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Review: Louise Barrett's "Beyond the Brain" There are a lot of books about embodied cognition. Like psychology itself, the idea that cognition might not all be in the head has fractured off into about 5 distinct flavours, most of them quite annoying and pointless.There are also quite a few books about the thesis of the 'extended mind' (Clark & Chalmers, 1998) ; the idea that cognition quite literally extends into our bodies and environments, in terms of the tools we use and the objects we interact with. It's getting quite hard to find a book on these topics that isn't a) simply rehashing old ground or b) trying to come up with it's own distinct flavour of embodied, extended cognition that fixes some problem of everyone else's. I find this sort of fracturing and endless bickering quite distracting and troublesome, for reasons best expressed by xkcd. I also agree with Tony Chemero, that much of this work is still, sometimes deep down, representational. I think this is because they fail to embrace a sufficiently useful theory of information, such as that proposed by Gibson. So I often find myself reading these books finding nothing new and far too much that's depressing. Louise Barrett's book, "Beyond the Brain: How Body and Environment Shape Animal and Human Minds" is, refreshingly, not like this at all. Barrett is a psychologist who studies animal cognition and behaviour, and her book does a lot of things very, very well. I'm not planning on a chapter by chapter book club on this, although I may at some point; Eric Charles has posted a few thoughts on the book as well, here, here, here, and here. To cut to the chase: if you are new to the area of embodied cognition, read this book. If you're familiar with the literature but want a clear, well-structured presentation of many of the key

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PsychScientists PsychScientists Interesting if wandering RT @TheSocialBrain roots of consciousness; how learning to walk stimulated our modern brains alturl.com/s44hx 2 hours ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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ideas, then read this book. If you're bored with the same old examples and want some new, perhaps more convincing examples of embodied cognition in action, read this book. And if you have heard some of the arguments but still think behaviour really comes from the computational activity of our complex brains, then, for the love of science, read this book. Old stuff done well One sign of a good book on embodied cognition is that it handles the classic material well. There's a standard set of important papers and empirical results that form the core of the initial case for embodiment and, specifically, embodiment expressed in terms of non-linear dynamical systems. Among these old favourites is the Watts steam governor to replace the digital computer as a metaphor for the way to achieve controlled behaviour (van Gelder, 1995). Like me, Barrett is entirely unconvinced by the computational, representational accounts of the governor and is happy to take it seriously as an example of how specially built coupled devices can solve complex control problems. Her account of it, and how it works as a metaphor to guide how we think about embodiment and dynamics, is crystal clear. Other topics done well: a look at the various robotic exemplars of the dynamical, embodied approach (such as work by Pfeifer & Scheier (1999) and Pfeifer & Bongard, 2007), plus a nice review of work by Linda Smith and Esther Thelen on the A-not-B error and infant prehension (see Thelen & Smith, 1994). The coverage is excellent and clear (I've added Chapter 7, on computational information processing vs. dynamical systems accounts of behaviour to my first year Motor Control module recommended reading list as a summary of two lectures). New things brought to the table Barrett specialises in animal cognition, and this angle on embodied cognition is, I think, one of the key novel contributions of this book. I admit, I'm a true believer in embodied cognition, so I'm biased, but I found many of the key ideas about embodiment much less controversial when they arose in the context of non-human behaviour. Chapter 4 (entitled 'The Implausible Nature of Portia') describes the simply astonishing behavioural flexibility of the hunting spiders of the genus Portia. These spiders prey on other spiders. They are capable of all finds of feats, of mimicry (strumming other spider's webs to simulate being prey themselves as a lure), and deception (taking advantage of wind blowing on webs and moving under cover of this 'smokescreen'). Being small spiders, however, they of course have tiny brains. Their most remarkable ability is that they can approach a target web via quite complex detours if necessary; they are able to navigate to a target that is not currently in their view. Their behaviour looks remarkably like 'insight'; they spend time sitting and examining their environment, not moving through it, until suddenly they pick a route as if they had finally arrived at a decision. The spiders, of course, are doing

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no such thing: there is no mental manipulation of a representation of their route options required. Instead, the spiders are scanning the environment with their very specifically built eyes, and scanning in a very particular way. These spiders have 16 eyes, some of which work like our fovea (high resolution over a small area) and some like the periphery (low resolution but excellent motion sensitivity). Portia scans the environment using these independent, mobile eyes, and experiments show it simply moves to solve a series of local problems, making the route up as it goes. It doesn't need to 'know' anything about gaps or obstacles, it simply moves according to a simple strategy of 'find the horizontal path'. Portia doesn't need a big brain to 'think about things in their absence', because she instead has a sensibly built body - truly embodied cognition.

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Other examples include the caching behaviour of scrub jays. and how crickets choose mates according to their song; the 'decision making' is implemented via a simple neural circuit between two ears spaced a particular distance. This work is especially interesting as it includes discussion of Barbara Webb's work on this system; Webb has built simple robot crickets in which she can manipulate the neural circuit and the nature of the ears to confirm that the crickets aren't making decisions, they are responding to signals in a manner dictated by their design; representations not required! Has she read her Gibson? One of my requirements for a good book on embodied cognition is an honest discussion of Gibson. The reason is simple: if you want cognition to be a process that spans the brain, body and environment of an organism, you need a theory of how these elements can be coupled together to form systems. In short, you need a theory of perception, and Gibson is really the only candidate up to the task. There are many people trying to do embodied cognition representationally, and this is just an error,as far as I'm concerned. The good news here is that Barrett knows her Gibson, and explains it well. Chapter 6 is an excellent review of Gibson's theories, and the context in which they arose. It's been a long time since I read something not written by me or Geoff Bingham about Gibson and enjoyed every word; the experience is deeply satisfying. She also ties Gibson's ideas to the work of biologist Jakob von UexkĂźll, and his notion of the umwelt (roughly, the world as it is experienced by a particular organism). Two organisms can occupy roughly the same space but experience very different umwelts (e.g. the ladybug on my finger and I are having very different experiences).Organisms are sensitive to some but not other aspects of the environment, and taking the organism's perspective on the world seriously is a key part of good biology.Barrett argues convincingly that it should really form part of good psychology too.

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Summary 'Beyond the Brain' is an excellent introduction to the logic underlying embodied cognition (why it's a good idea) and to the various candidate mechanisms that support it (how it might work, via Gibson and the

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3/27/2012 10:07 AM

Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists: Review: Louise Barrett's "Beyo...

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architecture of the body). Barrett's background in animal cognition means she has bypassed many of the annoying arguments typically raised by people who only talk about human cognition and who have fallen into the trap of thinking our cognition must somehow be different in kind to these simpler solutions. This has given her a very uncluttered view of the intellectual landscape, and she brings that view to this book. That's not to say she isn't aware of the various annoying arguments; quite the contrary. She spends some time on Adams and Aizawa's 'bounds of cognition' arguments and cuts through a lot of the distracting gloss on their argument that I must admit I had gotten overly concerned with. She also tackles the critique that embodied, perception-action style accounts can only handle movement and things in the now, and can't address 'representationally hungry', 'thinking about things in their absence' problems. The discussion of Portia addresses this; she also describes a simple robot mouse that can, without any memory built into it at all, achieve delayed reinforcement learning. This continues a recent trend in these kinds of books (Chemero's being the obvious other example) of embodied cognition people looking to address

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not only the new questions our approach asks, but also some of the old questions people think we can't handle. I admire this a lot, and it's a trend I hope continues. Read this book, and give it to your friends to read. References Barrett, L. (2011) Beyond the Brain: How the Body and the Environment shape cognition. New Jersey, Princeton University Press. Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Posted by Andrew Wilson at 17:32 +2 Recommend this on Google

Labels: animal cognition, Barrett, Barrett (2010), book review, cognition, dynamical systems, ecological psychology, embodied cognition, extended cognition, Gibson, perception-action, science, theories of psychology

3 comments: Gavin Buckingham Oct 26, 2011 11:09 AM if you want this book to get some greater exposure, why not submit this (very nice) review to Nature or something? Reply

Andrew Wilson

Oct 26, 2011 11:43 AM

I've been thinking about submitting a version of this somewhere. Does Nature do book reviews? Reply

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Gavin Buckingham Oct 26, 2011 12:20 PM Yup, although I dunno if you have to be invited. Cortex does them as well (Dave has submitted many to them in the past), and that gets pretty good exposure these days Reply

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3/27/2012 10:07 AM

HT151 2011-19200 CIP 49-4695 Social & Behavioral Sciences \ Political Science \ Comparative Politics Bell, Daniel A. The spirit of cities: why the identity of a city matters in a global age, by Daniel A. Bell and Avner de-Shalit. Princeton, 2011. 347p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780691151441, $35.00. Reviewed in 2012apr CHOICE. The call "city-zens of the world unite" symbolizes the enduring importance of and unique characteristics associated with cities able and willing to withstand the pressures of globalization. Rather than suggesting the rise of uniformity fostered by globalization across cities, Bell (Shanghai Jiaoton Univ., China) and de-Shalit (Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem) offer a series of fascinating and convincing case studies that counter this view. While the traditional nation-state may find it increasingly difficult to not comply with the global powers of uniformity, cities, motivated to protect their unique identity vis-รก-vis others and in response to external threats and equipped with substantial authority to enact laws, have emerged as mechanisms to both counter the homogenizing effects of globalization and promote a unique ethos. Suggesting that the promotion of ethos facilitates diversity and encourages communication among cities with similar identities, the authors pursue a qualitatively driven comparative case study approach that relies on the "strolling" data collection method. Personally familiar with Jerusalem, Montreal, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Oxford, Berlin, Paris, and New York, in their findings the authors describe unique ethes ranging from religious conviction in the case of Jerusalem to ambition in the case of New York. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. -- A. E. Wohlers, Cameron University

Andrew Delbanco: A Modest Proposal

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Posted: 03/27/2012 12:47 pm Read more Business Ethics , Business Practices , Elite Universities , Humanities , Job Skills , Liberal Arts Education , College News Between Inside Job, Margin Call, and, most recently, Greg Smith's public resignation from Goldman Sachs on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, business has been getting bad press of late -- to put it mildly. The notion of business as a predatory world in which customers are helpless prey has gained traction on the right (the Tea Party) and the left (Occupy Wall Street). Many Americans in the middle find the description convincing. Having spent my life in academia, which has its own problems, I can't say whether business ethics have fallen to the extent that Mr. Smith claims. If so, it's not the first time. Walt Whitman once denounced America's "business classes" for their "depravity" and charged that their "sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain." That was nearly 150 years ago. What I do know is that at the elite universities from which investment firms such as Goldman Sachs recruit much of their talent, most students are no longer seeking a broad liberal education. They want, above all, marketable skills in growth fields such as information technology. They study science, where the intellectual action is. They sign up for economics and business majors as avenues to the kind of lucrative career Mr. Smith enjoyed. Much is to be gained from these choices, for both individuals and society. But something is also at risk. Students are losing a sense of how human beings grappled in the past with moral issues that challenge us in the present and will persist into the future. This is the shrinking province of what we call "the

3/28/2012 10:49 AM

Andrew Delbanco: A Modest Proposal

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humanities." For the past twenty years, the percentage of students choosing to major in the humanities -- in literature, philosophy, history, and the arts -- has been declining at virtually all elite universities. This means, for instance, that fewer students encounter the concept of honor in Homer's Iliad, or Kant's idea of the "categorical imperative" -- the principle that Mr. Smith thinks is out of favor at Goldman: that we must treat other people as ends in themselves rather than as means to our own satisfaction. Mr. Smith was careful to say that he was not aware of anything illegal going on. But few students these days read Herman Melville's great novella, Billy Budd, about the difficult distinction between law and justice. Correlation is not cause, and it's impossible to prove a causal relation between what students study in college and how they behave in their post-college lives. But many of us who still teach the humanities believe that a liberal education can strengthen one's sense of solidarity with other human beings -a prerequisite for living generously toward others. One of the striking discoveries to be gained from an education that includes some knowledge of the past is that certain fundamental questions persist over time and require every generation to answer them for itself. For example, my students are startled to discover that one of the earliest texts of American literature, a sermon delivered by the Puritan John Winthrop while en route to the New World, raised issues that remain as pertinent today as when Winthrop raised them nearly 400 years ago. With regard to unpaid debts, he asked, "What rule must we observe in forgiving?" His answer, drawn from both Old and New Testaments, was that the creditor must "quit that which he lent" if the debtor has no means to pay. Surely the present crisis over mortgage foreclosures makes that point more salient than ever. I also find that more and more adults, many of them retired businessmen, are coming back at mid-life to audit the humanities courses they missed when they were in college. They come back not in order to earn a credential, but because they are looking to deepen their understanding of their own lives through encounters with great books, ideas, and works of art. Perhaps we should take a hint from these "lifelong learners" (as my university describes them) and from the growing number of humanities programs in many hospitals where, as one participant wrote about the value of reading and discussion, "surgeons commune with nurses... secretaries speak with equal voice to administrators; laboratory technicians give their viewpoint to obstetricians" -- all with the effect of increasing respect for one another and for their patients. What these busy professionals are doing is replicating the best kind of college experience-- small classes where students learn to listen, to speak with civility, and, with the help of classic writings, to open their minds to new ideas and perspectives. Perhaps it would be a good idea for executives to sponsor similar internal discussions of ethics and responsibility organized around some of the books they didn't encounter in college. Such discussions could make it a little harder to treat clients as "muppets" (the derisive term in vogue at Goldman Sachs, according to Mr. Smith), or to measure their value by their susceptibility to what traders at Bankers Trust, back in the 1990s, called "Rip Off Factor," or "ROF." No one can say that a revival of the humanities in, or after, college would ameliorate this kind of behavior. But surely it's worth a try.

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ALL THINGS READING AND WRITING

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27 — MARCH 27, 2012

I’ve begun reading Andrew Delbanco’s latest book, College, What It Was, Is, and Should Be, impressed by an essay in the Chronicle Review derived from the book. I’ve only made my way through the first chapter, but there are a several things to note immediately. First, Delbanco dances a little bit with question of what college was. He shows how all of our current debates and lamentations about college life–students are too often debauched, professors teach too little and too poorly, and the college curriculum isn’t focused well enough on getting students jobs–are all of very long-standing, common to our public discourse as equally in 1776 as in 1976 and on to today. At the same time he shows how in some very real ways colleges have already abandoned and are ever more quickly fleeing from ideals that they once embodied, however imperfectly. For Delbanco, the genius of college–as opposed to the professionally oriented university–is primarily to be found in an ethical imperative rather than an economic motive. It’s main value is to establish a kind of personhood that is necessary for citizenship. It’s qualities include the following: 1. A skeptical discontent with the present, informed by a sense of the past. 2. The ability to make connections among seemingly disparate phenomena.

