3-phase electricity generation involving rotor and stator could be very difficult to understand for non-electrical person. But it helps those who has some background. The various kinds of power generators could be interesting; I never knew the different kinds of nuclear reactors (pressured water (PWR) and Boiling Water (BWR)). The combustion power generator using the jet engine technology and its variant – combined-cycle power plants – were news to me. The various kinds of circuit breakers (oild, gas, vacuum, and air) and recloser used in a substation are neat. Some day I may be able to recognize one when I see one.

On the consumption side, the author discussed reactive (like Motor) vs. real power (resistor) and the use of the capacitor to increase the power factor. This was in a way very similar to the low-voltage power distribution on circuit boards.

The author went into great lengths on the US power grid systems and the load balancing vs. rotor angle. Informative but not very interesting. I skipped most of this chapter.

Personal safety chapter explains the equipotential zone and how to work safely with high voltage wires. I admire those who work the high voltage as a simple mistake could be fatal.

The following was written by a reviewer named “M McDonald” in Amazon. I thought he did such a great job of summarizing the book, I couldn’t do a better job than copying it here and giving him the credit:

The book focuses on describing how to crowds are creating new sources of value than the specific ways to tap into that value. Chapters 1 through 5, the first half of the book, concentrates on providing examples of the crowd sourcing phenomenon. The second half focuses down on the impact of crowds to economic and business organization.

Chapter 1: The Rise of the Amateur – discusses the shifting balance between individuals with deep expertise and communities of interest. These differences and the increasing amateur access to information and collaboration are changing the playing field in multiple disciplines for the better.

Chapter 2: From So Simple a Beginning – traces the rise of crowd sourcing back to the open source software movement. Howe details the early history of open source software, an interesting tale, as well as its basic principles of self responsibility, community contribution, and breaking large problems into small units. Howe describes the start of Wikipedia, SETI and the USPTO’s use of open software approaches in the chapter.

Chapter 3: Faster, Cheaper, Smarter, Easier – looks at the results that come from employing diversity and crowds to solve complex problems. Examples here range from desktop publishing, viral video, and music. In each case, the shift from centralized to distributed production results in the transformation of markets and the creation of new opportunities.

Chapter 4: The Rise and Fall of the Firm – puts together the principles of the first three chapters and describes their collective impact on modern business and market structures. Howe uses readily accessible examples, like CincyMoms, to illustrate how open access; amateur interest and aggregating intelligence upset traditional markets and organizations. This chapter is well researched and may be the best of the book as it bridges between academic studies (Benkler’s “The Wealth of Networks’) with real life examples.

Chapter 5: The Most Universal Quality – discusses the role of diversity and the power of crowds to aggregate diversity to match or out perform experts in many different situations. This chapter is the most like the Wisdom of Crowds as Howe explains both socially and mathematically how a crowd of amateurs can be more accurate than an individual expert.

Chapter 6: What the Crowd Knows is an extension of Chapter 5 and concentrates on the channeling of crowd wisdom into collective wisdom through prediction markets and other types of solutions. The chapter also introduces the idea of Marketocracy as a means to find talent in a crowd based on their results rather than their resumes.

Chapter 7: What the Crowd Creates focuses on the creative aspects of communities that require a different set of solutions to the aggregation of collective intelligence. These chapter discuses the notion of user-generated content and its dynamics based on tools, incentives, rewards, and ownership. It dives deep into the operation of iStock as an example of a company that harnesses the creations of a community.

Chapter 8: What the Crowd Thinks recognized the power of personal expression in terms of participatory decision making, reviews and visibility. Howe points out that about 10% of a community provides their opinions and views, setting the tone for the overall community. However those opinions operate as a significant filter for the community. BTW, Howe points out that Amazon reviews are an example of this – so welcome to the crowd. This chapter focuses on phenomenon such as American Idol and Digg as illustrations of crowd opinions.

Chapter 9: What the Crowd Funds is a short chapter that discusses the application of crowd sourcing principles to finance with applications such as peer-to-peer lending, micro-lending and Barak Obama’s appeal to large numbers of small individual donors.

