Why Most Predictions Fail – but Some Don’t is a 2012 book by Nate Silver detailing the art of using probability and statistics as applied to real-world circumstances. The book includes richly detailed case studies from baseball, elections, climate change, the 2008 financial crash, poker, and weather forecasting.
Data show that girls start to lose their confidence as early as kindergarten. If that trend continues, we could see yet another generation of women who lag men in the workplace.
What can we do right now to start closing that leadership gap? Girls Leadership, an Oakland, Calif-based nonprofit that teaches girls life and leadership skills for healthy relationships, emotional intelligence and assertive self-expression, is working on the answer.
Simone Marean, Girls Leadership’s executive director and co-founder:
When girls internalize that expectation to be sexy, we see the cost, even in early elementary school. We see a drop in their confidence. We see a real narrowing of their interests very early on, and when it gets to adolescence, we see girls suffering from depression, stress, and anxiety at around twice the rate of boys. This loss of voice, this wellness gap stays with girls throughout their college and early career experience. Even in 2015, we’re not seeing women participate at the same level of leadership as men, and that all starts in kindergarten.
The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens
By Benedict Carey
In How We Learn, award-winning science reporter Benedict Carey sifts through decades of education research and landmark studies to uncover the truth about how our brains absorb and retain information. What he discovers is that, from the moment we are born, we are all learning quickly, efficiently, and automatically; but in our zeal to systematize the process we have ignored valuable, naturally enjoyable learning tools like forgetting, sleeping, and daydreaming. Is a dedicated desk in a quiet room really the best way to study? Can altering your routine improve your recall? Are there times when distraction is good? Is repetition necessary? Carey’s search for answers to these questions yields a wealth of strategies that make learning more a part of our everyday lives—and less of a chore.
Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you’ll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results.
With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house “spark joy” (and which don’t), this international bestseller featuring Tokyo’s newest lifestyle phenomenon will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home—and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.
A former international hostage negotiator for the FBI offers a new, field-tested approach to high-stakes negotiations—whether in the boardroom or at home.
After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a hostage negotiator brought him face-to-face with a range of criminals, including bank robbers and terrorists. Reaching the pinnacle of his profession, he became the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator. Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss’s head, revealing the skills that helped him and his colleagues succeed where it mattered most: saving lives. In this practical guide, he shares the nine effective principles—counterintuitive tactics and strategies—you too can use to become more persuasive in both your professional and personal life.
“It all starts with the universally applicable premise that people want to be understood and accepted. When your adversaries say, “That’s right,” they feel they have assessed what you’ve said and pronounced it as correct of their own free will. They embrace it. … Reaching “that’s right” in a negotiation creates breakthroughs.”
This is listening as a martial art, balancing the subtle behaviors of emotional intelligence and the assertive skills of influence, to gain access to the mind of another person. Contrary to popular opinion, listening is not a passive activity. It is the most active thing you can do.
Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day
by David J. Hand
In The Improbability Principle, the renowned statistician David J. Hand argues that extraordinarily rare events are anything but. In fact, they’re commonplace. Not only that, we should all expect to experience a miracle roughly once every month.
But Hand is no believer in superstitions, prophecies, or the paranormal. His definition of “miracle” is thoroughly rational. No mystical or supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why someone is lucky enough to win the lottery twice, or is destined to be hit by lightning three times and still survive. All we need, Hand argues, is a firm grounding in a powerful set of laws: the laws of inevitability, of truly large numbers, of selection, of the probability lever, and of near enough.
Story Crunch 