Dyslexia and entrepreneurship

Earlier this week I attended a gathering sponsored by the Kauffman foundation. They treated a few dyslexic entrepreneurs such as myself to two days in a lovely hotel in Phoenix. (The hotel was a posh spa-type place but being the nerd I am I didn't partake of any of that and instead was looking forward to watching some Mythbusters but they didn't have Discovery Channel. Everything there was exceptionally beautiful but, again being the nerd I am, the only pictures I took were of this nice brick wall in the hotel and this interesting cactus.) Thanks to Marge, Maryanne, Cinthia, and everyone at the Kauffman Foundation who put together this conference for inviting me to such fun exchange of ideas in such a lovely place.

The basis of the meeting was a claim that the set of entrepreneurs is enriched for dyslexia but I was never shown any evidence of this so maybe it's true, maybe not; we didn't have time to review the literature. Anyway, the point was to discuss the anecdotes of the various non-randomly chosen samples invited to this conference for a kind of informal hypothesis building. I wouldn't call what we arrived at as a working hypothesis (indeed there wasn't even much commonality to our traits) but the stories were interesting nevertheless.

There were a number of researchers and educators there. My particular role, as seems to often the case, was to play devil's advocate.

My principal thoughts were:

1. Educators understandably think of anyone who leaves school early as a "failure of the system". I emphatically opposed this view. I argued that while universal access to education is one of the greatest accomplishment of our civilization (indeed, I wouldn't want to live somewhere that didn't provide universal education) that nevertheless universal education is a modern concept and that we *gave up something* when we embraced it. I am not the only person in the world that was poisoned by education (indeed, there was at least one other at this meeting who said the same thing). This claim to educators often leads to: "But how could we make school better so people like you won't leave?" and I counter this with: "Why should you want to do that?" I submit that my value to society is *exactly because I'm an outsider*. The uniqueness of my views are at the core of my contributions both artistic and scientific. Ipso facto, one can't have an outsider perspective by coming from the inside! I know it's a hard argument to swallow as an educator, but there are some people like me who simply should not be educated. So while I appreciate the effort of trying to adapt the education system to meet everyone's needs, I reject the premise that it should be done. Now, how to tell people like me from those who aren't, that's a different question.

2. What evidence do we have that dyslexia is actually a disadvantage? Yes, being unable to read *at all* is a serious hardship and I'm glad I can read. But I read very slowly compared to most people. I can't help but suspect that it is because I read slowly that I both obtain and retain more detail than do my fast-reading friends. Who says that mine is the wrong tactic? (Indeed, I quipped that perhaps we need to go on a negative marketing campaign to bash all the fast-reading people and thereby advance our slow-reading cause!) I have friends who can read ten pages in the time it takes me to read one. On the one hand, that skill is a huge advantage in deciding which papers are relevant while researching. But on the other hand, I tend to remember more detail and consider each little point the author is making. When review science papers for example, our combined skills are better than the sum of the parts and therefore, as is often the case, diversity of skills is a very good thing! Why should we try to "fix" this?

3. Reading is improved with practice. The education system failed me in this respect because it couldn't adapt to this obvious and universally acknowledged fact. In all human undertakings some people are born with higher natural abilities in some disciplines over others. I might find computers intuitive while others might find running fast easy. But *everyone improves all skills with practice.* Indeed, anyone with practice can "beat" anyone with natural skill who never practices. In other words, practice nearly always accounts for more than natural skill. The most common reason for not improving at something is that the initial hurdle of practice is not overcome. If you are naturally poor at reading then it's no fun so you don't practice so you don't get better. The solution is obvious: read stuff that is *fun*! But fun, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder; let dyslexic kids read what they want to. It's not a hard concept; yet most schools don't do this because they are slaved to a contrived government-mandated curriculum. Had someone told me it was okay to read a computer manual instead of some boring book like "Lord of the Flies" then I would have been a better reader by the time I was a teenager instead of having to wait until I got out of school and practiced as a young adult. If I was a teacher, here's what I would do if I met a ten year-old version of myself. I'd say: "What are you interested in?" The 10 year-old version of myself would probably reply "I don't know" and I'd respond with, "There must be something: Dinosaurs? Motorcycles? Computers? Movie Stars? Something!" This line of questioning would last for all of about 10 seconds before we hit something. "Oh, skateboards? Ok, cool, well here's a skateboarding magazine." I'd flip open the pages and find any stupid article on a skateboarding competition or whatnot and scan it for a few relevant details (sponsors, winners, etc) and then hand it over to the kid and say: "Give me an oral report on however much of this article you can make it through by the end of class." Do that exercise everyday in lieu of pointless discussions of characters in whatever idiotic state-mandated literature the rest of the class is supposed to read and by the end of the year that kid is going to be a better reader. It ain't rocket science! (And by the way, who can actually remember anything about any of the books you were assigned to read in junior high? Well, I can remember many of the things I read in the computer books at that age because I've been interested in those ideas ever since!)

