Book Review-Quack this Way. Conversation between Bryan A. Garner and David Foster Wallace

Quack this way is a transcript of a 67-minute-long interview between David Foster Wallace and Bryan A Garner. David Foster Wallace is a writer of extraordinary renown. He is a hero amongst the younger writers while practicing his art as a novelist, short story, and magazine writer. He is known as a real polymath:  he was a  mathematician, philosopher, and logician. Bryan Garner,  whose name was not well known to me, wrote the definitive American Usage dictionary titled:  Garners Modern American Usage. It has been favorably compared to Fowler’s Usage Dictionary for American English. I had not known about the usage dictionary until I read about Garner and as soon as I learned about it I bought it.  It is a treasure trove for anyone who even pretends to be a writer.

What started the friendship was that David Foster Wallace wrote a very complimentary review of the Garner’s Dictionary of American Usage. Harpers condensed it to a publishable length and published it. Wallace felt that they had cut out what he considered to be essential in his review, so he published it in his own book of articles called Consider the Lobster in its full length. He felt very strongly about that review.  Garner and  Wallace became good friends and they kept in touch through emails and phone calls; they've actually only met twice in person. This is the transcript of the second time. Garner was able to film their conversation in an LA hotel  to preserve for eternity, and we are lucky to still have this recording.

If you were to tell me that I would be geeking out over a book about English usage I would call you crazy, but it is indeed a crazy kind of intellectual stimulus that makes me happy these days. The  transcript is short, but chock full of very deep insights and repartee. The interview took place in February of 2006, the subject is language and writing. They started out with Garner asking Wallace about the advice Wallace ˗ who was teaching writing at Claremont College at the time ˗ what key things he wants to get through to his students. Much of what he had to say is philosophical in nature,  he does get into the nitty gritty details of communicating in English and it's obvious that he loves what he does, the intricacies, the mental turns, and the technical details. In fact, both of  them have the passion; that came through clearly in the interview.

Wallace riffs about the writer’s job, amongst other things. How he needs to teach the  very bright and gifted students and how he enjoys the challenges. He does go off into the wild about some esoteric writing foibles as well as specific types of writing, such as writing for the law and  marketing. As an example, he also delves into the use of passive versus active voice, as he is not an absolutist in that regard, and he makes the point that it is all about what you need to convey which should finally dictate the voice.

Eventually, Garner and Wallace gets into the book review that brought them together. Wallace talking about the deeper points that he wanted to make with the review, but which was edited out by the Harper’s editors.

Reading this transcript made me wish to have been present for the conversation itself and to have the chance to interject, asking both Wallace and Garner questions because as an enthusiastic amateur, I am just beginning to  appreciating the black art of communicating in English through writing,  I'm now coming around to being able to understand enough to be able to understand the art, beyond just appreciating.

Book Review: A mind for numbers , how to excel at math and science (even if you flunked algebra) By Barbara Oakley

I purchased this book quite a while ago because I read an article by Barbara Oakley in the Nautilus magazine and it intrigued me. The story of her career path was highly unusual and quite inspiring. She was a math phobic in her formative years, failing her algebra class in school. She naturally opted out of the STEM related  path and became a translator in the military, shying away from math and the technology path.  As she worked in the military, she realized that it is impossible to get ahead without some inkling of the math and sciences, so she decided that she needed to overcome her fear of math. Indeed, she got so good at the math and sciences that  she eventually received a bachelors, a masters, and then a PhD in electrical engineering. She is now a professor  in systems engineering.

This book is her way of passing on the method of her madness, her way to  overcome her fears and retrained her mind to be accepting of the mathematical learning and thinking. The  critical point that she is making is that it is possible to change the way your mental processes deal with problems. It is possible because your brain is malleable, but you need to put in the work to overcome bad habits, mainly procrastination and avoidance. A perfect illustration of the growth mindset.

She directly addresses those students who are working in the math and science area,  as her purpose is to demonstrate to a very skeptical audience how to be better at doing math and science. The useful part of her pedagogy is that even though the book is focused on math and sciences, the lessons can be transferred to other things: sports, music, literature, etc. Even though Oakley lays it out in 18 simple-to-read chapters,  the lessons are not easy, if it was easy, she wouldn’t be writing the book. She has set herself up for an informative and enlightening argument with the traditional way of teaching math and science.