3/27/2012 11:10 AM

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3. Appreciation of the natural world, enhanced by knowledge of science and the arts. 4. A willingness to imagine experience from perspectives other than one’s own. 5. A sense of ethical responsibility. These habits of thought and feeling are hard to attain and harder to sustain. They cannot be derived from exclusive study of the humanities, the natural sciences, or the social sciences, and they cannot be fully developed solely by academic study, no matter how well “distributed” or “rounded.” It is absurd to imagine them as commodities to be purchased by and delivered to student consumers. Ultimately they make themselves known not in grades or examinations but in the way we live our lives. Delbanco, Andrew (2012-03-22). College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be (Kindle Locations 138-148). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition. For Delbanco, these qualities are essential to the functioning of a healthy democracy. He puts this most succinctly and eloquently, I thought, in his adaptation for the Chronicle Review, referencing Matthew Arnold and saying, “Knowledge of the past, in other words, helps citizens develop the capacity to think critically about the present–an indispensable attribute of a healthy democracy.” Amen and a mane. The problem, and Delbanco is, of course, aware of it, is that what college is, and is fast exclusively becoming, is a commodity that is purchased by and delivered to student customers. The economic metaphors for college life are triumphant, and no more clearly so than in our discourse about whether a college education is “worth it.” The question of whether a college education is “worth it” is posed and answered these days in almost exclusively monetary terms. How much does it cost, and how much will you get for the investment? Over and against this rather ruthless bottom line, Delbanco’s descriptions seem noble, but I’m a little afraid that it is so much tilting at windmills (I reserve judgement until I’ve actually finished the book). Only today I was discussing these matters with several of my faculty who are going to be attending the conference at Wake Forest, Rethinking Success: From the liberal arts to careers in the 21st century. Our career development director described to me parents who come to her asking for job statistics for their children as they chose between our small Christian college and

3/27/2012 11:10 AM

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other more well-known universities. The fundamental decisions are not related so much to the the quality of education we could provide, not the kind of transformative potential that her child might realize in an environment at Messiah College devoted to the development and integration of an intellectual, spiritual and ethical life, but whether in fact our graduates get jobs as readily and whether those jobs pay as much as her child’s other options. The difficulty for a College less well known than the Ivies Delbanco focuses on, is to find a rhetoric and an educational program that holds up the flame of the education Delbanco imagines, while also speaking frankly and less idealistically to the ways in which that education can pay off in material ways. It’s not that these are poor questions for parents to be asking; its just that these questions are unrelated to the kinds of things Delbanco is saying College is for and that many of us have believed that it is for. Delbanco, of course, is trying to intervene in useful way to alter the national discourse about what college ought to be about. Without a shift in that discourse, its impossible to imagine College being for what Delbanco says it should be for, except somewhere in the hidden and secret recesses of the academic heart.

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“The college idea still has the power to motivate young adults more than any other form of education we know”—so says Andrew Delbanco in College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be (Princeton University Press, 2012). In America, the college and what is now known as the university are often housed under the same roof and treated interchangeably, but Delbanco emphasizes that they are distinct entities. In fact, the college idea has persisted despite its displacement, and near replacement, by the research idea that is central to universities. One of the virtues of Delbanco’s book is that he sees this distinction clearly. “A college and a university have—or should have—different purposes,” Delbanco writes. Colleges pass down old knowledge; universities create new. The college is, Delbanco argues, distinctively American. The notion that the late teens are a particularly formative age goes back to the Greeks, but this educational idea was given a particular institutional structure in England and then developed—and, crucially, democratized—in America. And if early American colleges are often portrayed (as the historian Richard Hofstadter memorably put it) as “precarious little institutions, denomination-ridden, poverty-stricken, keeping dubious educational standards,” Delbanco, unlike most historians of higher education, describes their virtues at least as enthusiastically as their detractors deride them. What principles animated these little schools, and what purpose did they serve? The American college dates back to Harvard, which persisted alone for more than fifty years in the British colonies before it was joined by William & Mary and Yale at the end of the seventeenth century. Religion dominated the curriculum (Harvard was founded as a school for the ministry), but not to the complete exclusion of subjects like logic, ethics, geometry, history and natural philosophy. The point was for students to learn to see that what Jonathan Edwards called “the university of things” represented a single truth, as it was the product of a single God. A senior-year course on moral philosophy, usually taught by the college president, served as the culmination of the four years. There is, this curriculum implied, a sort of order to the world, and therefore also a series of studies that can help us make sense of it. Harvard’s roots can be traced to a single Cambridge college, Emmanuel College, which was a Puritan stronghold in the seventeenth century and supplied more than one-fifth of the college graduates who came to "On Mad Men, identity is what's fungible, not nature." @Grantland33 on Mad Men and TV's golden age: New England in the 1630s. (Hence Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose name was changed from New Towne in http://t.co/V7sarJUd2 days ago 1638.) The Cambridge colleges, like those at Oxford, resembled cloisters; a gate kept the world out, and a

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great hall fostered exchange within. Teaching and preaching were, for Puritans, closely related activities, linked through their association with a “mysterious force” which the Puritans called grace. The operation of God’s grace leads some Church members to feel themselves drawn suddenly closer to God, just as a similarly intangible force can cause a student to stare rapt at the teacher, his education at least for the moment taking the form of a deep inner change. These central features of the old religious college—curriculum, community, grace—satisfied the student’s yearning to understand the world and to find his place in it. Perhaps most importantly, college gave students a sense of purpose, and a sense of responsibility to the broader community, which they would re-enter upon graduation. Delbanco insists that, as far as student expectations are concerned, not much has changed in the past few hundred years, diversity and technology notwithstanding: “Now, as then, most students have no clear conception of why or to what end they are in college. Some students have always been aimless, bored, or confused; others self-possessed, with their eyes on the prize. Most are in between, looking for something to care about.” What has changed is the college itself, and its sense of responsibility to its students. • Two parallel and mutually reinforcing developments transformed American higher education in the last third of the nineteenth century. The first was the rise of electives, associated most strongly with Harvard and its long-serving president, Charles W. Eliot, who took office in 1869 and stayed for forty years. The second was specialization, represented by newly founded universities with graduate schools, like Johns Hopkins, which opened in 1876. The changes started at Harvard and Hopkins, and quickly spread to the rest of the higher education system. Both developments were the result of a new emphasis on scientific research, imported from Germany by the thousands of American students who traveled to Berlin, Göttingen, and other German universities in the nineteenth century. The new research-oriented professors concentrated on narrower subjects than their old generalist colleagues while at the same time increasing, through their research, the number of subjects that could be taught. By the 1890s, nearly all college faculties had been divided into subject-based departments (like English or History); most top colleges had added research-oriented graduate programs; and some schools required no more than freshman English and perhaps a foreign language before students were free to accumulate credits as they saw fit. The research university has been so successful in America and around the world that we now see it as the norm. But electives and specialization undermined two key aspects of the old college. The first, and most obvious, was the prescribed curriculum and its implication of an ordered world. The basic principle behind the elective system, as Eliot put it in 1885, is that “a well-instructed youth of eighteen can select for himself … a better course of study than any college faculty.” Yet even a glancing acquaintance with the current campus situation suggests that most college students just pick courses that sound interesting, or satisfy requirements most easily; looking back, they often think it might have been useful, at that age, to have someone older tell them what to study and what to read. Colleges today have given up this responsibility to their students: as Delbanco says, “most are unwilling even to tell them what’s worth thinking about.” The second aspect of the old college that was undermined by specialization was the sense of community and common purpose that had animated the older colleges. With faculty split into separate departments, each pursuing its own ends, professors now tend to identify more with their fellow historians or biologists across the country than with the economists across the quad. And without any common courses to bring students together, learning becomes an independent, individualized activity that takes place only in the classroom. “As a significant reality in the contemporary landscape of higher education,” Delbanco writes, “the university as Mad Men, identity is what's fungible, not nature." @Grantland33 on Mad Men and TV's golden age: community barely"On exists.” http://t.co/V7sarJUd2 days ago

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Electives and specialization worked against the old fixed curriculum and the college community, but they were enabled by an even greater change in American higher education: its expansion and democratization. More students in the late nineteenth century meant there could be more professors teaching a wider variety of courses—and those courses would have tuition-paying bodies in the seats. The democratization process actually began before the Civil War, with the proliferation of hundreds of small sectarian colleges, then continued in the late nineteenth century with the founding of new universities and the start of some women’s and black colleges. But the main explosion came in the decades after World War II. Fewer than a quartermillion Americans, or two percent of the college-aged population, attended college at the start of the twentieth century; a number that rose to more than two million by the end of World War II, nearly ten million (roughly one-third of the college-aged population) in 1975, and about eighteen million today. By the late 1940s, as a character in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons says, you could “stand on a streetcorner and spit, and you’re liable to hit a college man.” The democratization of college in America is, for Delbanco, central to what makes the college distinctively American: everyone should have a shot. That’s why he’s so diligent, after giving the progressive story of expanding opportunity, to show the various ways we’ve stalled or slid backward in the past twenty or thirty years. State investment in public universities has declined so much that some schools, like the University of Virginia, which now gets only 8 percent of its funding from the state, have become basically private. Growth in need-based aid is being outpaced by growth in merit scholarships, which tend to go to students who don’t much need the help. The result is that colleges “have lately been reinforcing more than ameliorating the disparity of wealth and opportunity in American society,” making them more like schools for aristocracy than schools for democracy. But the deeper problem, according to Delbanco, is that, even if it were fully implemented, the democratization of higher education, with its attendant emphasis on merit, would actually work against the idea of grace. In theory, at least, we now operate in a meritocratic system in which test scores and grades are what get you into college, not skin color or religion or wealth. But this system corrodes the sense of community and civic duty which is necessary to hold a diverse democracy together. What Delbanco is too gentle to say in his own words is that college graduates today think they’re better people than those who don’t go to college, and as a result feel little sense of responsibility to their community or country. As an older sociologist once berated Delbanco (who went to Harvard in the early 1970s) over breakfast, “You and your whole generation are the smuggest, most self-satisfied in the history of the republic. You figured you had earned what you got, whereas when Jack Kennedy went to Harvard, he knew he was there because of his daddy’s money—and when he got out, he felt he ought to give something back!” “Our oldest colleges,” Delbanco laments, “have abandoned the cardinal principle out of which they arose: the principle that no human being deserves anything based on his or her merit.” To Delbanco’s credit, he eschews a straight celebration of the old college and demonization of the new, admitting that the research university and the democratization of college have been real gains. It is possible in any age to find students and professors who don’t care, just as it’s always possible to find students and professors who are utterly devoted to what they’re doing. Yet Delbanco is willing to assert that there’s a near-palpable “sense of drift” in college life today—which he attributes to the decline of the fixed curriculum (which told students what was worth knowing), the college community (which taught responsibility), and the Puritan concept of grace (which reinforced a sense of civic duty). Of course, the college idea has not been left entirely behind. In the early decades of the twentieth century, several growing universities, led by the likes of Harvard and Columbia, enacted a series of reforms to preserve something resembling the old college: Yale started its colleges to recreate the small community of the old college; places like Chicago and (most radically) St. John’s designed a core curriculum that all students "On Mad Men, identity is what's fungible, not nature." @Grantland33 on Mad Men and TV's golden age: had to take. Some http://t.co/V7sarJUd2 schools retreated from the elective system, creating small honors programs to foster days ago community and general education requirements that said what all students, at a minimum, ought to know.

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provide something like a true college experience for those who pass through them. But he doesn’t seem to have much faith that they’ll succeed in bringing back the most important aspects of the older ideal. • When I was in college (within the last decade), I had the great good fortune to find a true college, in the sense that Delbanco means, tucked away within the larger institutional structure of my school. Two or three dozen of us met twice a week, under the guidance of someone who was technically just an untenured, adjunct professor, to talk about political philosophy. Anyone could come to this series of courses; often some of us had to sit on the floor because there weren’t enough desks. Class never had any agenda other than free discussion—the professor started each period by saying, “Open floor”—but the questions we asked generally circled around one central concern: What is justice? We weren’t asking about justice in the narrow sense of what should be legal, but rather in the broader yet also more intimate sense of what obligations we, as humans, owed to ourselves, our families, our friends and our communities, and how we might deal with the inevitable conflicts that would arise between those obligations. Whether or not we knew it at the time, we were trying to figure out how a person should live. In a quaint touch that added egalitarianism and earnestness to the endeavor, we addressed each other as Mr. Lundin or Ms. Watkins: in class we were all the same, no matter what friendships or other activities we had going on outside. “A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard,” Ishmael says in Moby Dick. He’s telling us about the nature of whaling—it provides an education; it turns boys into men—but also about the nature of college. It’s a community of fairly young people engaged in a nearly religious search for something higher, be it a white whale or wisdom. (An older, slightly crazy person is usually leading the way.) My own experience makes me tend to believe Delbanco when he suggests, as a primary solution to the problems facing the American college, that “faculty must care.” No deep, systemic change is necessarily needed for it to happen. After all, I found this frankly life-changing series of courses not at a small northeastern liberal arts college or even an elite private university, but at a big state school in the South, the kind with tens of thousands of students and an athletics program that threatens to swallow the rest of the university whole. Yet there are at least a couple of icebergs standing in the way. Even—and especially—when faculty care, when they try to teach courses that might force students to think deeply about their own lives, they are not always supported by their administrations. The series of courses that was so important to me and to my classmates has been taught for more than twenty years now, but it has been endangered for at least the last ten. Why should administrators with limited budgets (extremely limited, in the case of a state university fighting for every dime it can get from the legislature) devote funds year after year to relatively small discussion courses, when they could spend the money instead on study abroad programs or new science buildings? There are, after all, lots of students at college these days, and they’re interested in lots of different things. The logic is sound, which only re-raises the problem that the democratization of college, which many intellectuals claim to support, may be playing its part in the destruction of what we most value about it in the first place. A big college population makes a fixed curriculum and a coherent college community not only impossible but possibly also immoral to maintain. Who are the liberal arts majors to tell the rest of the student body what and how they should learn? How would we like the opposite, which is in fact the more likely and “democratic” scenario? (The popularity of majors like business and engineering only sharpens this issue: Georgia Tech, in my hometown, might more properly be called the North Avenue Trade School; Stanford, where I go to graduate school, is essentially a high-class vocational school that subsidizes a small liberal arts "On Mad Men, identity is what's fungible, not nature." @Grantland33 on Mad Men and TV's golden age: program.) http://t.co/V7sarJUd2 days ago

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be. That sort of college might only exist today in a single course, or in a series of courses, or in a few select institutions. But maybe thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s okay. Although Delbanco mounts a strong case for extending this kind of education to as many students as possible, the truth is that it never has been, and probably never will be, for everyone. This entry was posted in Religion, Reviews and tagged college, education. Bookmark the permalink. Tags: college, education â&#x2020;? Chicago Heights

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3/27/2012 9:21 AM

4 • March 2012 SIAM NEWS

Tricky Mathematics

Entertaining and Interesting Experiments among which are all those commonly performed with the Cards. Author: William

Magical Mathematics: The Mathematical Ideas that Animate Great Magic Tricks.