Keyless Entry

Aaron and I finished the keyless entry to the house. There's a micro-controller in the basement (programmable from my computer) that monitors these three switches mounted discretely into the door frame that unlocks the door when the correct sequence is pressed. If the wrong sequence is pressed, the door locks for a long time so that randomly guessing accomplishes nothing and also can tell my computer to take your picture. When I have my outdoor speakers, I think I'll also add the sound of a cocking shotgun on error. :-)

Zack

Parameter Fitting Lecture

I gave a talk a few months ago about the new chemical kinetic parameter fitter that I've been working on with John Davis. It is a good introduction to the general problem of fitting model parameters and discusses how easy it is to confuse a good fit with a good model.
[PPT slides] [PDF slides]

Nerd v. Dork

There seems to be some confusion over the definition and distinction between nerds and dorks. Being both a nerd and a dork, I feel qualified to try to explain the distinction.

Nerdy is learning an ancient language.
Dorky is learning Klingon.

Nerdy is twittering the status of the Large Hadron Collider.
Dorky is twittering Magic the Gathering eBay auctions.

Nerdy is machining your own bicycle parts to make them more aerodynamic.
Dorky is riding a recumbent bicycle because it's more aerodynamic (and having an orange safety flag!).

Nerdy is eating at a fast-food restaurant because it optimizes the calories per dollar.
Dorky is eating at a fast-food restaurant because they have a batman collectible cup.

Nerdy is making cartographic illustrations of the Riemann Zeta function on Wikipedia.
Dorky is making cartographic illustrations ofTatooine on Wookiepedia. (Thanks to Aaron)

Nerdy is evolving ribozymes as biomarkers.
Dorky is evolving a five armed lizard in Spore.

Nerdy is keeping up to date with copyright and patent laws.
Dorky is keeping up to date with the bi-laws of the Society for Creative Anachronisms.

Nerdy is making a wind chime tuned to mixolydian mode.
Dork is setting your ring tone to the theme from Close Encounters.

Nerdy is configuring your living room for X10 home automation.
Dorky is configuring your living room as a World of Warcraft sanctuary.

Nerdy is giving your avatar attributes from your real-self.
Dorky is giving your real-self attributes from your avatar.

Talk -- CHANGE OF VENUE!

LAST MINUTE CHANGE OF VENUE!
The Blanton flaked out on us. Tonight's talk will now be at Welch Hall 2.246 at 8:15pm. We will meet in the courtyard in front of the Blanton at 8pm sharp and walk (approx 5-10 min) together to Welch. If you know where Welch is, feel free to meet us there. Free and open to the public, please invite anyone.

First grade science fair

This morning I was recruited (enlisted?) into judging the first-grade entries at the Lee Elementary science fair. It was particularly challenging to calibrate my expectations for what kindergartners and first-graders can reasonably be expected to do/understand and consequently I found it difficult to come up with constructive things to say. A few thoughts.