Chapter 10: Tomorrow’s Crowd highlights the rise of the digital native and the fact that people growing up today expect to work more collaboratively than their parents. This chapter explores how this next generation works, multitasks and collaborates. These traits are largely explained through changes in the media industry, which makes sense since digital natives are currently the target audience in that market. It’s just a matter of time before they are the target audience in every market.

Chapter 11: Conclusion – the rules of Crowdsourcing summarizes the book, wrapping its ideas into a few simple and powerful rules:

1. Pick the right model from among collective intelligence, creation, voting, or funding.
2. Pick the right crowd from the participants to the people who will influence and usher the crowd.
3. Offer the right incentives to the crowd that are often expressed in recognition rather just money.
4. Keep the pink slips in the drawer – crowdsourcing is not outsourcing
5. The dumbness of crowds, or the benevolent dictator principle – crowds need leaders who influence
6. Keep it simple, break it down – give the crowd something each individual can work on, yet can aggregate into something great.
7. Remember Sturgeon’s Law – 90% of what is created is crap so you will need to allow the crowd to separate the cream from the crap
8. Remember the 10 percent, the antidote to Sturgeon’s law – related to #7 that the crow can do the sorting in a democratic and open forum better than the experts.
9. The community is always right
10. Ask not what the crowd can do for you, but what you can do for the crowd – a crowd forms and is most effective when it sis working on something it wants.

Key concepts:
Regression to the mean: the big hits from Hollywood may be have been more luck than talents. Good luck in the beginning is better than bad luck in the beginning.

Monte Hall’s problem: The winning probability of switching to the unopened door of “Let’s make a deal” game is higher than not.

Applying multiplication vs. sum of individual probabilities. The availability bias causes us to overestimate probabilities of events associated with memorable or vivid occurrences.

Gerolamo Cardano’s sample space: including sequence of events like having 1 or 2 daughters for a set of fraternal twins. Interesting story about Gerolamo Cardano; how he went from rag (due to his despite for physicians) to riches (a famous physician and gambler). His demise and death at 75 was caused by his own son, trading up to a torturer job. His work (book on “Game of Chance”) on probability was not discovered until 100+ years after his death.

Pascal and his Pascal Wager and Pascal Triangle. Very informative description of calculating the sample space for the lotto.

The conditional probability: Author’s HIV test experience, athletes’ doping cases. Statistics used in OJ Simpson’s trial – how the attorneys twisted the statistics to bias toward client’s case.

Normal distribution: sample variances and error. Voters’ poll error.

Randomness being perceived as a pattern might be due to human nature of wanting to explain the cause and reasons.

This is a nice refresher book on statistics. I have learned a few things especially around the conditional probability. This is a tricky area for most people.

The Dip – A little book that teaches you when to quit (and when to stick) by Seth Godin

Winner wins big because the marketplace loves a winner – Zipf’s Law. Why it matters? People don’t have a lot of time and they don’t want to take risks. Also, scarcity makes being at the top worth something. With a flatten and long-tailed world, perhaps, this theory may not hold well or perhaps there are more ways to be the best. Big companies fail in a new market, according to the author, because they’re too willing to compromise to avoid offending other divisions or to minimize their exposure. They fail because they don’t know when the quit and when to refuse to settle. In a free market, we reward the exceptional.

The big surprise – the wrongest thing you learned in school – being well rounded is the secret to success in life. Superstars can’t skip the questions they don’t know – they get good at questions they don’t know.

Architecture of Quitting: Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations. Almost everything in life worth doing is controlled by the Dip, which the long slog between starting and mastery and the combination of bureaucracy and busywork, the difference between the easy “beginner” technique and the most useful “expert,” the long stretch between beginner’s luck and real accomplishment, the set of artificial screens set up to keep people like you out. Successful people don’t just ride out the Dip; they lean into the Dip, push harder, changing the rules as they go.

Curve 2: the Cul-de-sac (dead end) It’s keeping you from doing something else. The opportunity cost of investing your life in something that’s not going to get better is just too high.

Curve 3: The cliff – like smoking.

If it’s worth doing, there is probably a dip. The dip creates scarcity; scarcity creates value. The Dip is the reason you’re here. You get what you deserve when you embrace the Dip and treat like the opportunity that it really is. It’s easier to be mediocre than it is to confront reality and quit. Quit in the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter. If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start.

