Jason Makansi

I was drawn to this book by the synopsis; we are certainly living in uncertain times. It was a surprising read in many ways; I was expecting a far more political read and what I got was more of a family drama. In some ways that was good but when the politics did enter into the story it was a hard fit.

Cheryl Haddad loves her father and they spend a lot of time together. He is a taxi driver and her mother is a police officer. Her parents marriage is not a happy one but she does not realize this until much later in her life. One day her father heads off to his homeland to visit his dying father and he just disappears. She never hears from him again and her mother does nothing to try and find him. This impacts her entire life.

While this is Cheryl’s story there are other subplots going on at the same time involving an idealistic man trying to save his town. There is the story line that sort of tells what happens to her father. There is another that follows a DHS honcho working to bring a prison project to fruition to house detainees from Guantanamo. There is also Cheryl’s mother and a mysterious priest who may or may not be a priest. All of these stories go back and forth in time with no real sense of order. It took me quite a while to sort out the back and forth and forth and back.

There is a very good book in this book somewhere, you just have to work a bit to find it. It’s not the kind of book you can stray from or skim through. You have to pay attention or you miss which year you’ve gone back to or which character’s life you are now inhabiting. I think my poor addled brain was just not up to keeping it all straight.

I wanted the answers. I wanted to know the whys. I wanted to know how in the hell the horror at the center of this book could even be imagined. I think I need to read it again because I’m still confused. I don’t understand how Cheryl’s father could be THAT naive. I don’t understand how Cheryl’s mother could be THAT evil over issues that could be dealt with in better ways. I don’t understand how I could get to the end of this book and still be so unsatisfied.

But I guess there is much to be said for a book that gets a person thinking to this degree. As I noted – there is a good book in here. I think it’s just over my head somewhere. I think I may be just too literal a reader. It’s certainly a provocative book with a laundry list of issues to get you thinking. Imma gonna read it again to see if I can get it to make more sense for my poor little brain.… (mehr)

Disclosure: I received this book as a Review Copy. Some people think this may bias a reviewer so I am making sure to put this information up front. I don't think it biases my reviews, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

Subtitled How to sharpen your BS detector and smoke out all the "experts", Jason Makansi's book Painting by Numbers isn't so much about numbers, but rather about how to understand and evaluate the use of numbers in the media, in business, and everywhere else models, charts, graphs, and other statistical representations are used in support of a particular position or projection. Despite being a book about "numbers", there are very few actual numbers in it, because the point of the book is not how to conduct analysis and create mathematical models, but it instead directed at providing the tools that an ordinary non-technically proficient person needs to be able to assess, at least to some extent, the reliability of the myriad of statistical models they are presented with in everyday life.

Painting by Numbers is divided into two broad sections. In the first, Makansi lays out the "Twelve Commandments of a Numerical Skeptic", taking twelve chapters to discuss each commandment in turn. Each chapter outlines one of these "commandments", seeking to arm the reader with a tool capable of picking apart models and presentations that rely upon the use of numerical information. Makansi presents these in an approachable manner, allowing those who are not versed in the intricacies of mathematical analysis to gain an appreciation for the limitations of such methods, and identify when such limitations are present. The commandments also, to a certain extent, allow a skeptic to assess just how critical those limitations are, and how severely they impact the reliability of the model being used. This is not to say that reading this section will make someone capable of doing a complete assessment themselves - that would be well beyond the scope and intent of the book - but rather that they can make a rough evaluation that will serve to separate the wheat from the chaff of numerical models.

The second section of the book is titled "Putting Your BS Detector to Work" and contains ten examples of numerical models to which the author applies the commandments outlined in the first section. Each of the examples is drawn from the real world, and the author states that he picked them and then evaluated them, in order to show how the "twelve commandment" system is applied rather than picking examples that were specifically chosen to make a particular point. This section is interesting, but not quite as effective as the first section. This is, in part, because the examples provided are only sketched out to the extent needed to show how the twelve commandments apply, which means that they feel a little bit disjointed and lacking in context. I would have preferred to see the entire item being discussed (although, to be fair, that would have made the book considerably longer), and then seen an exploration of how the twelve commandments applied to it, as this would have fleshed them out more completely. In a book dedicated to providing readers with the tools to evaluate the context of numerical models, the lack of context for many of the examples given seems odd. The other thing that sticks out about this section is that every example provided is riddled with problems. As I said before, the author chose these examples blind, in an effort to essentially "play fair", but one could come away with the impression that there are no numerical models that are worthwhile. This may be an impression that the author intended, but if so, he doesn't say so.

