How have we arrived, in the relatively prosperous developed world, at least, at a cultural moment which values autonomy, personal freedom, fulfillment and human rights, and above all individualism, more highly than they have ever been valued before in human history, but at the same time these autonomous, free, self-fulfilling individuals are terrified of being alone with themselves? Think about it for a moment. It is truly very odd.

Via rockchalk : Rchaeology: The study of R programming by investigation of R source code. It is the effort to discern the programming strategies, idioms, and style of R programmers in order to better communicate with them. Rchaeologist : One who practices Rchaeology. There is a language gap between an R user and an R programmer. Users write “scripts" that use functions from R packages. Users don’t write (many) functions.

For those of us who are born before 1985, it is likely that we have seen two worlds; one, a world that wasn’t dependent on net and another, where our lives are dominated/controlled by the web and social media. The author says that that given this vantage point, we have a unique perspective of how things have changed. It is impossible to imagine a life without print. However before the 1450’s Guttenberg printing press invention, the knowledge access was primarily through oral tradition.

In today’s world where access to information is being democratized like never before, “learning how to learn” is a skill that will play a key role in one’s academic and professional accomplishments. This book collates ideas from some of the recent books on learning such as, “Make it Stick”, “A Mind for Numbers”, “The Five Elements of Effective Thinking”, “Mindset”, etc. The author has added his own personal take on the various research findings mentioned in the book and has come up with a 250 page book.

In a world where uncertainty is the norm, “being curious” is one of the ways to hedge volatility in our professional and personal life. By developing and maintaining a state of curiosity in whatever we do, we have a good chance of leading a productive life. The author of this book, Ian Leslie, is a journalist and it should not come as a surprise that this book’s content is essentially “annotating a set of articles and books on curiosity”.