distribution will likely converge with more data points.

5. Odds and Addends: The author covers the “odds” form of the Bayesian Theorem, o(A|D)=o(A)*P(D/A)/P(D|B), which is probably easier to understand for most people. The Addends part of the chapter goes into getting the density and distribution functions.

6. Decision Analysis: Given a prior distribution function, what’s the best decision to make given some data. The author presented a Price Is Right scenario and solve the best price to bid for a show case showdown based the past data and best guess to adjust the bid. The PDF, Probability Density Function, is introduced here. Also the use of KDE (Kernel Density Estimation) is used to smooth PDF that fits the data. This is an interesting application of Bayes Theorem. The math is complicated and couldn’t be done without a computer. I guess it would be good to bring your computer to the Price Is Right game.

7. Prediction: Here the author presented a better way to predict the outcome of a playoff game score based on past data between two teams (Boston Bruin vs. Vancouver Canucks.) This should be no difference from how the gambling industry computes the odds before a big game. Just imagine all the gambling earning you could’ve made by mastering this chapter! I’m sure someone has applied the same idea/theory to the financial market like stocks, bonds and futures.

8. Observer Bias: This is another angle of predicting the outcome (like the wait time for the next train at a given time) taking into account of the observer bias.

9. Two Dimensions: Using the paintball example, the author applies the Bayesian framework to the two-dimensional problem. In addition, the joint distribution , marginal distribution, and conditional distribution. And you don’t think one dimensional Bayesian framework is confusing enough…

10. Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC): When the likelihood of any particular dataset is 1) very small, 2) expensive to compute, 3) not really what we want. We don’t care of about the likelihood of seeing the exact dataset we saw but any dataset like that.

11. Hypothesis Testing: The Bayes Factor, the ratio of likelihood of a new scenario to that of the baseline, can be used to test the likelihood of a particular hypothesis, e.g. fairness/cheat of an Euro coin. Bayes factor of 1~3 is barely worth mentioning, 3~10 is substantial, 10~30 strong, 30~100 very strong, >100 decisive.

12. Evidence: Test for the strength of evidence. “How strong is the evidence that Alice is better than Bob, given their SAT score?”

13. Simulation: Simulate the tumor growth rate based on prior growth rate and the data points of current tumor size, age and etc.

14. A Hierarchical Model: reflects the structure of the system, with causes at the top and effects at the bottom. Instead of solving the “forward” problem, we can reverse engineer the distribution of the parameters given the data. The Gaiger counter problem demonstrates the connection between causation and hierarchical modeling.

15. Dealing with Dimensions: This last chapter combines all of the lessons so far and applies to the “Belly Button Bacteria” prediction and simulation. This is a very difficult chapter to understand and probably requires the full understanding of the previous lessons.


Book Reviews, Self Development

Book Review: “The Startup of You” by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

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Consider yourself an entrepreneur and your career as a startup company. By developing your competitive advantage, formulating your plan to adapt, networking with others, taking advantage of breakout opportunity by taking intelligent risks, you will become a successful startup yourself, according to the book authors, who had successful startup experiences in themselves.

The authors gave many good tips like budgeting for networking, maintaining a separate identity from your job. At the end of the audiobook (bonus), the authors had a nice panel discussion between themselves and answered a few of my questions. When billionaires give you tips, you’d better listen. The only turn-offs I have are at times the author (Reid is the CEO of Linkedin) appears to be promoting LinkedIn. But overall, it’s a good read.

A quick summary:
1. All Humans are Entrepreneurs:
Why the startup of you? The world is changing, the amount of time you spend at any job is shrinking. We need to act like a entrepreneur, making decisions in an information-poor, time-compressed, resource-constrained environment. Use the backdrop of Detroit, the auto industry, the authors drilled into the points of keeping up with entrepreneur spirit. The “Permanent Beta” mind-set of never finish improving your own skill sets: all the chapters that follow.