Hooper, MD. Date: 1774. How these volumes got there I never found out, but I assume that my older brother, who already had a degree from MIT, had bought them. Not in the least theoretical, these volumes begin with recreational arithmetic and then cover the waterfront of experimental chemistry, physics, optics, chromatics, acoustics, pyrotechnics (i.e., fireworks), etc. A clip from Volume 1 of Hooper (Arithmetic-Mechanics, 3rd Edition, 1787):

By Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham, Foreword by Martin Gardner, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2011, 258 pages, $29.95. Our whole life is solving puzzles.

-ErnoRubik Some years back at a large family gathering, a third cousin twice removed, a relative whom I hadn't seen in years, recognized me and approached with a deck of cards in his hand. "Take any card," he said, B Ph"[" "look at it, but don't tell me Y l lp what it is. Then put the card back in the deck, anywhere." I complied, after which he gave the deck a few taps and then produced my card. "Wow," I said, feigning surprise, and walked away to where the drinks were. Because of this admitted indifference, I am not your ideal reviewer for this book, which was written by two mathematicians of international reputation; masters of the arts of mathemagic, they have put on shows along those lines. My beau ideal of magic is when the magician produces a rabbit from his hat or saws a scantily clad maiden in two. Although I have enjoyed such shows, they rarely leave me curious enough to ask, "How is that done?" Ditto for mathemagic. I am willing to allow a craft its secrets, but Diaconis and Graham have been more than generous in revealing their smol<_e and

dates to predict the Second Coming and the End of the Wodd. This could well be called "mathematical eschatology," a fairly recent example of which is the entropic eschatology of Oswald Spengler, who speculated about the heat death of the universe. Last, but hardly least, there is recreational mathematics, as in Magical Mathematics. In the books of mathematical history that I have at hand, the only mention of the word "magic" I could find was in the term "magic squares." Yet such commentators as Yuri I. Manin have implied that all of mathematics is by its nature magic. J D . Recreational mathematics · aVlS might be defmed as mathematics for amusement and is often pursued via a variety of "tricks." Many such are elaborated in the book under review. Here are but a few of the things you will find: the I Ching and its magical aspects, de Bruijn sequences, patterns of juggling balls, paper folding, tiling, chain throwing, Hamiltonian cycles, roulette systems with cards, card shuffling, including "a riffle shuffle card trick and its relation to quasicrystal theory." Though not a practitioner, I have been aware of the existence of mathemagic for a long time. When I was about ten years old, a set of old books mysteriously appeared atop the piano in our living room. Here is the full title of the set: . Rational Recreations:

BOOK REVIEW

"Recreation XIII. Thirty soldiers having deserted, fifteen of whom are to be punished, so to place the whole number in a ring so that you may save any fifteen you please and it shall seem to be the effect of chance."

Philip Davis, a professor emeritus in the Division of Applied Mathematics at Brown University, has been reviewing books for SIAM News for more than twenty years. At the same time, he has combined a lifetime ofmathematics, scholarship, and abundant gifts as a raconteur in writing many books of his own. The most recent, Ancient Loons: Stories David Pingree Told Me, * is, as its title suggests, a collection of stories recounted to Davis by his longtime Brown ~ colleague David Pingree-a historian of ancient mathematics and long a m.e mber of Brown's now defunct Department ofthe History !"'S3!! of Mathematics. With additional twists of his own, the ever curious and engaging Davis retells the stories, which, according to the publisher, "trace connections between ancient characters, historical and mythical, and recreate a world in which the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake leads to unexpected pleasures and associations." A copy sent to SIAM News at Christmas quickly disappeared into the briefcase of SIAM executive director (and Brown alumnus) Jim Crowley, who returned it not long afterward. "This remarkable little book by Phil Davis brings together bits of philosophy, history, and mathematics, " he said. "There are few people today who could pull all this together and make it entertaining."

This is a variant of the old Josephus Problem. The contrast between the work of Hooper ami Diaconis-Graham is vast. In the former, the tricks involve elementary arithmetic, most of which a sixth grader should be able to see through. In the latter, the mathematics is very far from grade school and the authors have suggested open research problems. Recreational mathematics has been around for ages and has an assured future. If you are as clever and as fortunate as Erno Rubik (of Rubik Cube fame), you may be able to devise a new trick, a game, or a In Which the Principles of Numbers and device that will earn you a fortune and that Natural Philosophy Are Clearly and Copthe cognoscenti will be able to link to the *An AK Peters Book, published by CRC iously El~-~:cidated, bl_.!!..._Serie§. _of Easy, ~ latestmathematical theories. ·-· - -- Pre"s_ s·-~·~.~ -··· ~ . ............ ~----

Nonetheless, it is clear to m~ that Magical Mathematics is a treasure trove of "The Mathematical Ideas that Animate Great Magic Tricks" and hence an excellent source for people who like to perform such things. Simultaneously, via the histories and biographies embedded in the book, particularly in the chapter titled "Stars of Mathematical Magic," the book is a window into the day-to-day activities of the mathemagicians of the world, and a number of famous practitioners and their art are mentioned by name. The historical section gives a nod to J. Prevost, French author of one of the.earlie'st serious magic books (1584), and more than a nod to his slightly later counterpart, Gaspard Bachet (1612). If you want more dates and personalities, flip the pages of David Singmaster's Chronology of Recreational-Mathematics, where the timeline goes from before 2000 BC to 1996. Recreational mathematics has路 long had its constituencies: those who love it, create it, promote it, publish it, historicize it, and even critique it. In August 1988, for example, the List Art Center at Brown University hosted a show of the many magic squares, magic discs, stars, polyhedra created by Royal V. Heath, a man dissect in the book under review- tedious and boring. Along with historian of mathematics Eric Temple Bell, one might think of mathematics as "the handmaiden of the sciences," or of economics, or even of sports or politics, but the four-millennium-long history of the field displays the wide variety of the uses of mathematics, of its purposes or modes of thought. In the coinage of anthropologist Stephen Jay Gould, these are varieties of mathematical "magisteria," i.e., domains of authority, in which this grand human invention plays out. There is Pythagorean number mysticism, e.g., two is feminine, three is masculine. There is religious or ritual numerical mysticism, e.g., the Trinity, the Number of the Beast-666--in the Book of Revelation. There is Gematria, in which words are assigned numbers and the relation between the numbers feeds back into the words. There is "septolatry," which, as set forth in numerous writings, shows how you can connect the number seven with everything significant. There is calendric numerology or divination, as practiced by John Napier (of logarithmic fame), who used intervals of

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The following is a review by Frank Lambert. “Island” Melanesia, the area covered by this excellent field guide, is one of those regions that are difficult to pinpoint on a map. It covers around 41,700 square miles and includes numerous islands, although dominated by the Bismarck Archipelago and New Caledonia. Birds of Melanesia: Bismarcks, Solomons, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia is the first guide to cover this interesting region, with 501 species, of which 377 are resident. 204 of these are endemic to this region including one endemic family (Rhynochetidae) with a single representative: the somewhat bizarre Kagu. The author, Guy Dutson, is one of the few experts on the birds of this fascinating region and has field experience with the vast majority of species covered. Birds of the Solomons, Vanuata and New Caledonia (Dougherty et al. 1999 – Helm Field Guides) is the only comparable guide, but it only covered the 362 species found on those islands and is now dated. One thing to note is that Birds of Melanesia is an indispensible companion guide to Birds of New Guinea (Beehler et al. 1986) since it covers the Papua New Guinea islands of New Britain, New Ireland, and Manus, which along with Bougainville are most often visited by birders as a side trip from mainland PNG. Birds of New Guinea, however, does not cover these island groups. A series of maps clearly shows those areas that are included are the Admiralty, St Matthias, and Bismarck islands off New Guinea, the Solomon Islands including Bougainville (which belongs to PNG), Temotu (more often called Santa Cruz), Vanuatu, and New Caledonia. One odd thing about the maps, however, is that they do not show topography, which is both disappointing and inexplicable. With so many islands, the book includes a very useful five-page “gazetteer” that associates the 147 main island names with island groups and gives old or alternative names where appropriate (but no geographic coordinates). Introductory chapters provide useful information about each of the island groups, including a limited amount of information on some of the sites where some of the more interesting species can be seen. The introduction also provides basic information on vegetation and habitats, climate, and conservation issues. There is also a comprehensive checklist near the beginning of the book which many users will appreciate. The layout is the typical Helm/Princeton format of text facing plates, these being the work of Richard Allen, Adam Bowley, John Cox, and Tony Disley. Illustrations are of a high standard. The illustration of Eastern Yellow Wagtail Motacilla

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tschutschensis simillima, however, is reproduced too darkly and shows it as having dark brown upperparts (should be olive). Some of the swiftlets seem too plump and short-winged, such as Uniform Swiftlet Aerodramus vanikorensis, which in life is a very slim, long-winged species. The tail streamers of the breeding Little Tern Sternula albifrons seem far too short – the migrant race here is sinensis, which has much longer streamers than other races (though I could not find out about the tail streamers of the rare and local resident form). But these are minor quibbles, and the great majority of the illustrations are excellent. With a relatively limited number of species on many of the islands, this guide should certainly enable the user to identify anything seen well.

The species texts are ordered taxonomically as are the non-passerine plates with a few exceptions where species are sensibly moved to plates that depict confusion species. Passerine plates, in contrast, are divided into groups of plates for each main island group – the Bismarcks, Solomons, Markira, Rennell, Temotu, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia – reflecting major biogeographic differences. As a result, some passerine species appear on more than one plate, though in some cases, such as with Collared Kingfisher Todiramphus chloris, the races on different islands are significantly different, and having the correct race(s) on a plate for a particular island group is very useful. The text opposite the plates is generally very brief, describing only the main identification features and different races where relevant, and includes nothing about vocalizations. Where distinctive races occur this is usually mentioned opposite the plates (though not in the checklist). Instead of using distribution maps, this guide provides a distribution bar with boxes for 14 island groups and utilizing six different colors to indicate status in each part of its range. This arrangement undoubtedly saves a lot of space and in most cases works well. There are pitfalls to this method, however. For example, for Bismarck Black Myzomela one might get the impression that it can be seen on any small island off New Britain whereas it seems only to certainly occur on small islands to the west of this island (as noted in the main text). Also, for this species, it is unfortunate that a single very doubtful sight record for Kimbe Bay is mentioned, thus confounding even more the real distribution of a species that looks superficially very similar to Black Sunbird Leptocoma sericea (especially when bobbing around on a small boat offshore a small island!). All the distribution bars are tabulated over 14 pages in the checklist at the front. The second half of the guide provides more comprehensive information on each species, including detailed descriptions, comparisons with similar species, voice, habits, conservation status, and range. The guide follows IOC names and taxonomy dating from early 2010, but also gives alternatives, as well as the French name and a local name for restricted-range species. The taxonomy is therefore fairly up to date, though I noticed that for some reason Markira Leaf Warbler Phylloscopus makirensis is included within Island Leaf Warbler P. poliocephalus, which is a relatively old arrangement (it is split on the latest IOC list). Since the book was published, Gray’s Locustella fasciolata and Sakhalin Grasshopper Warbler L. amnicola have been split, and it is not clear which of these almost identical-looking species has reached these islands. Despite the perceived remoteness of Island Melanesia, 49 resident species are already of conservation concern and many more may be added in future years. The main problems that need to be addressed immediately are forest loss and the introduction of alien predators, but the effects of climate change on these islands may also prove to be very negative for

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species restricted to mountain tops. Three pigeons are believed to have already become extinct and another four species on New Caledonia are “probably extinct”. Two of these “probably extinct” species are nightbirds – New Caledonia Owletnightjar Aegotheles savesi and New Caledonia Nightjar Eurystopodus exul. It would seem to me rather premature to pronounce nocturnal species such as these “probably extinct” on such a large and poorly-worked island. My bet is that they are still there, waiting to be “rediscovered”. Something to bear in mind if you ever have an opportunity to visit this most fascinating of islands and use this marvelous Birds of Melanesia field guide. One of New Caledonia’s extant inhabitants, the Kagu, is in my top five birds list and unlikely to fall off it… This book has been co-published by Princeton University Press in the U.S. and Christopher Helm in the UK.

Publisher: Princeton University Press Date: February, 2012 Illustrations: paintings Binding: paperback Pages: 447 Size: 6″ x 9.25″ MSRP: $49.95

Birds of Melanesia Guy Dutson Best Price $32.66 or Buy New $32.89

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Reviewed by Frank Lambert on March 19th, 2012. Like

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http://www.slate.com/articles/life/do_the_math/2012/03/how_creativity_works_what_broadway_musicals_really_teach_us_about_collaboration_.html

How creativity works: What Broadway musicals really teach us about collaboration. By Jordan Ellenberg | Posted Friday, March 23, 2012, at 9:00 AM ET | Posted Friday, March 23, 2012, at 9:00 AM ET

Slate.com

Six Degrees of Innovation What Broadway musicals tell us about creativity. Is there a social-network model that explains the success of Cats? GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images. In 2012, with every 20th-century mode of public expression writing its living will, you might not expect the dowdy Broadway musical to have much to teach us about creativity in a networked world. Social scientists Brian Uzzi and Jarrett Spiro say differently, and their research—thanks to its featured billing in Jonah Lehrer’s New Yorker essay on brainstorming and his best-selling book Imagine: How Creativity Works—has now been cited everywhere as a window into the mysterious world of collaboration. Uzzi and Spiro studied 474 Broadway musicals released between 1945 and 1989, analyzing the complex web of collaborations and relationships between producers, librettists, choreographers, and the rest. The sociologists analyzed the features that correlated with success on the Great White Way. The take-away message echoing through the business blogosphere is pretty simple: For optimal innovative bang, your team shouldn’t have too much experience working together, but they shouldn’t be total strangers either. Their relationship structure (quantified by a factor alluringly denoted by the single letter “Q”) ought to be somewhere in the middle—like Goldilocks’ porridge, just right. When Q veers outside the optimal range, the team founders: either they find no common ground at all, or, surrounded by the same old faces, they produce the same old stuff. There’s only one problem—that’s not really what’s in Uzzi and Spiro’s study. But their actual findings are even more interesting! Let’s start with that mysterious Q. It’s made up of two parts. The first is the average number of connections you need to join two random people in a network. That number can be surprisingly small, even in a very big network; for example, you can connect two random Facebook users, on average, . The second part of Q measures the extent to which two people who are connected to the same person are likely to be connected to each other: the “clusteredness” of the network. You might imagine that a highly clustered network, where people glom together into small, interwoven groups, would require long chains of connections to get from one incestuous clique to another. But applied mathematicians in the 1990s, most notably Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz, found that many real-world networks don’t obey that intuitive relation. In real networks ranging from Facebook friendships down to neurons in the hippocampus, small-scale groups are indeed tightly clustered, but the presence of rare but crucial connections between distant clusters means you can hop from any person to any other in surprisingly few steps. Networks with this property are called “small worlds,” and it’s the small worlds that have high values of Q. A network with connections chosen randomly and with no interesting structure, on the other hand, will have a low Q. Which one is the network of Broadway artists like? Uzzi and Spiro found that it depends when you ask. Q starts big in 1945 and then gets bigger, hitting Peak Small World in 1947; at this point, Q is higher than Uzzi considers optimal. Q then steadily drops, passing through the “sweet spot” in around 1950, the year of Guys and Dolls, and bottoming out in the early 1970s. Apart from a brief rise in the late ’70s and early ’80s (I knew there had to be some explanation for Cats) it doesn’t recover. Moreover, the trends in Q track corresponding trends in the financial and artistic success of Broadway as a whole. Shows were more likely to be successful when they were embedded in a network whose Q was not too high and not too low. Associations of this kind can be hard to interpret, but they keep popping up in the social science literature, in contexts from scientific collaboration to hip-hop. What’s the difference between this story and the oversimplification we started with? It’s that Q is not a property of an individual show; it’s a property of the whole network. In mathematical language, we’d say it’s global, not local. That distinction is vital. Suppose you found that countries that were more economically stratified enjoyed better Page 1 of 2