Seven reasons you might fail to become the best in the world:
1. Run out of time.
2. Run out of money.
3. Get scared
4. Not being serious enough about it.
5. You lose interest or enthusiasm or settle for being mediocre.
6. Focus on the short term instead of the long .
7. Pick the wrong thing to be the best in the world.

Eight Dips:
1) Manufacturing dip, 2) Sales Dip, 3) Education Dip, 4) Risk Dip, 5) Relationship Dip, 6) Conceptual Dip, 7) Ego Dip, 8 ) Distribution Dip.

Quitting the stuff you don’t care about or the stuff you’re mediocre at or better yet quitting the Cul-de-Sacs frees up your resources to obsess about the Dips that matter. If you’re going to quit, quit before you start. Reject the system. Don’t play the game if you realize you can’t be the best in the world. You have only two good choices: Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.

The market wants to see you persist. If demands a signal from you that you’re serious, powerful, accepted, and safe. The bulk of the market, any market, is made up of those folks in the middle of the bell curve, the ones who want to buy something proven and valued. If your product isn’t working, if your service isn’t catching on, if you’re not even appealing to the crazy geeks who like the new stuff, you mustn’t persist with a tactic just because you feel stuck with it.

The opposite of quitting isn’t “waiting around” is “re-dedication” – an invigorated new strategy designed to break the problem apart.

It’s OK to quit, and quit often. Quit if you’re on a dead-end path, facing a cliff, has a Dip that isn’t worth the reward at the end. Not giving up and abandoning your long-term strategy but quitting the tactics that aren’t working. If your job is a Cul-de-Sac, you have to quit or accept the fact that your career is over. Strategic quitting is a conscious decision ou make based on the choices that are available to you. Quitting is better than coping because quitting frees you to excel at something else. Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.

Three questions to ask before quitting:
1. Am I panicking? Quitting when you’re panicked is dangerous and expensive.
2. Who am I trying to influence. Influencing one person is like scaling a wall. Influencing a market, on the other hand, is more of hill than a wall. You can make progress, one step at a time, and as you get higher, it actually gets easier.
3. What sort of measurable progress am I making?

Quitting before you start: Write down under what circumstances you’re willing to quit and when. And then stick with it.

Soft tires: pick your dip. It’s the last 10 pounds, the ones that get it to full that really pay off. Figure out how much pressure you’ve got available, then pick your tire. Not too big, not too small.

If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.

This book presents some interesting ideas: 1) be the best, no reason to be mediocre, 2) a sound quitting strategy. At first, I was confused about author’s message whether it’s best to slog through the Dip or quitting. After reading it second time, I finally got the message. Yes, quitting is not so bad if it’s the means to an end. The hard part is to figure out if you’re in a Dip or a Cul-de-sac or cliff. Well, I think I can apply some of the learning here to my career.

Some interesting side stories from Augustine Burroughs:
– Buying John Updike first-edition books and cursing him to die to profit from it.
– Nose bleed in the plane and book-signing while encountering his book fans.
– His encounter with Tooth Fairy, not a very organized fairy as told by his Grandma.
– Getting his other dog as a companion to his Cow Cow dog.
– Chipping his molar biting into a clam shell during vacation and chipping another tooth biting into a tater. Vacationing in a doll-filled Bed and Breakfast inn.
– Lesbian friend, Christi’s searching for a lipstick lesbian mate. $3K ad in a magazine and getting shut on her face after sending 1 dozen-dozen roses to a potential mate after one date.
– The making of the Jr. Mint commercial.
– Awakening from constant state of drunkenness and started writing his inner thoughts
– Dating Alex – why being 30 years old makes him put up more of the craps.
– Giving up Kitty-Kitty, the retarded dog, as a sign of rock bottom in alcoholism.
– Saturday-night Susan and the Penis Man – the ultimate peeping-tom experience plus the Hendersons and star-gazing from his office window.
– Trying to get out of being caught by the undercover cop while getting the attention of an English bulldog.
– Sarah Lee ad account – how he scraped the bottom of the barrel and yet came out shining.
– New job at cutting sails – got hired and fired the same day.
– Druggy Debbie – a friend who he met at a job fair of new restaurant. She threw a bloody tampon at a disgruntled customer who waved his penis after being asked to show his ID. Debbie is also a traffic-law-binding citizen. She and the author would go out and flash nasty sign (with obscene picture) to warn people of bad driving.
– His two grandmothers – how he hated his grandma on his mother side and tease her on his thinning hair and cutting off the grandma’s heads from all of the family pictures.
– Getting an Afro perm. Touched on racism about McDonald vs. Wendy’s and Chery Coke.
– Tricking his Mom on his psychic ability after learning the tricks from the packages of Wonder bread.
– Chinese Santa. He listened to all his childhood stories told by Mrs. Chang who spoke with a strong Chinese accent.
– Getting his puppy after earning $3/day on throwing dummies into a pond for dog training.

