Author: Daniel

• How to remember
  • Get the information
  • Weave it together
  • Store the woven information
  • Fetch the memory
• Storing the memory takes time and can be interrupted
• There is no “memory bank”
• We rebuild memories, not replay them
• We can only remember what we pay attention to
• You have 15-30 seconds to pay attention to sensory input and convert them into memories
• Three memories: things we know, things we do, and what happened
• Self-testing is important to remembering
• Space out your learning
• Repetitive learning and recall
• Meaning can improve memory retention
• Tying to something autobiographical enhances memory
• Episodic memories are very plastic
• Every time we remember, we save a new version of the memory
• Descriptive language affect memory
• “Ugly sisters”–words similar to what we are looking for–distract us… keeping us looking in the wrong place
• Prospective memory–listing things now to remember later–is something we are not good at
• Be precise when trying to remember to do something for the future
• Stop replaying or sharing memories to forget them faster
• Forgetting is important to drop irrelevant information and declutter the mind
• Your physiology is part of your memory context
• Sleep aids muscle memory
• Naps provide short term boosts

A fascinating history of Finance and Banking the US from the earliest days (1776) through the financial collapse of the Great Recession (2008).

An industry that makes so much money has to be good at managing themselves

• Bias (variance from the target) and noise (variance from others) appear is most organizations
• System noise compounds rather than balance (cancel) out
• Most people are content with maintaining a single world view
• Focusing on common language allows us to avoid developing common standards
  • Conflict avoidance helps support this
• (Feedback is really important to making consistent decisions)
• Verifiability does not affect our estimates
  • (Just because something can be verified does not mean we are better at estimating it)
• Decisions require predictive and evaluative judgements
• Bias and noise are independent errors
• Avoid mixing your values and facts
• Waiting a few weeks to make a second guess helps improve personal guess
• To get most accurate average estimates
  • Get input from other people
  • Ask yourself a second time, weeks later
  • Ask yourself to guess again, assuming your first guess is wrong
• Summing up votes can have a huge boost in accuracy
• Crowds are only wise if people register views independently from each other
• Discussing ideas with others often intensifies original beliefs
• “We do not need more accurate weights than our measures.”
• “Frugal rules” (algorithms with few inputs) are often better than complex algorithms but not as good as ML
• People are often willing to trust an algorithm until it makes a bad decision
• Most things happen in “the Valley of the Norm” where it is easy to explain after the fact
• Using comparisons instead of labels for more accurate judgements at scale
  • 7 is the magical number of categories
• We like casual stories of explanation, even if they are not rational
• Intelligence has a strong correlation with financial success
• Open minded is better than strong confidence
• Documenting each step helps to reduce bias due to information exposure

• Blame bad design, not human behavior
• Visibility is a good reminder of what can be done
• 1:1 button-to-function ratio is the simplest design
• There are “additives” and “substitutive” dimensions
• Feedback is important to determine relationship
• At the store, users care about prestige; at home, they care more about useability
• Arbitrary design happens when the design is broken
• Design so errors have a low cost
• We blame the environment when we fail and praise ourselves when we succeed; we blame others when they fail and praise their environment when they succeed
• We typically only store partial descriptions in memory (this saves time and space) enough to discriminate from similar items
• Rote memory is difficult to maintain
• Interpreting the arbitrary is not the same as understanding it
• Reminders have signals and actions
• If a design relays on labels, the design is faulty
• Usability should be considered in the purchase
• Seven steps of execution
  • Plan
  • Specify
  • Perform
  • Perceive
  • Interpret
  • Compare
• Mistakes are made in the reflective stages (plan and compare)
• Slips are made in the other stages
• Focusing on aesthetics can be detrimental to functionality
• Use groupings and shapes to make switches intuitive
• Slips are doing something when intending to do another
  • Capture errors (starting a task with a common start but switching to another)
  • Description error (correct action on the wrong object)
  • Data driven errors (dialing the number you are staring at instead of from memory)
  • Association errors
  • Mode errors
• We classify the rare as either unique or common and both are wrong
• Warning signals are rarely the solution
• Iterative processes allowed to naturally improve the product over time
• If you cannot constrain, standardize