Stocktaking: Reading
I’m not getting through so many books as I want. I’m enjoying the book on Bayes’ rule, despite the occasional glitch—e.g., a reference to the word “bit’ as being derived by Claude Shannon (of Bell Labs and information-theory fame) from “binary dibit” which sort of stunned me: it was derived from “binary digit”, as every schoolchild knows. (My recollection is from a Friday night lecture given by Al Clark when the lectures still were given in the Great Hall with the question period in the King William Room of the Library—near to the Liberty Tree: now all changed, alas. I verified my recollection in Wikipedia: “He attributed its origin [the origin of the word "bit" - LG] to John W. Tukey, who had written a Bell Labs memo on 9 January 1947 in which he contracted “binary digit” to simply “bit”.”)
The book has other infelicities, including a certain vagueness in describing findings in particular cases, but it is still an entertaining read. I continue to be bemused to see how such a powerful tool was in effect suppressed for so many years.
But I need to focus more on reading and on sticking with a book until I’ve finished instead of keeping so many going at once. “Slow and steady wins the race” argues for completing a book before moving on. Maybe I should start a book journal to assist with that: some piece of software in which a list of book titles can serve as index and access point… hmm. Anyone ever use iData3.com?
In the meantime, I continue reading McNeill’s A World History (3rd edition), various library books, etc.