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overall health. It would be nuts to respond by increasing the income differential between yourself and your spouse, on the grounds that economic stratification keeps the doctor away. Stratification, like Q, is a global measure, which applies to the whole society. It is not a local value, one that can be attached to a single person or family. And sometimes global measures matter most. Uzzi and Spiro found little or no relation between success and local measures, such as the extent to which team members had worked with each other on previous shows. The success or failure of a Broadway show had less to do with the relationships between the names in the Playbill than the shape of the broader network at the time the show was produced. Even with simpler measures, you can veer way off track by inferring local conclusions from global statistics. Andrew Gelman’s book Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State provides a telling example. The richest U.S. states, like New Jersey and Connecticut, tend to vote Democratic, while the poorest, like Mississippi and Arkansas, are substantially more Republican. This fact, easy to see on the election-night map, helps drive a popular narrative that the Democrats represent the economic elite. But what’s true at the global level of states is false at the local level of individuals. Richer voters support Republicans; richer states support Democrats. How can this be—if poor people like Democrats more, and poor states have more poor people, why don’t the Democrats win in Mississippi? Gelman’s research identified two reasons. First, Mississippians are more Republican than Connecticuters at every income level, presumably for cultural reasons independent from income. Second, Gelman finds that the relationship between income and GOP voting is much stronger in the poorer states. In Mississippi, rich people skew heavily Republican and the poor tend to support the Democrats. Republicans dominate in places like Mississippi by racking up huge margins among the richest residents. In Connecticut, by contrast, the rich are almost as likely to vote Democratic as the poor. That’s what allows coastal pundits to maintain their impression that Democratic voting goes hand-in-hand with expensive cars and exclusive private schools. The global nature of Q—and the difficulty of using global measures to craft local strategies—might be a disappointment for business people who want to use the lessons of Broadway to out-innovate the competition. But it shouldn’t be. The new social science of complex networks is addressing a different kind of problem, a deeper and potentially more important one. This research is concerned less with how to construct teams to maximize their creativity than with the question of what kind of society maximizes everyone’s creativity. And real progress on that front would be something worth singing and dancing about.

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March 23, 2012 by ArtPlantae Today By Carol Gracie From the time I was a child, plants have always interested me, first for their beautiful flowers, but then because I would always notice something interesting happening on or near the flowers: insects visiting them (sometimes eating them!), other insects mating on them (rather risqué for a 10-year-old), colors or shapes changing; I always wanted to know why. As an adult, I began teaching children and other adults about plants, both informally on nature walks and then on a professional basis at The New York Botanical Garden. Many people already appreciated the beauty of plants, but few gave them more than an admiring glance and failed to get to know the stories behind their pretty faces. It was my job to introduce them to the rich lives of plants and give them a sense of their role in the environment. Like animals, each plant interacts with its environment in some way. Since plants are stationary they have had to evolve creative strategies to accomplish tasks like reproduction, dissemination of their seeds, and protection from predators that are more easily carried out by mobile animals. Plants are particularly important because they are the very basis of life for most other organisms on earth; they can

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manufacture their own food, and without them, life as we know it would not exist. Most of the adults that I taught were in class because they already cared about plants and wanted to learn more about them. However, capturing the interest of kids at the Garden on a school field trip was often more of a challenge. What to do? I found that a “hands-on” approach was best. Let them touch — sometimes even pull apart — what they were studying. Ask them questions about it. Get them to look and discover. When outdoors, I gave them magnifying lenses and let them observe what the insects were doing on/in the flower. The latter idea is easier said than done. The only insect that some city kids knew was the cockroach— in their eyes a creature put on this Earth to be stepped on – and many kids (and some adults) have such a fear of bees that they instinctively flail about when approached by one. Showing them that I wasn’t afraid of 6-legged creatures, and that the insects usually paid no attention to me if I remained still, would often give them the courage to become observers. And what keen observers young plant detectives can be! Once “into it,” they spot things that most adults miss — an insect camouflaged on a tree trunk, one hiding beneath a leaf, ants cooperating to carry something too heavy for one to bring back to the nest alone, etc. Being in the field with an interested child can open one’s eyes. However, I must admit that if a snake suddenly slithered across the trail, an immediate halt to all botanical education ceased. Things that move – fly, crawl, run, and slither — are just inherently more interesting to children. Since snakes have little direct connection to plants, I would share their excitement about the snake and once it had disappeared from view, get them to think about what snakes ate — often frogs or small mammals — and then to consider what those animals ate until we got back to plants, thus following the food chain back to the miraculous plants that didn’t need to “eat” anything else but could manufacture their own food. Of course, someone would always ask about “meat eating” plants, and we were off on another discussion. Several species of carnivorous plants are on display in the greenhouses of The New York Botanical Garden, so I could show them how each traps its prey and explain that the green plants still made their own food and only absorbed certain nutrients, which were lacking in the poor soils where they grew. Although I no longer teach in a classroom setting, I still lead occasional wildflower walks and lecture about wildflowers. I find that the same techniques are effective with adults. I’ve led or co-led over 30 ecotours with a botanical focus, mostly to places in South America, but also to more local destinations. The location is not important. It’s getting people to take the time to really look at things. Once they learn to “stop and smell the roses,” they become interested observers and can enjoy the excitement of discovering something new, even if that something is long known, and only new to them. We have had several artists, particularly natural history artists, travel with us over the years. Because they always seemed frustrated that they didn’t have time to do proper sketches before we moved on, we decided to offer some ecotours that included a separate component for artists. We offered one of these tours to Trinidad and two to the Amazon. On the Amazon tours we had one with the artists traveling together on the same boat with us and one with artists traveling on a separate boat that traveled along with the general natural history boat but was able to take longer stops at places where the artists could complete comprehensive sketches or photos. The artists’ boat would catch up with the other boat later in the day. What we found was that the artists didn’t want to miss anything that people in the general boat were seeing, and they preferred to stay with us, clipping specimens and keeping them fresh in water along the way. We would travel from one locale to another during the heat of the day, with most people on the “regular” boat taking a siesta or reading, while most of the artists were busily working away on the morning’s specimens or attending workshops led by our friend and artist-in-residence (or rather artist-on-board), Katie Lee. In the afternoon, we would be off in the canoes again, enjoying more of the Amazon’s wonders side-by-side with the artists. Over cocktail hour and dinner together we would view what they had created that day and marvel how each chose to focus on different aspects of nature, or used different styles, media, or techniques to depict the same species. As most of us settled in for the evening, we would notice lights on until late into the night on the artists’ boat as they diligently completed their work for the day. We all learned from each other and had a great deal of fun together on those trips. The Trinidad trip was a bit easier since we were based at a lodge with more spacious

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facilities for the artists to spread out. Nevertheless, they generally accompanied us on all excursions, and we often enjoyed sitting in on their workshops. I hope to reach a larger audience with my latest book, Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast: A Natural History. In it I have included details about the lives of 35 plus wildflower species that have interested me over the years. As a photographer I’ve spent long hours in the field plant watching, and in the process learning about the plants’ lives. Knowing what pollinates them, how they reproduce, what eats them, etc. gives me a better understanding of how they fit into the environment and a deeper appreciation for their importance. It’s this information — from my own observations and that of many others — which I have written about in the book. Although I am not an artist I feel that depicting some of these interactions would make drawing or painting the wildflowers more interesting, both for the artist and for the viewer of his/her artwork. About Carol:

Carol Gracie is retired from The New York Botanical Garden, where over her three-decade career she served as Senior Administrator of Children’s Education, Foreign Tour Director, and a Research Assistant on tropical plant collecting expeditions. Aside from her current book, she is the co-author (with Steve Clemants) of Wildflowers in the Field and Forest: A Field Guide to the Northeastern United States (2006), co-author (with her husband, Scott Mori, and others) of A Guide to the Vascular Plants of Central French Guiana (Part 1, 1997; Part 2, 2004), principal photographer for Flowering Plants of the Neotropics (2004), and editor of Guide to the Natural Areas of the Lower Hudson Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, second edition (1981). Carol has five plant species named for her (and one named jointly for her and her husband) as a result of her work in the tropics. Carol and her husband live in South Salem, NY. Share this:

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Posted in botanical art, botanical illustration, Education, general botany, natural science illustration | Tagged botany, education, Plants, teaching & learning | 1 Comment

One Response 1. on March 24, 2012 at 5:39 AM | Reply Gioya De Souza-Fennelly You are so right. I am a middle school environmental science teacher in NYC and workshop leader at

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NYBG.People generally love plants but do not know why. When introduced to the fascinating world that revolves around plants indoors and outdoors you are guaranteed to have them hooked. My urban Title 1 students come from backgrounds where plants played an important part in their grandparents and may be even parents lives and this interest has resulted in some very academic and enriching inter generational relationships.

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Mairi Gillies combines sculpture and horticulture to preserve plants in a new way and coined the word "hortisculpture."

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Mairi will respond to reader's questions on March 26. Send your questions to Mairi. Learn more Betula pedant by Mairi Gillies

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Graphite Artist Announces New Online Course Draw Plants Quickly & Easily at the New York Botanical Garden Ask The Artist with Mairi Gillies Mairi Gillies Creates Lasting Impressions in Botany Education Classes Near You!

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Wendy Hollender (interview) Wendy Hollender Gilly Shaeffer (interview) Today's Botanical Artists Society of Botanical Artists Billy Showell (interview) Billy Showell Sarah Simblet (webinar) Robin Brickman (interview) Mark Granlund (office hours) Wendy Hollender (webinar) Diane Cardaci Katie Lee (webinar) Bruce L. Cunningham (webinar) Jane LaFazio (interview) Jane LaFazio Mally Francis (interview) Kandis Elliot Anne-Marie Evans Margaret Best Elaine Searle Mindy Lighthipe Niki Simpson Anna Knights Helen Allen Birmingham Society of Botanical Artists Hazel West-Sherring John Muir Laws Martin J. Allen Institute for Analytical Plant Illustration

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See books about painting plants

Seeing with Graphite Eyes Students Overcome Their Fear of Drawing in Botany Lab Eradicating Plant Blindness in the 21st Century Using Social Media to Gather Feedback About Student Interest in Natural Resource Management How to Draw Plants for Documentation Investigating the Drawing Process Making Students Aware of Errors During the Drawing Process How do you grade a sketch? Helping Teachers Turn Observers Into Naturalists Empowering Children to Know What They Know Through Art Lesson Plans in Botanical Art & Plant Conservation Anne Marie Evans Discusses Teaching, Learning & Botanical Art The Timeless Value of Naturalist Journals An Interdisciplinary Approach to Learning the Power of Plants Margaret Best Discusses Color in Botanical Art, Provides Tips for Informal Science Educators Generating Interest in Boring Subjects Public Perception of Botanical Gardens Quality Observation is the Common Denominator in Art & Science 7 of 13

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Botanical Wall Charts in the Classroom Lesson Plans in Botanical Illustration Practical Drawing as a Thinking Tool Visualizing Plants with Botanical Symbols Does experience in the arts lead to academic achievement? The Value of Words Over Botanical Illustration Biologist Learns to Draw Plants, Sees with New Eyes Visualizing Life Cycles & Ecosystems Niki Simpson Introduces Digital Composite Botanical Illustrations to Botanical Art Imagery in Scientific Communication The Last Botany Student in the UK Humans First. Then Animals. Then Plants. The Origin of Botanical Field Guides User-friendly Identification Tools for Plants & Animals Students Take First Step Towards Creating Unique Florilegium Make Students Better Observers This School Year The Botanical Artist as Naturalist Remember That Plant You Saw? The Arts & Everyday Learning Why Integrating the Arts into the Classroom May Improve Content Retention Watercolors of the Herbs of Britain Provide Framework for Dichotomous Key Learning with Journals, Notes and Scrolls What makes plants interesting? Ecoliteracy Curriculum Emphasizes Plant Restoration, Natural Dyes Educational Wall Charts Teach Less, Better Plant Identification & Environmental Literacy Outdoor Education & Plant Blindness Scholars Study Images in the Service of Science

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Botany Program for Botanical Artists Launched in UK Olcani: When Plants Are Medicine Botany Education in the 18th Century Thoughtful Observation What do textbooks teach us about plants? Drawing Plant Life Cycles Painting Hawaii's Endangered Plants Researchers Study Renaissance Herbals to Preserve the Botanical Tradition of the Ancient Mediterranean Scientific Illustration in the Elementary School Classroom How Textbooks Contribute to Plant Blindness The Botanical Drawings & Discoveries of Joseph Hooker The History of Botany in the US Seeing Plants Equally

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volunteers work to convert unused railroads into trails for healthful outdoor activities. Search their national TrailLink database to locate a trail near you. Sierra Club Trails Locate trails for hiking, cycling, climbing, and many other outdoor activities. Go to Sierra Club's Trails. Disclosure

Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging Technologies American Museum Natural History New York, NY June 25, 2011 - June 24, 2012 Joseph Hooker - Naturalist, Traveller and More Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Dec. 26, 2011 - April 9, 2012 Treasures of the Royal Society Library The Royal Society Dec. 5, 2011 - June 21, 2012 Portraits in Bloom Westport Public Library Westport, CT January 3 - March 28, 2012 Pepper in Image and Word Lloyd Library and Museum Cinncinati, OH January 14 - April 13, 2012 Wild Green Things: The Art of Anne Ophelia Dowden Andersen Horticultural Library

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Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Chanhassen, MN January 18 - May 2, 2012 Notes on a Natural Quandry Cumberland Gallery, TN February 18 - March 31, 2012 Botanical & Natural Studies 2010-2011 Limelight Gallery Lewisham Library Catford, London February 28 - April 6, 2012 Conserving Plant Biodiversity in a Changing World: A View from NW North America UW Botancal Gardens Seattle, WA March 1-31, 2012 Native Pennsylvania, A Wildflower Walk Hunt Institute Pittsburgh, PA March 2 - June 29, 2012 The Orchid Show: Patrick Blanc's Vertical Gardens New York Botanical Garden New York, NY March 3 - April 22, 2012 Get coupon code to save 20%! Inspired Elegance: The Botanical Illustration of Deborah Kopka Library House Antiques and Art Grand Rapids, OH March 3 - April 6, 2012 NEW Lewin: Wild Art Library of New South Wales Sydney, Australia March 3 - May 27, 2012 Selections from the Reichenbachia Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden Ginter Gallery II March 10 - April 22, 2012 NEW Plant Portraits: The Botanical World Through the Eyes of Artists Shenkman Arts Centre Ottawa, Ontario, Canada March 23 - April 25, 2012 11 of 13

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THIS WEEK Nourishing Art TAG Gallery Santa Monica, CA March 27 - April 21, 2012 Read L.A. Times Review THIS WEEK Wildflowers of Mineral King Theodore Payne Foundation Sun Valley, CA March 30 - June 30, 2012 Margaret Flockton Award Exhibition 2012 National Herbarium of New South Wales, Australia March 31 - June 29, 2012 Earth Day Exhibitions at McKinney Avenue Contemporary Dallas, TX Watershed Animal Stories Mine…Mine… April 14 - May 19, 2012 Focus on Nature XII: Natural History Illustration New York State Museum April 28 - December 31, 2012 When They Were Wild: Capturing California’s Wildflower Heritage The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens Expected 2013 Art and Nature ASBA Members & Philadelphia Society of Botanical Illustrators Bartram's Garden Philadelphia, PA April 26, 2013 Add your exhibition to this list!