First, the adults (parents / teachers) are not very clear on the meaning of a hypothesis. Even the form we were to fill out had it wrong, saying something like: "Did they predict the answer?" This understanding of "hypothesis" -- guessing the answer -- is as common as it is unfortunate. Unfortunate because the children (and obviously some adults) interpret this as direction to get the "right" answer. In science (and, I'd argue, life) there are no correct answers, only correctly-executed experiments! A hypothesis isn't a prediction, it is a falsifiable proposal of what result could, in principle, answer a question. For example, the best experiment in my group was about preservatives used on apples. The hypothesis should have been stated as "[Citation] says that lemon juice is useful as a fruit preservative. We wondered if it was better than water? If lemon juice does work well as a preservative we would expect that a water-treated control apple would be browner than a lemon-treated sample." The key aspect of a hypothesis is not that you are predicting the answer but rather that you are stating what result would, in principle, support or refute the theory.

Second, I had a very hard time with the non-experiments. I found myself prejudiced against the "demonstration" and "collection" entries. It isn't that I don't see the value in such real-world work but rather that such entries are poorly defined. What amounts to a good demonstration or collection is very fuzzy -- closer to art than science. There were several presentations that amounted to little more than a cut-and-paste job from Wikipedia (obviously directed and printed by parents.) It took me a few minutes before I got over my negative response to these, independent of the parental contributions; I thought about how often it is that I find myself presenting to peers a summary of existing work as opposed to my own novel experimental findings. Once I thought about it like that I felt better. I came to the conclusion that what's missing from most of the demonstrations is that the children are not asked to look with a skeptical eye on the facts but rather to reguritate authority.

For example, one demonstration was a summary of natural history. It was a nicely drawn time line with pretty illustrations but was filled with exact cut-and-pasted factoids from Wikipedia (at least they cited the source!). I wrote on that one, "Beautiful drawings! A nice overview of natural history. Where does the evidence about these animals come from? For example, fossils. Are some of the fossils more common than others? Where are the biggest gaps in the fossil evidence?"

I wrote similar things on all the other demonstrations. It seems to me that a demonstration should be thought of as a guide that helps others to know where there's research to be done and emphasizes the view that science is not about answers but questions. In effect, a good scientific presentation is more interested in what isn't known than what is. This is obviously hard for a first-grader but I don't think it's impossible.

The demonstrations that regurgitate facts reinforce the false view that science is just another kind of authority figure -- like a teacher or religious book. This view is, again, as common as it is unfortunate. Media, politicians, teachers, and all too often scientists themselves, promote this false perception with statements like "Scientist say that..." with some air of "and therefore shut up". Science is not an authority figure! Indeed it was founded on exactly the opposite principle, that authority is to be *explicitly rejected*. The motto of the first scientific organization, the Royal Society, is "In Nullis Verba" roughly "On the words of no one." A good scientific argument is not "you should believe me because I say so" but rather "look at these interesting findings I have... I draw your attention to the fascinating mysteries revealed by this work." Ideally, science is hospitable -- it offers up the evidence like a well-planned party and invites the guests to join in and enjoy the evidence by thinking for themselves.

That ideal is, of course, not always fulfilled but we might as well try to instill it in first-graders doing demonstrations and collections. Essentially, demos shouldn't cite factoids without being skeptical of them. They should dwell on the methods used to find this evidence at least as much, if not more, than on the facts themselves. For example, that natural history poster mentioned above could have had the exact same time-line, been 1/4 as detailed, and simply showed some pictures of fossils (or ideally, real-life examples) and said: "There's lots of fossils of dinosaurs in this time." and "There's very few fossils before this time. Maybe it's because the animals were too soft to be preserved, but maybe they have just been over-looked for some reason." Just a few sentences like that would have been much more scientific than the pages of copied Wikipedia factoids.

Protocells Book

The book "Protocells" came out recently in which my friends Jeff Tabor, Matt Levy, Andy Ellington and myself have an paper entitled "Tragedy of the Molecular Commons". Check out the high-quality binding from MIT press. Angel pointed out that it's a convertible book: either hardback or paperback! There's many interesting articles in the book and therefore provides further evidence that you shouldn't judge a book by its (unglued) cover.