2. Develop a competitive advantage:
You are selling your brainpower, skills and energy and doing so in the face of massive competition. Ask yourself, “A company hires me over other professionals because …” What are you offering that’s hard to come by and both rare and valuable? The three factors that influence your competitive advantage: your asset, aspiration and values, and market realities. More below:
Your Assets:
Soft: can’t directly trade for money, intangible contributors to career success: the knowledge and information, professional connections, and the trust you’ve built up, skills you have mastered; your reputation and professional brand; you strengths (things that come easily for you).
Hard: what you list on a balance sheet: cash in the bank, and etc.
Your Aspirations and Values:
Aspirations: your deepest wishes, ideas, goals and vision of future. Values: what’s important to you in life, be it knowledge, autonomy, money, integrity, power and so on.
The Market Reality:
Andreessen’s quote, ” Markets that don’t exist don’t care how smart you are.” You aren’t entitled to anything. All advantages are local; pick a hill that has less competition.

3. Plan to Adapt:
Do both listening to your heart and listing to the market. Be true to your values and vision, yet remain flexible enough to adapt. The author introduced the idea of ABZ planning:
Plan A: what you’re doing now – your current implementation of your competitive advantage.
Plan B: what you pivot to when you need to change either your goal or the route for getting there – generally in the same ballpark as Plan A.
Plan Z: your fall back position: your lifeboat. It’s what allows you to take on Plan A and B.
Prioritize learning: prioritize plans that offer the best chance at learning about yourself and the world. What will grow your soft asset the fastest and the most learning potential.
Learn by doing: actions, not plans, generate lessons that help you test your hypotheses against reality. I particularly like this idea of maintaining a reputation and public portfolio of work that’s not tied to your employer. Then you’ll have a professional identity that you can carry with you as you shift jobs. “The best Plan B is different but very much related to what you’re already doing.” Favor options that let you keep one foot planted while the other one swings to the new territory. Pivot into an adjacent niche.

4. It takes a Network:
“The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.” “I” vs. “We” is a false choice. It’s both. Think I^We (I to the power of “We”) Like dating, have a long-term perspective. See the world from that person’s perspective. Also think how you can help and collaborate with the other person first. Think of it like ballroom dancing – move in unison, perhaps gently guiding or following. Ask “what’s in it for us?” instead of “What’s in it for me?”
Two types of relationships:
1) Professional allies: someone you consult regularly for advice, proactively share and collaborate on opportunities together, talk up/promote to other friends. A relationship that goes from being an exchange partnership to being a true alliance.
2) Weak ties and acquaintances: exposed to more information or job listings you haven’t seen – valuable in the breadth and reach of your network. Here the authors dived in the the LinkedIn functions – a bit of self promoting. Why not? It works.
How to strengthen the network: 1) offer to help. 2) gifts like relevant information and articles, introductions, and etc. 3) let yourself be helped. 4) be a bridge. 5) set up an “interesting people” fund to take people out for meals,
Navigate status dynamic when dealing with powerful people: don’t make them look bad. Actively maintain the relationships you value and consciously let fade those you do not.

5. Pursue Breakout Opportunities:
Opportunities are like the snap to the quarterback in football. Careers, like start-ups, are punctuated with breakouts. Curiosity about industries, people, and jobs will make you alert to professional opportunities. Join information groups and associations as possible. Do the hustle and be resourceful. Be resilient: when the naysayers are laud, turn up the music (Pandora). Keeping your options open is frequently more of a risk than committing to a plan of action. “Making a decision reduces opportunities in the short run, but increases opportunities in the long run.”

6. Take Intelligent Risks: “Risk” in career context is the downside consequences from a given action or decision. Pursue opportunities where other mis-perceive the risk (like Warren Buffett) – lower risk than your peers think, but are still high-reward. Short-term risk increases long-term stability. The volatility paradox: small fires prevent the big burn. Make yourself resilient to the shocks by pursuing those opportunities with some volatility baked in. Non-volatile environment give only an illusion of stability – high chance of a “black swan.” “The only long term answer to risk is resilience.”

7. Who You Know is What You Know:
“How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose.” “What will get you somewhere is being able to access the information you need, when you need it.” Your network is an indispensable source of intelligence. They offer personalized, contextualized advice, and filter information you get from other sources. Progression of literacy of reading/writing in the old days, to now search literacy and “network literacy” (knowing how to conceptualize, access, and benefit from the information flowing through your social network. Pull intelligence from your network by posing questions to the entire network or targeted individuals who are domain experts, who know you well, or just really smart people.
Asking good questions: 1) converse, don’t interrogate, 2) adjust the lens (narrowing the scope), 3) frame and prime (e.g. top 3 things did you NOT get to do and wish you did?), 4) follow up and probe. 5) push interesting information out to your network.