A keyword that comes up time and time again is einstellung, it is defined as the process where an idea that you already have in mind, or your simple initial thoughts, is preventing a better idea or solution from being found. This is what she identifies as the culprit for our habit of depending on rote thinking and for our penchant to convince ourselves that a problem is the same problem that we have seen before, even though it is not.  She identifies the necessary mindscape for solving problems, defining the oppositional modes of thinking that she  terms focused and diffused thinking. The two terms are like the System One versus System Two thinking that the Tversky and Kahneman made famous. It is also like the terms  procedural versus conceptual thinking. They are all similar but not the same, but similar enough so that one can draw analogies between them.

When thinking of those in the math and Sciences, the public often talk about the amount of focus and  concentration that is needed to solve those problems. This is the stereotypical way we think of our mathematicians and scientists: these wild haired geniuses, with furrowed brows, and unkempt lab coats covered with chalk dust, thinking with superhuman concentration, even though that is the worst way to be creative and innovative. What cause people to get locked and blocked in their thoughts is this excessive focus on focus, which brings our tendency for einstellung to the fore. The real breakthroughs in math and science often happens when the mathematician or scientists or engineer uses what Oakley terms diffused thinking; that is they don't hang on tightly to what they know already, they try to diffuse their focus so that the brain has freed up their active memory so that they could see other ,; open their minds up to different ways of approaching a problem; or even make giant leaps of faith which would help them solve the problem. It is not just a matter of serendipity; it is a matter of necessity that scientists’, mathematicians, and engineers are deliberately diffused when they do their best work.

Another thing that Oakley talks about is chunking,  this is a term that have become ubiquitous amongst the other cognitive scientific literature. Indeed, much of Oakley's book seem familiar because she has called upon much of the latest research on learning. Chunking is a way of combining steps in any progression that leads up to a unified piece of knowledge which allows the brain to unite the discrete steps of a progression so that the separate steps coalesce into a coherent chunk of knowledge. This condenses the knowledge and it allows  making connections between different ideas and understanding the underlying principles and fundamentals of many things easier.

Connection making is something that humans are exceptionally good at;  in fact, I believe this is what separates us from other animals, this ability be able to chunk knowledge together to create connections. Chunking also serves a great purpose in helping us manage the limited capacity of our active memory. If it is chunked, it is in our long-term memory; if it is in the long-term memory it is there for us to reference. We do not need to recall the fundamentals every time we are solving a problem because having the chunk in the long-term memory means that it is there being ready and  useful for us.

The idea is that the active memory can only hold a certain number of chunks of knowledge. If  your active memory is full, you are not able to absorb other new knowledge or new information. The book  spends many pages on how to chunk information and how to store that chunk into the long-term memory for safekeeping. Which frees up our active memory to help us make connections between different ideas.

Oakley also spends a lot time dealing with procrastination. Procrastination is what we do when we are scared or if we are intimidated by the task. She delves into different tips and strategies on how to deal with procrastination. One of the best things about this book is that she is able to create checklists for dealing with procrastination and she gives tips and hints on how to become better learners.

The reader gets the idea that this book goes beyond just being a favorite topic for the author, this is her passion: to share what she has learned from her own experience learning to be a converted math and science geek while practicing her profession as a teacher.

This is a very worthy  book to read. It is not a hard read, it is quite an easy read, some of that comes from the fact that much of the material seemed to be familiar to me so it was preaching to the choir. As I say that however, I would recommend this for any of my future STEM students. It is especially useful for anybody who is interested in learning or in the area of  cognitive sciences of learning because she integrates all the different concepts from different books and publications. The material is presented so easily and rationally so that it all makes sense.

Many of the other books I have read in this area emphasizes the why’s of learning, i.e. the methodology; this book shows us the how’s that we need in order to execute so that we can be better learners. I highly recommend this for anyone, whether you are math phobic or not, or if you are just concerned about being the best learner you can be, this book will help you get well on your way.