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March 23, 2012 by ArtPlantae Today

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Last week we learned how to conduct and record observations of plants in the field. Today we are treated to a reference serving as a fine example of how the life histories of plants can be written and, more importantly, introduced to a general audience. In Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast: A Natural History, Carol Gracie shares the life histories of more than 30 spring-blooming plants growing in the northeastern United States. A seasoned writer, teacher and interpretative naturalist, Carol is able to “talk plants” to an audience whose interest may range from no interest at all to pure passion. The plant profiles Carol writes are more than a string of facts about a plant’s morphological parts and its dry taxonomic history. Each profile is a history lesson sprinkled with interesting insights into how plants work. Using a friendly conversational tone, Carol touches upon complicated topics such as pollination ecology, species introduction, plant taxonomy, ethnobotany, horticulture, medicine and climate change without bogging readers down with the type of information that makes eyes glaze over. To maintain her easy-going storytelling approach, Carol chose not to clutter her profiles with references and footnotes. Instead, she waits until the end to cite her sources. She also went out of her way to keep her book free of the confusing technical jargon botanists speak. However, since some botanical terms cannot be translated into everyday English, Carol also provides a glossary of terms at the end of her book. More than a guide to 30 popular plants of the northeast, this book is a guide to seeing. While reading Carol’s book, be prepared for your observation skills to improve without any effort on your part. This magical transformation occurs because of Carol’s detailed color photographs highlighting key characteristics of plants and the significant changes that occur during each plant’s life cycle. After viewing Carol’s 500+ images, you will discover you’ve developed a search image for the subtlest of details such as tiny persistent styles and the gentle arching of reflexed stamen. I like Spring Wildflowers for several reasons. First, it doesn’t read like a textbook. It is easy to get lost in one plant profile after another. Second, it is a fascinating introduction to the plants of the northeastern US. Having lived around chaparral and coastal sage scrub all my life, there were plenty of opportunities to be surprised as I turned the pages of this book. What a treat to see the snowflake-looking flowers of the miterwort (Mitella diphylla) and its boat-shaped fruit. Not to mention the drama of an emerging skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) and the intriguing morphology of featherfoil plants (Hottonia inflate). What I like best about Spring Wildflowers is that it piqued my curiosity about East Coast plants. My fascination with plants and how they go about their business was greater at the bottom of page 233 than it was at the top of page 1. This is a good thing!

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Published earlier this month, Spring Wildflowers is Carolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most recent book. This book is recommended for teachers, naturalists and all plant enthusiasts in the northeastern US, armchair naturalists everywhere, and anyone striving to write interesting, easy-to-read plant profiles for a general audience. See inside Spring Wildflowers Literature Cited Gracie, Carol. 2012. Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast: A Natural History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Related Bringing Plants to the People by Carol Gracie Share this:

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Mairi Gillies combines sculpture and horticulture to preserve plants in a new way and coined the word "hortisculpture." Mairi will respond to reader's questions on March 26. Send your questions to Mairi. Learn more Betula pedant by Mairi Gillies

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Anna Knights Helen Allen Birmingham Society of Botanical Artists Hazel West-Sherring John Muir Laws Martin J. Allen Institute for Analytical Plant Illustration

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The Timeless Value of Naturalist Journals An Interdisciplinary Approach to Learning the Power of Plants Margaret Best Discusses Color in Botanical Art, Provides Tips for Informal Science Educators Generating Interest in Boring Subjects Public Perception of Botanical Gardens Quality Observation is the Common Denominator in Art & Science Botanical Wall Charts in the Classroom Lesson Plans in Botanical Illustration Practical Drawing as a Thinking Tool Visualizing Plants with Botanical Symbols Does experience in the arts lead to academic achievement? The Value of Words Over Botanical Illustration Biologist Learns to Draw Plants, Sees with New Eyes Visualizing Life Cycles & Ecosystems Niki Simpson Introduces Digital Composite Botanical Illustrations to Botanical Art Imagery in Scientific Communication The Last Botany Student in the UK Humans First. Then Animals. Then Plants. The Origin of Botanical Field Guides User-friendly Identification Tools for Plants & Animals Students Take First Step Towards Creating Unique Florilegium Make Students Better Observers This School Year The Botanical Artist as Naturalist Remember That Plant You Saw? The Arts & Everyday Learning Why Integrating the Arts into the Classroom May Improve Content Retention Watercolors of the Herbs of Britain Provide Framework for Dichotomous Key Learning with Journals, Notes and Scrolls

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What makes plants interesting? Ecoliteracy Curriculum Emphasizes Plant Restoration, Natural Dyes Educational Wall Charts Teach Less, Better Plant Identification & Environmental Literacy Outdoor Education & Plant Blindness Scholars Study Images in the Service of Science Botany Program for Botanical Artists Launched in UK Olcani: When Plants Are Medicine Botany Education in the 18th Century Thoughtful Observation What do textbooks teach us about plants? Drawing Plant Life Cycles Painting Hawaii's Endangered Plants Researchers Study Renaissance Herbals to Preserve the Botanical Tradition of the Ancient Mediterranean Scientific Illustration in the Elementary School Classroom How Textbooks Contribute to Plant Blindness The Botanical Drawings & Discoveries of Joseph Hooker The History of Botany in the US Seeing Plants Equally

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Botanical Gardens Learn about your local garden at www.publicgardens.org. National Park Service Search for national parks at the National Park Service website at www.nps.gov. National Environmental Education Foundation's Nature Center Guide. Find your local nature center. Rails-to-Trails Find a trail for hiking, walking, cycling or inline skating. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and its volunteers work to convert unused railroads into trails for healthful outdoor activities. Search their national TrailLink database to locate a trail near you. Sierra Club Trails Locate trails for hiking, cycling, climbing, and many other outdoor activities. Go to Sierra Club's Trails. Disclosure

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Westport Public Library Westport, CT January 3 - March 28, 2012 Pepper in Image and Word Lloyd Library and Museum Cinncinati, OH January 14 - April 13, 2012 Wild Green Things: The Art of Anne Ophelia Dowden Andersen Horticultural Library Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Chanhassen, MN January 18 - May 2, 2012 Notes on a Natural Quandry Cumberland Gallery, TN February 18 - March 31, 2012 Botanical & Natural Studies 2010-2011 Limelight Gallery Lewisham Library Catford, London February 28 - April 6, 2012 Conserving Plant Biodiversity in a Changing World: A View from NW North America UW Botancal Gardens Seattle, WA March 1-31, 2012 Native Pennsylvania, A Wildflower Walk Hunt Institute Pittsburgh, PA March 2 - June 29, 2012 The Orchid Show: Patrick Blanc's Vertical Gardens New York Botanical Garden New York, NY March 3 - April 22, 2012 Get coupon code to save 20%! Inspired Elegance: The Botanical Illustration of Deborah Kopka Library House Antiques and Art Grand Rapids, OH March 3 - April 6, 2012 NEW Lewin: Wild Art Library of New South Wales Sydney, Australia March 3 - May 27, 2012 10 of 12

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Selections from the Reichenbachia Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden Ginter Gallery II March 10 - April 22, 2012 NEW Plant Portraits: The Botanical World Through the Eyes of Artists Shenkman Arts Centre Ottawa, Ontario, Canada March 23 - April 25, 2012 THIS WEEK Nourishing Art TAG Gallery Santa Monica, CA March 27 - April 21, 2012 Read L.A. Times Review THIS WEEK Wildflowers of Mineral King Theodore Payne Foundation Sun Valley, CA March 30 - June 30, 2012 Margaret Flockton Award Exhibition 2012 National Herbarium of New South Wales, Australia March 31 - June 29, 2012 Earth Day Exhibitions at McKinney Avenue Contemporary Dallas, TX Watershed Animal Stories Mine…Mine… April 14 - May 19, 2012 Focus on Nature XII: Natural History Illustration New York State Museum April 28 - December 31, 2012 When They Were Wild: Capturing California’s Wildflower Heritage The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens Expected 2013 Art and Nature ASBA Members & Philadelphia Society of Botanical Illustrators Bartram's Garden Philadelphia, PA April 26, 2013 Add your exhibition to this list!

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I’ll be honest; when I read the press release for Carol Gracie’s forthcoming book Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast: A Natural History, Princeton University Press had me at “In a book that hearkens back to an earlier era of natural history…” Rather than trying to cover in a cursory manner the vast number of species to be found in her geographic area of study, Ms. Gracie has wisely selected a few dozen and presents them in multi-faceted minute detail – not only botanically but historically and sociologically - as well as in vivid visual representation with over five hundred supporting photographs. Needless to write, I’m very much looking forward to getting “stuck-in” to a careful reading and examination of it for a full review. 0

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The Kaufman Field Guide to Advanced Birding “If you wish to know, seek first to understand.” When the statue of Kenn Kaufman is finally unveiled in the (alas, still yet to be built) Birding Hall of Fame, these words should be inscribed in bold letters across the front of the pedestal upon which it stands. John Riutta | February 13, 2012 | 0 Comments

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http://t.co/rJwO8b13 8 hours ago Well the FFFs (fake female followers) are back. This latest batch even has followers of their own. Who would follow fake Twitter accounts? 12 hours ago "You don't tug on Superman's cape." - Jim Croce @DianneBirdgCoo: IMG_4286-2 by -winnu#bcbirding #birding http://t.co/Cvzb0bVQ 12 hours ago http://t.co/F6EcmkzB Wow! Now that's an obscure book upon which to base a movie script. 12 hours ago

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Leupold Katmai Binocular to be Discontinued Perhaps the most unfortunate news discovered at the 2012 SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nevada was that of the discontinuation of the Katmai binocular by the American optical firm Leupold. John Riutta | January 25, 2012 | 0 Comments

New Discovery: Minox Pocket Tripod As an enthusiastic user and proponent of the Minox MS 8Ă&#x2014;25 Makroskop since its introduction, I have long maintained that it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t receive nearly as much attention as it deserves by the vast majority of bird watching, hunting, or general outdoor journalists. John Riutta | January 20, 2012 | 0 Comments

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FLASH! Filson / Le Chameau Wellies to be Produced Well-informed hunters, bird watchers, and all others who pursue an activity requiring prolonged plodding over wet or muddy terrain know the value of a well-designed, soundly-constructed Wellington boot. John Riutta | January 20, 2012 | 0 Comments

Meopta MeoPix iScoping Adapter Demonstrated at 2012 SHOT Show While news of the Meopta MeoPix iScoping Adapter for the iPhone 4 and 4S has already been published in The Well-read Naturalist, actual images recorded through the scope have not yet been â&#x20AC;&#x201C; until now. John Riutta | January 19, 2012 | 4 Comments

FLASH! New Nikon EDG VR Fieldscope Unveiled Nikon has unveiled its latest addition to both its spotting scope line-up as well as its premium-level EDG product family: The EDG VR 85 Fieldscope. John Riutta | January 18, 2012 | 0 Comments Popular Recent Comments Archives Life Everlasting; the Animal Way of Death Meopta to Introduce New Digiscoping Adapter for iPhones

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Meopta MeoPix iScoping Adapter Demonstrated at 2012 SHOT Show The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate Forthcoming Title: The Lord God Bird Life Everlasting; the Animal Way of Death Forthcoming Title: Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast Newly Noted: The Kirtlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Warbler Feathers; the Evolution of a Natural Miracle Ranger Rick Mobile Apps for Children Ellen: I've been following Jon's work for a few years - have taken a couple of the courses his school offer Julie Zickefoose: Thank you, John Riutta, for this lovely mention. I cannot wait until the book is in your hands. It m John Riutta: It was a pleasure to meet you and your colleagues at Meopta Surujh. I am very pleased to learn that Surujh: Thank you for taking the time to stop by the Meopta booth and introducing the public to the MeoPix! John Riutta: A good question Norm - and one I asked. The original model will be designed for Meopta and similarly Archives:

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Review: Petrels, Albatrosses, and Storm-Petrels of North America: A Pho...

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“Wow!” That, or something similar but perhaps less fitting for a family website, is likely the most common reaction of someone seeing an albatross for the first time. Or, for that matter, Petrels, Albatrosses, and Storm-Petrels of North America: A Photographic Guide. First of all, this is one large, heavy book. And then, when opened, you’re greeted by a plethora of attractive photographs and detailed maps in a well-designed layout. But do the contents of this book live up to the favorable first impression? Petrels, Albatrosses, and Storm-petrels of North America is a photographic identification guide to these birds (also called tubenoses) by Steve Howell, who is probably the foremost expert on their identification. These are not birds that you are likely to see from land. You have to make a concerted effort to see tubenoses, which usually means going on a boat (“pelagic”) trip. But it’s worth it. However, once you see them you will find that they are not the easiest birds to identify. Many look frustratingly alike, and when you compound that with the less-than-ideal viewing situations inherent to pelagic trips, you will understand why a book such as this one was desperately needed. This guide includes all of the approximately 70 species that have been recorded in North America. That last sentence seems straightforward, but needs to be expounded upon a bit. First, it is “approximately 70 species” due to the dynamic taxonomic status of these birds. There are 70 accounts here, but some treat multiple taxa that could be distinct species. Second, Howell includes two birds – Solander’s Petrel and Madeiran Storm-petrel – that are assumed to occur here, but have yet to be confirmed. Last, “North America” means exactly that; this book’s geographic coverage is waters within 370 km (200 nautical miles) from land from Alaska and Canada south through the Caribbean to Panama. The accounts are broken down into three sections: Petrels (including Shearwaters); Albatrosses; and Storm-Petrels. Each of these is further broken into subsections that group similar birds. Each section and subsection is preceded by an extremely helpful introduction that includes general identification tips and comparison photos.

