A term meant to convey a person’s inability to make sense of the numbers that run their lives. Innumeracy was coined by cognitive scientist Douglas R Hofstadter in one of his Metamagical Thema columns for Scientific American in the early nineteen eighties. Later that decade mathematician John Allen Paulos published the book Innumeracy. In it he includes the notion of chance as well to that of numbers.

The example of innumeracy found in this post is somewhat more interesting than most, because it comes from a source that really should know better: Discover Magazine.
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A while back, they apparently lost their Explainer and asked for applications for a replacement. As part of the application, they requested that you submit a list of 10 sample questions to be explained.

Now, I have no real general journalism experience - most of what I’ve done is technical writing of one form or another. So I’m not a particularly good candidate for this position. But I thought I’d give it a shot. Here is the list of 10 sample questions I submitted on March 17, all based on topical news items:
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Monday, November 17, 2008 8:00 AM

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. My name is Maxine Perkins and for the next six weeks, I will be either your best friend or your worst enemy.

Most of you are probably wondering “Why am I here? What have I done? Are these restraints really necessary?”

The answer is quite simple. As you might recall, two weeks before the presidential election, in an attempt to distract the populace put the minds of the voting public at ease, President Bush issued an executive order making English the official language of the United States. Originally titled the “Speak American Act” but now popularly known as the Jules Winnfield Law , it insures that attempts by foreign terrorists to corrupt our voting process will be nipped in the bud. 2008 marks the year that we made sure election fraud will only be committed by decent American citizens.
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Of course, it’s not particularly unusual for companies like Google, Adobe, and Apple to try to sneak their software onto your system using somewhat deceptive practices. Last time I checked up on my Dad’s PC his browser had Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar,  AOL Toolbar, and a Toolbar from his ISP. The actual browser window was a miserable little ribbon a few hundred pixels high. Dad had no idea how the toolbars got installed, but I have no doubt they were all stealthily piggybacked on one piece of software or another.

But Mozilla CEO John Lilly seems to think this use of the update feature to promote a web browser goes beyond aggressive marketing and into the depths of evil. His angry blog post basically says that using an update/patch service to load new software violates some sort of basic compact between users and providers:

It’s wrong because it undermines the trust that we’re all trying to build with users. Because it means that an update isn’t just an update, but is maybe something more. Because it ultimately undermines the safety of users on the web by eroding that relationship. It’s a bad practice and should stop. 

John goes on to say that he doesn’t condemn the common practice of using installed software to push your other products – he seems to be saying that the update program is a special case.

Things get really interesting when you start reading the comments to his post. As is often the case with All Things Apple, the issue seems to have caused extreme polarization.  A selection of anti-Apple comments include:

This is disgraceful. It fails the user in favor of serving Apple. It is, in fact, malware-level tactics. 

This is just a sick way of tricking users to download their browser by making it seem as if an update if available for a piece of software already installed. I bet it even takes over as the default browser afterwards, which would look very bad on Apple.

Right on, John Lily. “Update” means “update,” not “Give me your other products.”

But predictably, the Apple apologists insist that Cupertino can do no wrong:

You Windows users are not only paranoid, but so anti-Apple that your comments are hysterical. This is the biggest NON-ISSUE yet – and anyone using a computer that can’t use that screen and make a good decision should go back to a typewriter. 

The consumer has already trusted Apple (or any company) by downloading one of their pieces of software already. There is already a placement of trust in Apple (or other company). If they trust Apple enough to install one of their apps, then extending that to another one of their programs seems to make sense to me.

Some of the complaints here are over the top. Pushing Safari with a iTunes update is “Malware”? Please. Sure, it’s marketing, but it is utterly benign, other than using a little disk space that is trivial by modern standards. … Compared to all the real malware issues faced by Windows users, this is not worth notice. And, most of all, compared to the execrable practices of Microsoft and other PC software vendors, this is a tempest in a teapot.

I think one thing we can agree on is that there are tens of millions of Windows users with iTunes installed, and the vast majority of them are going to be clueless about what Safari is and whether they should uncheck that radio box.Does this mean Apple is preying on the ignorant? Are they in fact somewhat evil? Or is this just the way the world works now?

Use the comment box to let me know what you think. Inquiring minds want to know.

(By the way, I should note that in the past I’ve always used Firefox on OS/X - Safari 2.0 was lame, unstable, your basic piece of crap. I’m writing this on Windows using Safari 3.1, which is surprisingly fast and seemingly bug free. Quite an improvement!)