Despite those minor quibbles, Painting by Numbers remains a useful and informative work, aimed squarely at arming the non-numerically inclined with the tools necessary for them to deal with information provided via numerical models and their close companions, graphs and diagrams. This book is not a technical guide to numerical analysis, and it is not intended to be. The collection of "commandments" cover a wide range of issues that crop up in numerical models, and are presented in a manner that those who are not particularly comfortable with numerical analysis can both understand and apply them. The examples are, in general, easy to follow, and provide a broad spectrum of illustrations of the "commandments" in action. For those looking for a more in depth exploration of numerical analysis, Painting by Numbers comes equipped with a list of fifteen recommended titles on the subject.

At just over 150 pages, Painting by Numbers is exactly what it sets out to be: A clear and concise primer on how to evaluate the numerical data that bombards us on a daily basis. Although the tools provided in its pages are very basic, that should be considered a feature and not a bug. This book is not aimed at those who are already skilled at understanding numerical analysis, but instead seeks to equip those who do not have such a background to they can look at what they find in newspapers, on television, and in the board room with a properly skeptical, and hopefully, reasonably informed eye. For anyone looking for a guide to becoming a skeptic concerning numbers and their meaning, then this book would be an excellent resource.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds.… (mehr)

This is a funny book. It is quite chatty and in many ways shallow and short-sighted. But then in other ways the author keeps his eye on some fundamentally important points. He also has a broad familiarity with the electric power utility business. So his points are worth studying, even if they are really just raw starting points for study rather than refined nuggets of wisdom.

Probably the core puzzle that Makansi confronts is the way consumers take for granted that reliable electric power just flows out of the plug in the wall, at a stable price. Despite the fact that this assumption has held up for something like a century, it is not sustainable. It represents an ignorance which masks an irresponsibility, which Makansi makes clear. There are environmental, political, and military costs to making electricity flow so freely and reliably.

Makansi does dance around most of the core pieces of the puzzle, but hardly manages any kind of coherent solution. Which is not so unreasonable, after all. As far as I can tell, the only realistic solutions are totally unacceptable. Which is to say, we have some hard lessons in front of us! Really, though, it is a lot more fun to read about a return to paleolithic living than actually to confront any real live movement in that direction. We are all dancing the musical chairs to avoid confronting those hard lessons. Makansi is in company with the very great majority of us in his dancing, and at least he is bringing up the issues which is a lot more than most folks do.

It is easy to dismiss a lot of his writing because it is very dated. This book was written before the Fukushima disaster and before the Lehman Brothers disaster. Maybe nuclear power is still the right direction, who am I to say, but the case for it sure got a lot harder after Fukushima. And the world of finance shifted hugely. This book also came before the big expansion of hydro-fracking for natural gas. Anybody's guess really but it sure looks like fracking will fade as quickly as it sprouted, if the depletion rates stay as brutal as some report.

Makansi tries to strike a balance between salvation by technology and salvation by personal responsibility. Salvation by automation and salvation by awareness... it is really a very awkward balance! Really he has all the ingredients in the pot but he has barely started to cook the stew.

This book is a good introduction to many of the issues facing the supply of electric power. It's a bit like a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Maybe all the pieces aren't here, but certainly enough of them to enable a person to get a good picture of the problem. The difficulty with the book is that the pieces aren't really fit together. The deeper difficulty is that nobody really knows how to put the pieces together. Don't get distracted by how dated the book is. Any book or viewpoint will be just as dated, at least if it stays at this superficial level. The way to move closer to the truth is not to update the book, though that might be useful, but to dig deeper into the underlying dynamics. A worthy project, for sure!… (mehr)