Book Reviews, Gardening

Book Review: “The Botany of Desire” by Michael Pollan

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All these time I thought I was the center of the universe for those plants in my garden, when in fact I was being manipulated by them to propagate their genes, no different than the bees or insects which pollinate them. Michael Pollan in this book provides the perspectives from the plants’ perspective. The author offers very good impelling stories for 4 specific plants: apples, tulips, marijuana (cannabis) and potato. In apples, we sought out sweetness and in tulips we saw beauty, and marijuana we crave for intoxication, and in potato we chose to control.

The DVD version like the book version is quite enjoyable. Seeing the pictures is worth a thousand words in the book. The audiobook makes my commute a breeze.

A quick summary here:

1. Apples: Sweetness
In pursuit of sweetness (hard to come by in the early days), people planted apples to make hard cider (fermented into alcohol) as a “safe” drink instead of then contaminated water. The story of Johnny Appleseed (Chapman) and how this “bum” planted and sold apple trees grown from seeds in the 19th century was interesting. Also the evolution of Apples from its origin in Kazakhstan sounded like a heroic journey. As a lover of apples, I found the Apple story intriguing. So many varieties of Apples (mostly not sweet) were found in its origin and yet we mostly consume a small subset of the Apple species like my favorites: Fuji and Golden Delicious. The lack of genetic diversity was due to the fact that modern apples are mostly grafted because apples don’t grow true from seeds (What’s wrong with Johnny Appleseed?).

2. Tulips: Beauty
I found it hard to believe that until the recent century, flowers were not appreciated, considered pointless. This is probably limited to Western culture. The author went into great details of the Tulips Maniac in Holland in 1635. Interesting tidbits: the highest priced, exotic tulip during the Tulip Maniac was infected with virus such that it gave out a strange color pattern. Another one: 200 million years ago, there were no flowers. The advent of flower creates an interest for the pollinators, which upon being gratified, will do the leg work for the plants. How convenient is the evolution.

3. Marijuana (Cannabis): Intoxication. I got to learn about the ambivalence of law in dealing with legality of using marijuana, especially in Holland. I also learned about the differences between Indica and Sativa – how the two species produces different properties of physchoativity, in human’s quest to grow marijuana indoors due to the unfavorable law. And the author’s encounter with the local police chief while growing a marijuana plant in the back was hilarious. And the political/legal pendulum of using marijuana added some spice to the evolution of this plant in our society. In most of the human history, psychoactive drug/plants (THC in marijuana) play an important role especially in arts, music, literature and even religion, as we often hear about celebrities’ abuse of drug and overdose. I found it fascination that what marijuana does chemically is to allow us to forget, especially the painful experience. I guess it’s a form of numbing that makes us less stressed, hence happier.

4. Potato: Control
In this section, the author touches on genetic engineering like the GMO (trade name: New Leaf) slips of Russet Potato that’s capable of producing a natural BT that kill the potato beetle. Historically, the rise of potato due to its ease of planting brought prosperity to Ireland in 18th century. Then the famine as a result of one fungi that kill off the entire mono-culture potato crop within a week was rather dramatic underling author’s point – the danger of mono-culture for all crops. Since McDonald’s uses only the Russet potatoes to make their famous French Fries, the risk of growing this type of potato are high for pest invasion and their pesticide resistance. We can all learn from the original South Americans who domesticated potatoes planted multiple kinds of potatoes – biodiversity – for disease and pest control.

Book Reviews

Book Review: “Parenting Without Power Struggles: Raising Joyful, Resilient Kids While Staying Cool, Calm, and Connected” by Susan Stiffelman

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arm wrestle final
Be the captain of chip in your relationship with your children. There are excellent Question and Suggestion sections at the end of each chapter that answered many of my questions. The 6 stages of attachments are very interesting and are the fuel for our connection to our kids. I also come to appreciate the importance of the “village” attachments in raising a child. There are many other wonderful ideas on approaching problems of anxiety, depression, anger, and etc. It’s very nicely done and a must read for parents.