Species Accounts

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Each account includes: Size – length and wingspan in centimeters; bill and tail measurements where appropriate Identification Summary Taxonomy Names – origin of scientific and common names, if known (neat addition) Status and Distribution Similar Species Habitat and Behavior Description Hybrids Molt – wing molt timing, for the most part Altogether, each account comprises one to four pages of text. Large, detailed range maps are included for all regularly-occurring tubenoses, with colors representing breeding and at-sea ranges, and molting areas. Arrows indicate the direction of migration routes, with numbers giving the months of their occurrence. Birds that occur in both the Atlantic and Pacific have separate maps for each.

Photographs Each account, save one, concludes with a series of photographs showing the bird in a range of positions and plumages. The lone exception is Townsend’s Shearwater, which is illustrated with a painting by Ian Lewington comparing Townsend’s with other small shearwaters. The photo captions highlight specific field marks and identification tips, and also include the photographer and the location and date the photo was taken.

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Given the challenging conditions of pelagic photography, these photos are great. And some are truly spectacular, such as the Great Shearwater on page 5, which instantly became one of my favorite bird photographs ever (see below). But perhaps the most useful of all the photos are those that include multiple birds, of different species, which allows direct comparisons. I only wish there were more such pictures here. The only other complaint I had about the pictures was that I felt they were too small and some didn’t show enough details, especially the aforementioned shots with multiple birds. However, after some feedback from others and spending some more time with the book, I no longer think this is a valid criticism. Yes, it would be nice if the pictures could be a bit larger, but even as they are they do an amazing job of depicting these birds as birders are likely to see them in the field.

Introduction A 50-page introduction describes tubenoses, ocean habitats, taxonomy, conservation concerns, and field identification. The latter section, the largest at 21 pages, begins with a warning that “what follows may seem an almost overwhelming amount of information to digest”. And, indeed, it is intimidating. But Howell has a knack for taking even the most technical and arcane of subjects and making them understandable. This introduction, as well as the various introductory sections throughout the book, is worth reading and re-reading. The main thing I can think of that would improve this guide would be to have Lewington illustrate every species. But, presumably, that’s being saved for the upcoming field guide that he’s working on (also with Howell, and others, for Princeton). This book will obviously be of most help to North American birders, but it would be useful to western European birders as well since many of the birds covered can also be found in the eastern Atlantic.

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Great Shearwater © Steve N. G. Howell

Recommendation Petrels, Albatrosses, and Storm-Petrels of North America: A Photographic Guide is absolutely required for anyone interested in the identification of these wonderful birds, and is one of the best family identification guides, period. If you have ever been, are planning to go, or even think that you might someday go on a pelagic trip, then you should get this!

Publisher: Princeton University Press Date: January, 2012 Illustrations: photographs Binding: hardcover with dustjacket Pages: 507 Size: 7.25″ x 10″ MSRP: $45.00

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ShareThis Category: Advanced ID, Family Guides Tags: albatrosses, petrels, Petrels Albatrosses and Storm-Petrels of North America: A Photographic Guide, Steve N.G. Howell, storm-petrels Disclosure: The item used to produce this review was a complementary review copy provided by the publisher. Related Posts Albatrosses, Petrels and Shearwaters of the World Two New Guides from Princeton University Press Review Roundup: January, 2012 Review Roundup: In Print, May â&#x20AC;&#x2122;08 Review Roundup: February, 2012

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Maine Outdoor Journal | Field Notes: How to Be a Better Birder, by...ME!

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Derek Lovitch, a career biologist and naturalist with a life-long passion for birds, now lives in Pownal. He and his wife, Jeannette, own and operate the Freeport Wild Bird Supply, which serves as a vehicle to share their passion for birds, birding, and bird conservation. Derek goes birding nearly every day, all year long, and blogs about it here. entry 1 of 775 | next >

How to Be a Better Birder, by...ME! Mar 23, 2012 03:41 PM 0 comments, below Categories: Gear, News Tags: Birding, Freeport Wild Bird Supply, Derek Lovitch, How to Be a Better Birder, Books, Town: Freeport My first book has hit the shelves, and I hope that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll join us here at the store on Saturday, March 31st at 3:00pm for a launch party to celebrate the publication of HOW TO BE A BETTER BIRDER!

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Derek Lovitch has contributed to these categories About this site Beyond Maine Gear Issues News Skills/Tips Staying In Trips

And you thought that I’ve just been writing this blog for the last couple of years!? Many of the topics that I often discuss in the blog, such as the effects of weather on bird migration, finding rarities, and using NEXRAD radar to analyze migration are covered in a greater depth in my book than I could hope to achieve here. But hopefully you’ll find it as accessible and conversational as I strive for in these entries. Join us for a presentation here at the store on March 31st as I share tips and takeaways for birders of all levels who want to learn how to bird like the experts. Using the Sandy Point Morning Flight phenomenon as a case study we’ll learn how geography, weather, and habitat combine to provide outstanding birding opportunities, maximize our time in the field, and challenge ourselves to improve our identification skills. Following the talk, I’ll sign first editions of HOW TO BE A BETTER BIRDER, so this is an excellent chance to pick up a copy for your bookshelf or as a gift for a fellow naturalist or birder. Of course, we have a pile of books already out at the store, and I’m happy to offer a signature at any time, should you so desire. In this short, accessible book, I “provide a crash course in advanced birding that capitalizes on technological innovation as well as good old-fashioned observation. With a light, deft touch, Derek provides inspirational chapters on advance field identification; birding at night; birding and habitat, geography, and weather; vagrants; and how to combine passion and purpose to participate in the birding and conservation world at large,” according to my publisher, Princeton University Press. “HOW TO BE A BETTER BIRDER is not the first book to raise the curtain and reveal the secrets of the best birders around, but what Derek does better than anyone else is combine the best practices of field identification with explanations of how technology is being used to find and track birds. Here, readers will discover how weather patterns affect migrating birds, how weather radar tracks populations of migrating birds even at night, and why simply by considering geography as they plan their outing they can increase their chances of seeing certain species.” So I hope that you’ll join us on the 31st for the presentation, and a reception with refreshments to follow. The book is available where ever books are sold, and you can purchase it online also through our e-store. And please become a fan of the book’s Facebook Page for updates on presentations and appearances, examples and anecdotes related to concepts within the book, and more. Report Abuse Add a Comment

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How to be a Better Birder | Vancouver Sun

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March 22, 2012. 8:06 pm • Section: Bird Watch The heading of today’s post is the title of Derek Lovitch’s new book from Princeton University Press. How to Be a Better Birder ($19.95) is for birders who have moved from the beginner stages and want to hone their skills. The book is broken into nine chapters that describe advanced identification, birding by habitat, geography, effect of weather, at night, birding with a purpose, vagrants, a New Jersey case study and ‘patch’ lists. The author raises an interesting point that I took for granted after years of field observation. Many field guides focus on field marks such as the colour of legs, length of wings or shape of the bill. Once you master the basics then the field marks can lead to more details such as differences between age classes, hybrids, or subspecies. Lovitch suggests the improving birder look at the whole bird. A general shape and movement can indicate the species from afar without seeing detailed field marks. The other chapters provide guidance on how to focus searches for species by where they live or gather. Understanding the preferred places birds like to live makes finding them easier. When birds can be found is important too. Following a storm event can knock birds down into forests or blow seabirds close to shore. The general thrust of this book is that to advance as a birder will require targeting your searches to places and times best suited for each species. There are some helpful information on recent electronic tools and citizen science projects for the birder. If you can identify most birds in your neighbourhood and want to learn more so that you can really enjoy the fun of birding wherever you go, then Derek Lovitch’s book will be a useful guide to hours of enjoyment in watching our wild birds. Share:

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3/27/2012 9:25 AM

How to be a Better Birder | Vancouver Sun

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3/27/2012 9:25 AM

Popular (Computer) Science 9 Algorithms that Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas that Drive Today's Computers. By John MacCormick, Prince-

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type is to give explanatic;m& that, without

importance is that PageRank was the first

oversimplification, are understandable to a general audience. MacCormick succeeds ton University Press, Princeton, New brilliantly at this. He lays out clearly the Jersey, 2012, x + 219 pages, $27.95. problems to be solved and the ways in which they arise in programs used by the Despite the widespread popular interest reader every day; then, patiently, with a in computers, there are very few good, popular introductions to the cenwealth of beautifully chosen tral ideas of computer science. examples and analogies, he 9 Algorithms that Changed builds up the key ingenious the Future is certainly one ideas behind each of the algoof the best that I have seen. By Ernest Davis rithms, and makes it clear how MacCprmick presents the centhey work. A reader new to tral ideas behind eight algocomputer science will certainly .rithms, or categories of algorithms, one per have to read slowly and to think, but the chapter: effort will be well rewarded. When the technical details become too difficult to 1. Indexing for information retrieval explain, MacCormick says so; he never tries to "dumb things down." 2. PageRank, therankingmethodusedby Google The book assumes almost no mathematics-only integer arithmetic and modular 3. Error-correcting codes arithmetic-and almost no computer sci4. Public-key cryptography ence-only experiences, such as running 5. Pattern recognition: nearest-neighbor search engines and using A TMs, that are methods, decision trees, and neural part of everyday life in 2012. In a proof that networks the halting problem is uncomputable, he 6. Data compression introduces the idea of a program running on 7. Consistency maintenance m dataits own text; he spends four pages formulatbases ing this idea for the benefit of a reader who 8. Digital signatures ha·s never consciously run a program on any input at all, and has no idea that a program A ninth chapter discusses uncomputable could double as an input. problems (this is the "ninth algorithm" of The only discussion that I thought the title). MacCormick concludes with a could be improved was that of PageRank. chapter on the prospects for future "great MacCormick devotes half of that chapalgorithms"; I did not find this discussion ter to the "random surfer" stochastic convincing or even thought-provoking. model, an analogy that I have never The algorithms, MacCormick says, were considered very useful for understanding chosen to satisfy three criteria. First, they PageRank. Its only real value is that it must be part of programs used daily by the allows PageRank to be connected to the man on the street. Second, they must be large mathematical literature on computaddressed to specific tasks rather than genering stationary clistributions for Markov ic problems. Third, they must be theoryprocesses, which is not .relevant to the oriented rather than hardware-related. A intended reader of this book. A hydraulic fourth criterion, one presumes, is that their model-the pages are reservoirs, the links explanation must be accessible to the audiare pipes; the total. outflow from Pis proence; ·the fast Fourier transform, for example, satisfies MacCormick' s first three crite- . portional to the amount in P and divided evenly among the . pipes, .the ·PageRank ria at least as well as many of the algorithms is the steady state-is just as accurate he chose, but could hardly be'explained in a and avoids the confusing and irrelevant general-audience book.

great success of "crowd-sourcing." The book is impressively free of hype. If anything, I thought it was a little too lowkey; it could have reasonably included a little more "gee whiz!" stuff. Given the two chapters on search engines, why not include a few of the numbers that indicate the sheer scale of the things (numbers of web pages indexed, of languages dealt with, of user queries per second, of machine cycles per query, of networked PCs per data center, and so forth)? In the chapter on pattern recognition, why not mention the car that drove itself·across the country-not, actually, the most difficult technical accomplishment in computer vision, but one of the most astonishing. In the chapter on PageRank, why not trumpet Google's other great triumph of crowd-sourcing, the Google spelling corrector? Let me also mention an omission of a different kind: The Further Reading section for the chapter on uncomputable problems should certainly include Hofstadter' s

BOOK REVIEW

Gi5del, Escher, Bach. In one respect the author and the reader

have been ill served by the publisher; the quality of some of the illustrations is very poor. Those on pages 117 and 119 illustrating lossy compression of images are printed so badly that one can hardly tell the low-quality images from the high-quality images, and the whole point is lost. Likewise, the screen shots on pages 180 and 181 of the output when JPEG and executable files are opened in Excel ate almost unreadable. They are garbage, of course, but· the reader, should be able to see that they are garbage. I hope that these flaws can be ftxed in future printings,. or; if that is not practical, that the images can be put on the web, with a ·URL given in the text. But these are very small blemishes in what is, overall, an extraordinary achievement in the daunting task of presenting computer science for a popular audience. Ernest Davis is a professor of computer science at the Courant fnstitute of Mathematical Sciences, NYU.

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Newsjournal of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

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Predictive Policing By Dana Mackenzie Philip K. Dick got jt wrong. In 1956, in a story _called "Minority ~eport" (l~rer made)nto ~ movie), the science··fiction writer ,envision.e d a world in which police could identify crimes before they happened. In the story, a panel of three "precogs" used their powers of extrasensory perception to foresee these future crimes. The police would then prevent the crimes by arresting the perpetrators-to-be. More than half a century later, Dick's vision of predictive policing is coming true, at least in part. This summer, police in Santa Cruz, California, began using computer models to identify "hotspots" where crimes are more likely to be committed on a particular day. Dick got the story wrong in two important respects, however. First, the new predictive policing is based on places, not people. "The models say nothing about which individuals are committing the crimes," says Jeffrey Brantingham, an anthropologist at the University of California at Los Angeles. Thus, the issues of free will and civil liberty that permeated "Minority Report" are not really relevant.

D D

Second, the 21st-century version of predictive policing does not rely on ESP. In reality, no clairvoyance is requiredonly mathematical modeling.