Very funny and some facetious stories as told by Augustine Burrough. I must say he either has a very interesting life or somehow he captured and told them better than anyone else. A little of both, maybe.

According to Malcolm Gladwell, success takes hard works (over 10,000 hrs) and opportunities, upbringing, culture and dumb luck.

On hard work:
It takes roughly 10,000 hrs or 10 years to be prepared for an extraordinary opportunity – like Beetles, Bill Gates and Bill Joys. It’s a nice rounded off number. Surprisingly, the correlation of good math skill is strongly correlated to hard work. And engineering takes good math skill. Does it mean all engineers are hard workers? Perhaps.

On opportunities:
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Bill Joys all were born within 6 months of one another in 1955 to catch the wave of computer innovation, Canadian hockey team members were all born near January due to the recruiting cut off time. Bill Gate was fortunate to be do programming at age of 13 with unlimited access to a university mainframe computer.)

On background and culture:
Chinese kids have linguistic advantage due to the simplicity of number counting. This stretches a bit. But Asians do have a legacy of good work ethics, thanks to the rice planting culture, which espouses the cause and effect or reaping what you plant. This is a very different style of feudalism from the western culture. Honestly, I believe Confucius might have more to do with it than rice plantation as people in Northern China don’t farm rice. The high accident rate of Korean Airlines in the past was attributed to the high PDI (Power Distance Index) of the Korean culture, where the lower-ranked officers do not communicate or challenge his/her superiors, thus allowing mistakes being made by the captains. I tend to agree with this theory. Gladwell attributed his success to being surrounded by two intelligent friends from childhood and educated parents, thanks to their heritage and superior standing in Jamaica.

Gladwell is a extraordinary (outlier) story teller. He seems to make simple, mundane stories so interesting, especially the Korean Airlines cockpit conversation. It’s ironic that outliers is a statistic term to describe something that doesn’t fit a normal distribution and some of the theories he proposed would not pass the mustard of a good statistician. I was told by my Six Sigma instructor that outliers are like goldmines because there are some phenomena/variables that have not been accounted for. In this case, Gladwell found a goldmine of a topic for this book. And yes, if all corner cases are accumulated at the same time, there would be outliers. It happens but rarely. If the society can change or improve the factors for success, the normal distribution may get shifted, raising the bar for the society.

Auguesten makes guy people look funny and normal. “Magical thinking” is a psychological term which describes the belief that one exerts more influence over events than one actually does. Sometimes, this may be the right belief so that as a whole we truly exert more influence over one another’s life.

I particularly like the story about his addiction to the steroid and how he grew his tits and acne on his shoulder. According to him, it’s the “new” thing for gay and normal guys.

The other hilarious stories includes
– His attempt to get rid of the opossum that ravaged through his covered can where he stored the crap of his dog – this resulted in a poor girl’s nightmarish discovery during her egg hunt.
– His attempt to get his boyfriend to change his lotion.
– Picking up a dog called Bentley that ended up sleeping between them.
– Shopping for a log cabinet.

The crude and yet funny stories are:
– Killing a rat in his tub with a RAID spray, scorching water and finally waving in a random pattern with a flashlight.
– Cursing his boss who started out a very nice boss then turned into an abusive boss because of the suspected incestuous relation between her husband and her daughter. She suffered a sudden death due to a brain clog.
– Stepping on the fingers of a baby without telling his/her mother, who blamed the kid for his/her bad behavior.

And Augusten shared some of the most heart warming stories between him and his lover, Dennis. His use of metaphors and detailed description of each event make a mundane thing come alive and interesting. It’s a good and fun read/listen (audio book) for me in the car.