Jeff Bezos Hawks the Kindle

It’s still not clear whether electronic books are the wave of the future or a consumer products cul-de-sac. Technology continues to improve, and there are certainly lots of good reasons for a device like Amazon’s Kindle to be the leading edge of a major wave of adoption. A few of the more obvious arguments include:

• Reduced cost of distribution. The publishing industry wastes a lot of money printing and shipping books, and because of historical practices, creates huge numbers of books that never even get sold. Not very green, and a waste of money.
• Niche markets that can be very well-served. For example, high school and college students can replace those 30-pound backbacks with a 30-ounce tablet-sized device.
• Removal of barriers to publication. The news and magazine businesses are being revolutionized by self-publication in the form of blogs. Self-publication is possible in the printed book world, but it is still a rather awkward process. Publication to electronic format is presumably a trivial problem.
• Integration of information resources. A device like the Kindle allows you to consult the Internet, written reference materials, and your personal notes all from the same device, making it a true information portal.

But consumer acceptance is a fickle thing, so we don’t know if these rational arguments are going to fly. And of course, every writer who reviews a device like the Kindle or the equally capable Sony Reader feels compelled to write something along the lines of “But I just can’t imagine forgoing the pleasure of curling up on my couch with a good book.” I’m sure that when Gutenberg introduced movable type there were millions of industry reviewers posting notes to their blogs saying “The uniformity of the type is just esthetically unpleasing - I love it when I recognize the script of one of my favorite transcribing brothers.”

And then of course there’s the Steve Job’s money quote on the subject:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore, forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

So it’s really pretty hard to be sure just which way this is going to go.
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But like any of us, Jerome had a rough day or two. His trades didn’t get executed properly, his numbers fell, and he was going to look bad. And like many of us, Jerome thought he could cover it up by doing better on his trades the next day.

Problem is, Jerome’s catch-up strategy failed him. He started deviating from his programmed trades, kept his losses hidden, and kept trying to get back to even, until somebody noticed that the bank was $7.2 billion in the hole. Whoops.
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American Express Needs YOUR Feedback!

Dear American Express Blue Cardmember:

American Express would like your feedback. We would like you to participate in a survey about your Blue card from American Express. Your participation will provide us with valuable feedback and help us tailor card benefits to better meet your needs.

As a token of our appreciation, you will receive $5 from American Express*. Please note that this survey will be running for a limited period of time. To increase your chances of receiving the honorarium, please complete the survey at your earliest convenience.

The web address for the survey is shown below. To begin the survey, simply double-click on the address to go directly to the questionnaire. However, if you are unable to double-click on the address, please copy and paste the text below into your browser’s address bar.

Well, I need five bucks, and a little bit of checking gave me moderate insurance that this was really from American Express, not a phisher. The survey was being outsourced to Confirmit, a real company, and they don’t seem to be on any malware site lists. Furthermore, as things went on, there was an enormous amount of content in the survey and seemingly no payoff for phishers, so it seems unlikely that this is a scam.

However, right off the bat there was some cause for concern. Double-click on the address? How many browsers do you use that need a double-click before they follow a link? If Confirmit is a real company, they clearly didn’t assign their top copywriter to this project.

The real fun started when I actually started the survey. The classic “make a good first impression” rule that your mother taught you is just as true for web pages as it is for anything else. And the first page of the American Express survey was the equivalent of showing up for your first date with a big gravy blotch on your tie:
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In honor of the often puzzling topics I’ve been working on, here’s a little crossword with an algorithms theme.

The java applet that lets you solve online has a bit of lameness, but it’s not mine and so it’s kind of out of my hands. I’d love to have a higher quality engine, but the free choices are limited. In particular, there doesn’t appear to be a free javascript crossword engine for the taking, so I’m stuck with Java, as are you.
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I’m doing a little background research for an article on music downloads, and as a result, need some people to fill out a survey.

The goal of the survey is to get a little background on people’s attitudes, plus a comparison of differences in attitudes between old people (me) and young people (?).

The survey is super-simple, 4 pages that should take no more than 3 minutes. If you’re interested in helping, the best of all possible worlds would be for you to fill it out completely, and if you’re over 25, strong-argm some under-25 type, like your kid, into filling it out as well.

The survey is here. A free survey on SurveyMonkey is limited to 100 respondents, so if it tells you to buzz off, that might mean I’ve got all the feedback I can afford.

Thanks!