Crime Begets Crime Around five years ago, Brantingham began talking with UCLA mathematicians Andrea Bertozzi and Lincoln Chayes about the possibility of using mathematical models to understand criminal behavior. The conversations led to a National Science Foundation grant and a burgeoning research program that has grown to include undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs, working in close cooperation with the Los Angeles Police Department. The fundamental idea behind predictive policing is that crimes beget other crimes. For example, when a burglary is committed at a certain location, the likelihood of another burglary at the same location in the next few days is greatly enhanced. Criminals really do return to the scene of the crime. The probability of burglaries near the original crime scene also increases, as either the original bl}rglars or copycats seek other targets. At the same time, many burglaries are not related to previous burglaries. They are part of a background crime rate that

In addition to the accompanying article, Dana Mackenzie has written recently _for SIAM News about isogeometric analysis and the mathematics qf imaging the coremantle boundary region deep within the earth. For such articles, combined with extensive writing for more general audiences, he received the 2012 Communications Award of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics. Commending him for "a remarkably broad and deep body of writing for experts and nonexperts alike, " the award committee pointed out that Mackenzie's "work focuses largely on mathematics itself, but also touches geology, climate change, astronomy, academic mathematics as a profession, and even the game of chess. " He is the author of the forthcoming book The Universe in Zero Words: The Story of Mathematics as Told Through Equations (Princeton University Press, June 2012). ·

is stationary in time but variable in place. This assumption is very natural; all of us

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io tnodal e-dffuqullkes, called c:,tochas\ic. w1tn a probabilistic, agent-based moaet in declustering." which individual burglars move randomly on a grid and choose targets based on their Earthquakes, it turns out, have a lot in perceived attractiveness. Computer simulacommon with crimes. Every region has a certain unchanging background risk of tions showed the emergence of the hotspot earthquakes. In addition, there is a timeeffect. In a subsequent paper, Bertozzi and Short dependent risk of aftershocks, particularly after a major quake. Stochastic declusterstudied a simpler, deterministic model, with ing is a statistical method for parsing functions representing the density of crilninal agents and the risk of crime at any earthquake data into "background" events given place or time. These functions - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - satisfy a system of two reaction- The breakthrough toward a model diffusion equations. The research.with real-world applicability came in ers proved, for instance, that hotspots form when rando:inly occur- .the form of a method seismologists ring background crimes are dose use to model earthquakes, called enough that the "areas of influence" "stochastic declustering." of individual crimes overlap. At this stage, the mathematiand events that are aftershocks (or precurcal models were highly theoretical. The sors) of other quakes. Obviously, earthagent-based model would require informaquakes that are closer in space and time tion about how individual crilninals move, are more likely to be related. The same which could be obtained only from trackprobability distributions, or "kernels," ing devices placed on every crilninal or that are used retrospectively to determine potential crilninal. The deterministic model the relatedness of past earthquakes can involves parameters like the diffusion. rate also be used prospectively to estimate the or the distance scale at which individual likelihood of future ones. crimes start forming clusters, whose valMohler applied the same type of analyues are unknown. ''The model I've just sis to one year of burglary data from described is too myopic," Bertozzi says. the Los Angeles San. Fernando Valley. "We can tell you everything about an idealHe flagged neighborhoqds in which the ized society, but the real world is not that model indicated that burglaries were more way." likely to occur. Of. c.ourse, if you flag Crimes and Earthquakes 100% of the neighborhoods in the city, you will correctly -"pieqict" every crime The breakthrough toward a model that occurs, but you will.·not generate any with real-world applicability came when useful information. Mohler found that if another postdoc, George Mohler, joined he flagged the 10% of the city at highest the group. Mohler had heard from a risk each day, he correctly _predicted the colleague, statistician Rick Schoenberg, location of 660, or 25%, of the 2627 burabout a method that seismologists use glaries in the data set. At this point, Zach Friend, a crime analyst for the Santa Cruz Police Department, read an article in The Los Angeles Times about Mohler's work and contacted him Optimization S.A. Vavasis, University of Waterloo to see if he would like to try his model iri Supercomputing B. Norris, Argonne National Laboratory action. Mohler spent a few months develControl and Systems Theory ·oping the software and working with the P.S. Krishnaprasad, University of Maryland, College Park Dynamical Systems police to decide what the output should look E. Sander, George Mason University like. The system went online in July 2011. Orthogonal Polynomials and Special. Functions P. Clarkson, University of Kent, UK Every day at 4:00 PM, Friend collects Geometric Design J. Peters. University ofFlorida the crime reports for that day and feeds Geosciences · them into the software. The computer L. Jenkins, Clemson University · Life Scle~ces . .. works out the probability of a burglary T. Kepler, Duke University Imaging Science · in each 500-foot by 500-foot grid cell in S. Siltanen, University of Helsinki, Finland Santa Cruz over the next day. Friend idenAlgebraic Geometry · E. Allman, University ofAlaska Fairbanks tifies the ten grid cells with the highest Uncertalnty Quantification M. Gunzburger, Florida State University probabiljty and tells police officers to pay special altention to those areas. This may mean just driving their cruisers through SIAM News Staff the areas during the times when they are J.M. Crowley, editorial director G.R. Corbett, editor not doing anything else. According to

Policing continued from page 1

know of "bad neighborhoods." Curiously, though, previous efforts to computerize the collection of crime data tended to underestimate the importance of the background crime rate and overemphasize the recent trends. Several big-city police departments currently use a method called CompStat (short for Computer Statistics or Comparative Statistics): All recent crime complaints are plotted on a map and compared with statistics for previous years; "hotspots" of unusual activity are identified. "I've been to the CompStat meetings," says Bertozzi. "The police get together in a gigantic room in downtown Los Angeles, and go over the data division by division on a map and discuss what they will do in the ~ next few weeks to respond to it." .~ .'CenipStat has been credited with sig' n.ifioanfly reducing crime rates jn New f 'fork, ~here it was first introduced; it t brougl:\t h$ll'd data to an enterprise that Jiad p_revtously depended on anecdotes { img intuitiorl. Nevertheless, CompStat has .some.jim,hatiorts. When the meetings are ~he'id ,.weekly, ·as in Los Angeles, the police cannot respond to trends on shorter time scales. It is also a purely reactive approach. Police are sent to patrol places where crimes have already occurred. There is no attempt to construct mathematical models of the spread of crime to nearby locations.

The First Models Bertozzi, Chayes, Brantingham, and Martin Short (at that time a postdoc) started

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Editorial Board

P. Boggs, Sandia National Laboratories P. Castro, Eastman Kodak Company C. Castillo-Chavez, Arizona State University E. Cumberbatch, The Claremont GrGduate Sc/wol P.W. Davis, Worcester Polytechnic Institute B.A. Fusaro, Florida State University M. Heath, University of Illinois.'· , N.J. Higham, University of Manchester · C.J. Holland, U.S. Department ofDefense, The Pentagon R. Mattheij, Technische Universiteit Eind/wven, The Netherlands · G. Melinint, CEA, Bruyeres-Le-Chatel, France R. Spigler, Universil)i of Roma Tre, Italy G. Strang, Massachusetts Institufe of Technology

I.E. Block, SIAM Managing Director, Emeritus: Contributing Editor

Representatives, SIAM Activity Groups Linear Algebra J. Nagy, Emory University Discrete Mathematics R. Haas, Smith College Mathematical Aspects of Materials Science I. Fonseca, Carnegie Mellon University

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C.A. Mehne, associate editor

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See Policing on page 3

Policing continued from page 2

Friend, about 20% of the blocks flagged by the computer are places that the police would not have anticipated as high-risk. Two months into the project, the data look very encouraging. Six arrests have been made as a result of the computer "tips," including one that was~prominently featured in a New York Times article. In a downtown garage that had been ffagged as high-risk, police found and arrested two women who were peering inter Cirrs. According to the Times, one of the woril.en had an arrest warrant:outstanding, and the-other was carrying ii.legiu 路drugs. Perhaps.... rlio;e importantly, biirgl_aries were down 路21%.-in..S~ta {:Qiz in July 2011 compared with July 2QJOk.This reversed the trend of the frrst half of 2011, when the burglary rate had been higher than the previous year's. In a department hit by staffing reductions, Friend says, predictive policing "allows us to be more effective with our resources." The reaction within and outside the department has been very positive. In November, the Santa Cruz predictive policing experiment made Time magazine's list of the top 50 inventions of the year. Unfortunately, as Martin Short points out, the Santa Cruz experiment is not "scientifically rigorous," because it does not compare the results of predictive policing to those of business as usual. (Perhaps burglaries would have dropped by 27% anyway.) The limitation was at the request of Santa Cruz, which in any case was arguably not large enough to conduct a full-blown randomized controlled trial. Los Angeles definitely is large enough, and that will be the next step for Mohler (now at Santa Clara University) and the UCLA team. The Los Angeles Police Department started a randomized .controlled trial of Mohler's predictive policing software in October. Mohler expects to release results in May.

Mathematicians Spark Boyc of Elsevier Journals In a January 21 blog post, Timothy Gowers, a mathematician at the University of Cambridge, declared his intention "to refuse to have anything to do with Elsevier journals from now on." Gowers, a 1998 Fields Medalist, was making public his earlier personal decision neither to publish papers in any of Elsevier's journals, nor to referee papers or serve on the editorial boards of any of them. His statement initiated a boycott that, as this issue of SIAM News goes to press, has been joined by more than 6200 scientists, with mathematicians accounting for about 20% of the total. Elsevier, based in Amsterdam, is a large commercial publisher of scientific and medical journals, including about 90 in mathematics. Four of particular interest to the SIAM community are Journal of Computational Physics, Linear Algebra and Its Applications, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, and Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis; leading

Elsevier biomedical journals include Cell and The Lancet. In a follow-up statement released shortly after the boycott began, Gowers and 33 other mathematicians, including current and former SIAM presidents Nick Trefethen and Doug Arnold,

Randy LeVeque, chair of the journal subcommittee of SIAM's Publications Committee, and Ingrid Daubechies, president of the International Mathematical Union, expanded on Gowers's reasons for the actions against Elsevier. In the statement, titled "The Cost of Knowledge," the group cited the high cost of subscriptions to Elsevier journals, as well as the publisher's practice of requiring that libraries purchase journals in bundled packages, making the "journals that they actually want" extremely expensive. Other commercial publishers engage in similar practices, but the group settled on Elsevier as the most conspicuous offender. Along with cost issues, the follow-up statement made several charges related to Elsevier's standards for its journals. Specifically, the statement claimed that in some cases papers or material from papers published elsewhere have appeared in Elsevier journals, without credit to the original authors, and that, when alerted to the plagiarism, Elsevier failed to take action. Also cited was the publisher's manipulation of commonly used quality 路 measures, such as impact factors, to inflate the reputations of some of its journals. The boycott occurs at a time when a host of questions have been raised

Obituaries

paper in the Journal of

Jack Warga, a highly regarded PolishAmerican applied mathematician, was a

in which he introduced the notion of relaxed

Mathematical Analysis and Applications,

Gang Violence So far, the researchers have emphasized burglaries over violent crimes like murder. According to Friend, there is a reason for this: "Criminologists have found that [property crime] is a predictable act and that you can deter it simply by having a police presence in the area." Violent crime is harder to predict and to deter. Gang-related violence might be an exception to this rule. Undergraduate research groups at UCLA have studied mathematical models of gang-related crimes in the Hollenbeck area of Los路Angeles, which has about 30 active street gangs. Gang-related crimes are highly clustered, and the computer can often identify a gang as the likely perpetrator. From a mathematical point of view, "These are well-behaved gangs!" says Kym Louie, a senior at Harvey Mudd College who has worked on the project for three summers. Bertozzi and George Tita, a criminologist at the University of California at Irvine, have worked on agent-based models of gang rivalries, or what Bertozzi calls "bottomup models." Such models have proven useful for illustrating how a gang-rivalry network might form. While they still cannot make predictions about individual people, the researchers hope to incorporate additional individual-level data from the LAPD to make their models of gang activities and retaliatory behavior even more realistic. According to Brantingham, one key to 路the success of the UCLA research program has been the supportive attitude of the Los Angeles Police Department, especially in the early years, when the research was very theoretical. "We've been very careful not to overpromise," he says. ''We've never pushed the idea of mathematics as a silver bullet. Good science has to be done in small, incremental steps. Now, after about a half dozen years, we are moving in a more practical direction, and we feel cautiously optimistic." Dana Mackenzie writes from Santa Cruz, California.

University from 1966 until his retirement in July 1993. He worked in the aerospace industry before moving to Northeastern; he held a Weizmann Memorial Fellowship at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, in 1956 and 1957, and spent a sabbatical year there in 1973. During 1981 he was on sabbatical leave at Tel Aviv University. Jack (originally Yitzhak) was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw; his father was a furrier, and the family lived on Bielanska Street, in the city center. Unlike many families in the Jewish community, they spoke Polish rather than Yiddish at home. Yitzhak studied at a Polish school, where he became deeply interested in the Polish language and literature, especially poetry. While in school, he belonged to a socialist youth organization, and it was there, as he wrote in his memoirs, that he acquired his idealistic approach to life. In later life, he retained a very good literary Polish, if a bit old-fashioned. In the late 1930s, in the face of growing anti-Semitism and hooligan attacks, his parents sent him to Brussels, where relatives were living, for further studies. This probably saved his life. His mother and younger brother perished in the Holocaust; his father survived, sheltered by a Polish friend. Yitzhak was a brilliant student, but his education in Brussels was interrupted by the German invasion of Belgium. He escaped to Vichy France and later managed to emigrate to the United States via Spain and Cuba. After the war Jack resumed his education in the U.S., which culminated in a PhD in mathematics from New York University in 1950. Working initially in industry, he was by 1966 manager of the mathematics department in the R&D division of the aerospace corporation Avco. The mathematical problems that he encountered during this period inspired his interest in optimization and control theory, to which he made seminal contributions. The most notable are presented in a landmark two-part 1962

existence for a broad class of optimal control problems, and derived necessary conditions for a relaxed control to be optimal. Jack maintained his career-long interest in relaxation and optimality through studies in a variety of contexts. His pioneering work on these themes is the subject of his classic monograph Optimal Control of Jack V\ Differential and Functional Equations (Academic Press, 1972; take translated into Russian, 1977). Although Arki this work was fairly abstract, Jack asserted with that his experiences in industry had proexcl foundly influenced his research; he was ated most comfortable working on problems Thi! with a clear connection to an application ciall area, which opened the way for intuition Thn and mathematical analysis. botl: A keen interest in nonsmooth control syshis 1 terns led to Jack's formulation, in 1975, of disk new generalized derivatives for nonsmooth and functions, now referred to as "Warga's duri derivate containers." Concepts of genertop alized derivatives emerging around this Uni路 time, including Warga's derivate containued ers, played a crucial role in the subseadjr quent development of optimal control and J; optimization, in which nonsmoothness has to 1 had a dominant role. Other areas to which con' Jack made important contributions include lou. controllability conditions, higher-order usee optimality conditions, numerical methods, stan optimality conditions for optimal control erne problems with state constraints, time delays, mur and with min- max costs, and differential and games. nal Alex Ioffe recalls his first exposure to elm Jack's research, at the 1966 International mac Congress of Mathematicians in Moscow. imp Alex, after presenting a short communieve: cation on the subject of relaxation, was

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New growth from an old church Reviewed by Pat M arrin