1. How to be the captain of the ship through calm and stormy seas: Who’s in charge. Ask yourself the 4 questions about your belief or thought that precipitates your upset: 1. Is it true? 2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? How do you feel (or react) when you think that thought? 4. Who would you be without that thought? Our children want and need to feel dependent on us like in a blackout or disaster. The wonderful advises are: a. Focus on loosening your need for your child to behave properly so that you can feel you’re a good parent. b. Explore the meaning you’re assigning to your child’s problematic behavior. C. Let go of the drama and threats that simply emphasize how out of control you’ve become. d. Come alongside your child, rather than at him, so he feels you’re his ally and advocate. e. Create a plan and stick to it with quiet authority, even at the cost of having your child dislike you. f. Love your child in the way he most needs it: by being the calm confident Captain of the ship as your child navigates the sometimes rough waters of growing up.

2. Attachment and Connection: All relationships including those between the child and parents involve the six stages of attachment by Gordon Neufeld: 1) proximity (through touch, contact, and closeness), 2) Sameness (mimicking mannerism), 3) Belonging or Royalty (“My Mommy!”), 4) Significance (feeling being treasured), 5) Love, 6) Being Known (confide in parents). Be cautious that your kid’s peer attachment with his/her friends are not reliable and mostly conditional.

3. How to help your kids have healthy relationship with the members of their village. Strengthen the attachments with teachers, and other adults of the family, neighborhood/community and friends. Do the same by putting energy in the lives of other children creates a bond that benefits all.

4. Creating an unshakable connection with your kids: Kids want to be able to tell us the truth. Children’s “Neck up and neck down” communication style – be the translator to help them express what they’re feeling (neck down). Find ways to build connections.

5. Helping kids deal with frustration: Frustration fuels aggression. “Our ability to live joyful and successful lives depends on our ability to adapt.” Understand the 5 stages of grief: DABDA (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance). Move your child toward adapting by helping her find her tears.

6. Handling Resistance, anger, whining, meltdowns, and aggression: Use Act I (ask questions for the child to offload his/her upset and to keep the child talking). Act II (Ask permission to offer advises). Get the three yeses from the child by asking if the correct feelings were spoken. “If whining is the answer, what’s the question” – explore the reasons why the child whines or interrupts.

7. How to get kids to cooperate: The need for close and secure attachment is one of the strongest drive that humans have. Kids are inclined to do what you ask when they feel close to you and when you request from a sense of connectedness. There are times when a child’s refusal to cooperate is an indication of unspoken tension in the household, and his resistance is his attempt to exert even a little power within the context of feeling powerless. Give direction from connection (being interested in what they’re doing). Eye contact (“Eye on me” before asking to comply). Requesting into the yes (Get the child to nod and say yeses). Catch them being helpful. Ask “What would she have to be feeling to behave this way?” Use a big fat period.

8. Celebrate the child you’ve got: Accept and see your kids for the remarkable human beings they are.

9. Every child’s a genius: a “genius” as defined as “to give birth” or “to be zestful or joyous.” ADD can be explained by “hunter” vs. “farmer” traits. Having ADD is like being a hunter in a farmer’s world.

10. How to help kids avoid depression and anxiety – and be genuinely happy: When the parent-child relationship is fragile, the prospect of turning to Mom and Dad can seem impossible to a troubled youngster. To deal with anxiety, imagine that “Little Fear Guy” sits on their shoulder and is dedicated to their safety. Distinguish between “shapeless” fear (often attributed to modeled fear from a parent) and “specific” fear. Practice the “ABC” thinking: A (actual events), B (beliefs we construct about the event), C (the consequence of our having the beliefs). “When a thought shows up that has the power to make us sad or angry or anxious, we DON’T have to believe it.”

11. Being present and mindful, and unwinding without electricity: Turn off the gadgets and be present. Kids are like a gift that continues to unwrap itself. Play the suggested games in the book with your kids.

12. Empowering your kids to create their best lives: Five qualities that help youngsters move toward adulthood with the resources needed to find their passion, manage the obstacles that may get in their way, and persevere to making their dreams come true: self-respect, problem-solving, visioning, and gratitude.

13. Live like your kids are watching – because they are: The cameras are always rolling. When we make mistakes, the thing to do is to apologize sincerely, and not justify or blame someone else for making us do.