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LATINO CATHOLICISM: TRANSFORMATION IN AM ERICA’S LARGEST CHURCH By Timothy M atovina Published by Princeton University Press, $29.95 The future is in the numbers. Census data and recent surveys project a continued, dramatic growth of the U.S. Latino population, fueled by immigration and higher birth rates than other demographic groups, against a declining population of white Americans of European descent. This trajectory has special implications for the U.S. Catholic church, which is now approaching 40 percent Latino membership. Notably, half of all Catholics under age 25 are Latino. Since 1960, Latino Catholics have accounted for 70 percent of all growth among U.S. Catholics. Without this surge, the U.S. Catholic church, which has also seen a major exodus of Euro-Catholic members, would be posting a decline similar to many mainline Protestant churches. What does it all mean? Timothy M atovina’s new book, Latino Catholicism, offers a comprehensive look at how the numbers are driving a process of transformation within America’s largest church. Matovina, a professor of theology and the director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, draws on current population data, surveys, history and multidisciplinary research to create a rich narrative of Latino Catholicism from the Spanish conquest to today’s projections for a potentially seismic shift in both the national and religious identity of the United States. The book is an essential tool for pastoral planners at every level in the church, for anyone engaged in the debate over immigration reform, for parish ministers facing the complex challenge of multicultural integration as it impacts human services, liturgy and faith formation. It is also a valuable guide for anyone seeking a better understanding of the political and religious implications of the changing face of America and its democratic institutions. M atovina begins with an important history lesson. The first English settlers in the New World landed 120 years after the arrival of Spanish Catholics in the Caribbean and well after the Spanish had conquered M exico and extended northward into the southeastern and southwestern Worshipers stand regions of what would become the continental United States. during a M ass Yet American history taught in most schools assumed Anglo-Protestant honoring immigrants dominance as the country expanded westward, displacing native peoples at St. John the and seizing the northern half of M exico in the 1850s, regarded as an Evangelist Church in inevitable expression of “M anifest Destiny.” Changing borders made Riverhead, N.Y., Oct. Latino Catholics, established in these territories for 250 years, foreigners 30. (CNS/Long Island in their own land. As millions of immigrants arriving from Europe flooded Catholic/Gregory A. into the Southwest, Mexican-American citizens were exploited and Shemitz) discriminated against. The racist suppression of Latino culture and religion continued well into the 20th century, with protracted legal battles needed to secure voting rights and equal access to education and public accommodations. Even within the Catholic church, ethnic power politics determined hierarchical appointments, creating a legacy of exclusion for Hispanics seeking recognition within their own church. M atovina notes that in 1970, Latinos were 26 percent of the church but were represented by only 1 percent of its bishops, while Irish Catholics at 16 percent had 56 percent of bishops. Today, bishops of Latino descent are still only 10 percent of 300 U.S. bishops, in part due to the failure of the church to attract Latino vocations to the priesthood, the only pool for appointment to the hierarchy.

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M atovina’s chapter on the state of Latino leadership in the church provides a fascinating but often discouraging look at the rise and fall of Latino influence at the national level from strong post-Vatican II support for Latino ministry to more recent setbacks in the crisis-ridden, financially-strapped U.S. church. In 1972, Latino leaders began a series of five national conferences called Encuentros, whose purpose was to produce a national pastoral plan for Latino ministry. The meetings elicited public commitments from the national conference of bishops to

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address the special needs of the growing Latino Catholic population. In 1984, the bishops’ conference formed a national Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs, giving voice and resources to support a more effective response to Latino needs. But in 2006, a major reorganization of the conference reduced the secretariat to a subcommittee of a new umbrella, Cultural Diversity in the Church, cutting staff and funding overall. Latino advocates noted that the national pastoral plan had gone unfunded and also that these new cuts coincided with major payouts in the clergy sex abuse crisis, a blow to the Hispanic community, with its strong family values, and a lost opportunity to increase ministry when it really mattered. M atovina addresses the complexities of incorporating new immigrants into the church while promoting unity. This includes the debate over whether “national parishes” that preserve language, culture and devotional practices postpone integration or are a necessary stage in moving new groups into the broader, multicultural church. Catholics of M exican, Puerto Rican and Cuban descent, like earlier German, Irish, Italian and Polish immigrants, have long defended their national parishes. It is likely that future inculturation will include a range of options, from parishes representing a single culture, to dual-culture or multicultural territorial parishes, as immigrant groups enter mainstream American Catholicism.

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Another tension affecting Latino entry into the American and Catholic mainstream is the question of whether assimilation into the dominant culture is always a desired goal, since “Americanization,” evident over several generations, often results in loss of traditional culture and religious identity. Preserving Catholic values and beliefs supports gradual integration for Latinos within ethnic enclaves while they achieve economic and educational gains that put them on an even footing with other American groups. Once heavily concentrated in the Southwest (Mexican), South Florida (Cuban) and New York (Puerto Rican and Dominican), many Latinos, especially new immigrants, are now spreading across the country, going anywhere jobs are available and often creating new Latino majorities within older pockets of Catholics in the traditionally Protestant Midwest and South. The presence of undocumented immigrants is challenging Catholic congregations that were once immigrant, but are now established, to welcome newcomers in need of controversial advocacy and basic material support. The fate of church-supported immigration reform this year may depend on how successful the bishops and local pastors are in promoting multicultural Catholic unity over nativist fear and division. While M atovina does not shrink from controversial questions or unknowns in his assessment of Latino Catholicism, he remains upbeat about the future and the contributions Latinos have to offer the church and nation. A history of resisting injustice and discrimination has deepened Latinos’ spiritual, liturgical and communal identity as Catholics. Strong lay participation in ministry, and movements like Cursillo, Charismatic Renewal, the growth of small Christian communities in parishes, an emphasis on care for the poor and a history of leadership by women are only some of the gifts Latinos bring to the larger church. Ready or not, the Catholic church in the United States for decades to come will increasingly reflect its Latino members and the dynamic transformation now under way. [Pat M arrin is editor of Celebration, NCR’s worship resource. Contact him at pmarrin@ncronline.org. Visit celebrationpublications.org/conference to learn about “Eucharist Without Borders,” Celebration’s April 11-13, 2012, conference in Rio Rico, Ariz., on the role of the church in immigration reform.] Section: I. Book Reviews

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Gonsalves: Bees provide the model By Sean Gonsalves March 29, 2012 2:00 AM

As a young boy raised in a rural community of upstate New York, Tom Seeley spent much of his time alone, exploring the "shady hardwood forests" and "sunlit abandoned fields" around his home. Next to an old farmhouse, Tom — who would grow up to be professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University and one of the world's leading experts on honeybees — discovered a beekeeper's hives. "Sitting beside one, I could see bees landing heavily at the entrance with loads of brightly colored pollen, I could hear the hum of bees fanning their wings to ventilate their nest, and I could smell the aroma of ripening honey," he explains in his critically acclaimed book "Honeybee Democracy." Friday evening, Seeley will be at Falmouth High School to give the final lecture of the Marine Biological Laboratory's Falmouth Forum series, co-sponsored by the town's 300 Committee Land Trust. On Saturday morning, he'll give another sweet bee talk at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster, sharing his insights on what these fascinating vegetarian insects can teach us wingless two-legged primates about optimal group decision-making and why New England town meetings are near-ideal forms of democracy. It turns out, natural selection isn't exclusively about "survival of the fittest" (Herbert Spencer's misleading phrase), or Tennyson's "nature, red in tooth and claw." Group cooperation is also a feature of evolutionary history — and honeybees are a quintessential example. Reading Seeley's book, I was amazed to learn that bees not only dance and talk to one another, they actually debate, reach consensus on where to create new hives, and then, in a swirling swarm cloud, precisely navigate their way to the chosen spot that turns out to be the optimum locale. I also learned the term "queen" bee is a bit of a misnomer that says more about human culture being projected onto nature than it does about the actual social organization of bees. Bee colonies do have "queens," but they're not the bosses. There's a division of labor among bees and serious discussion on new hive locations, but they operate without a leader. It's more accurate to think of bee colonies as one living organism, with each bee representing a different cell in the body politic. Seeley's research demonstrates how optimal outcomes can naturally spring from democratic processes, with implications for collective decision-making in human societies. "Of course, I always caution people about the caveats. It works for bees because they're all in it together," he told me. With large human groups that have deep and abiding disagreements, bee democracy doesn't apply. But the cooperative code evolution provided bees can inform human practices — on a small scale. "The New England town meeting really has it right. It may be messy and slow at times, but it really is one of the best forms of democracy," he said. Ultimately, Seeley said, evolution is about competition (between different genes, not people — social Darwinists take note). "But what people have lost sight of is that sometimes genes do better if the organism they build cooperates with other organisms. ... Where high cooperation evolved, it's usually because the environment is highly dangerous." However, he said, even with groups embroiled in conflict, "that doesn't mean there isn't room to nurture cooperation."

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Gonsalves: Bees provide the model | CapeCodOnline.com

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Town meeting-like decision-making is a good example of this principle in human practice — so much so that Seeley has distilled what he calls the "five habits of highly effective groups" based on his observations of bee life. Of course, it's not all sweetness and light among bees. If honeybees had their own USA Today, he said, the headlines would speak of the "sub-lethal" impact that human-made pesticides are having on bee colonies and the harsh living conditions of migratory beekeeping. "About a third of all the honeybee colonies in the nation are trucked into the central valley of California every year to pollinate the almond orchards. That's very hard on honeybees," Seeley said. On a lighter note, when I asked if bees need a new Hollywood agent or if depictions in the movies and literature are correct, Seeley told me about his role as scientific adviser to the "Bee Movie." The popular kids' movie is riddled with inaccuracies, he said, most notably the notion of male bee workers. In bee colonies, it's actually the ladies that do all the work. But he did extract a promise from the movie's producer. "I told him to make scientists like they were in the Bmovies I saw as a kid, where scientists were saving the world and got the girl in the end; not the nutcases we see portrayed nowadays." Email Sean Gonsalves at sgonsalves@capecodonline.com.

If you go Dr. Thomas Seeley, a world authority on the social behavior of bees • 7:30 p.m. Friday, Falmouth High School, 874 Gifford St., Falmouth; 11 a.m. Saturday, Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, 869 Main St., Brewster • For more on bees, go to http://blogs.capecodonline.com/cape-cod-beekeeping to read Times' copy editor Julie Lipkin's blog Copyright © Cape Cod Media Group, a division of Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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A Cinema Rasik's View of Global Issues

Essential Technology for Society's Growth - Wisdom of Robert Shiller

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Quick Search The last three centuries have been owned by England and America. No other country or continent in the world has been able to compete first with England and now with America. There were several reasons for this dominance, industrial innovation and naval supremacy being two often cited. But underlying these was the foundation that allowed old England and today's America to grow industrially and militarily.

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That foundation is the critical technology of finance. Today the U.S. Dollar is the unquestioned reserve currency of the world. In the 19th century, it was the British Pound. England established the modern foundations of central banking and its financial innovations allowed England to grow strong in a way France and Prussia could not match. Today, America is unmatched in the scope and farsightedness of its financial innovations.

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This progress has been ignored or misunderstood by traditional philosophers, historians and thinkers. Very few think of finance as a technology, a critically needed technology that can help create and maintain what is termed as a "Good Society". Instead, as a result of the 2008 credit bust, finance is treated with derision if not outright vilification. As Professor Robert Shiller of Yale writes: "Hostility runs high towards societal institutions that are even tangentially associated in people's minds with finance. This hostility is reminiscent of the public state of mind during the last major world financial crisis - the Great Depression after 1929 - which led ultimately to a degree of unrest that shut down much of the world economy and contributed to the tensions that led to World War II." This makes his new book Finance and the Good Society timely and important. Just a quick look at contents of Part Two of this book would make you look differently at Finance. For example, Professor Shiller discusses "Finance, Mathematics and Beauty" and takes a look at "Financiers among Artists and Other Idealists". Part One of the book takes into account today's public hostility and examines the various organs of the body of financial capitalism. If you wish to understand the beauty of financial theory that has inspired great minds and its application to economical development of modern society, read Finance and the Good Society by Professor Shiller. Below we review a few sections.

Why is Finance Critical? Professor Shiller has argued often that the growth of a country is dependent on the growth of its financial system. We recall him warning in 2009 that efforts to reduce the size of the American financial system would result in slowing the pace of American recovery. This view was prescient. This has been the weakest economy recovery ever. Professor Shiller points out: "The gross value added by the financial corporate business was 9.1% of U.S. GDP in 2010. ... By comparison, it was only 2.3% of GDP in 1948". To those who are troubled by this, Shiller says: "...19.7% of the U.S. labor force in 2012 - supervisors, security personnel, members of the military, was involved in guarding in some form. The high percentage of our citizens paid to guard us and our installations and possessions is at its essence surely more troubling than the percentage engaged in the substantially productive activities of finance. Yet relatively few of us seem bothered by this statistic." So again, why is Finance critical?

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"In fact, finance has been central to the rise of prosperous market economies in the modern age - indeed this rise would be unimaginable without it." What is Finance? "The word finance is commonly thought of as the science and practice of wealth management - of enhancing portfolios, managing their risks and tax liabilities, ensuring the rich get richer." The above is just one aspect of finance.

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"At its broadest level, finance is the science of goal architecture - of the structuring of the economic arrangements necessary to achieve a set of goals and of the stewardship of the assets needed for that development."

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Professor Shiller tells us that the word finance actually derives from the classical Latin term for "goal" - the Latin word finis, which is usually translated as end or completion. He explains further:

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"Finance does not embody a goal. Finance is not about "making money" per se. It is a "functional" science in that it exists to support other goals - those of society."

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Financial Innovations and Financial Capitalism Professor Shiller writes: "Financial capitalism is an invention, and the process of inventing it is hardly over. ... It will mean designing new financial inventions that take account of the most up-to-date financial theory, as well as the research revolution in behavioral economics and behavioral finance that has explored the real human limitations that inhibit rational and humane decision making." In his section "The Inexorable Spread of Financial Capitalism", Professor Shiller describes how financial innovations emanating from Amsterdam, London, and New York are developing further in Buenos Aires, Dubai, and Tokyo. Specifically, he writes: "But China, India, and Russia have seen a flourishing of financial sophistication and amazingly high economic growth rates." Professor Shiller also strikes a note of worry: "To be sure, financial innovation is still percolating, at a slow and conservative level, but major new financial inventions cannot be launched now because of fear." This would be sad because, "Creating and implementing such inventions will be the best tactic to deal with economic inequality." This is perhaps the central message of Finance and the Good Society.

Finance, Aggression in Society, Global Conflict Management Dennis Gartman, author of the globally distributed The Gartman Letter, likes to point out that historically societies with large numbers of unemployed young men have sent them to the border. The tactic is to let these young men vent their aggression externally rather than internally. Professor Shiller devotes sections to discuss the concept of aggression in human beings. He brings up the ideas of Albert Hirchman (author of The Passions and the Interests) that man "as he really is" is driven by passions that often create conflict. Then Professor Shiller writes: "A financially sophisticated economy provides an outlet for aggression that is substantially constructive and does not result in loss of human life." Any one who has traded financial instruments or worked on a trading floor can easily see how human aggression can be channeled into trading, a much safer channel than was available to our ancestors. Professor Shiller also discusses the work of Bruce Russett and John Oneal in their book Triangulating Peace. "They conclude that three variables, measured for any given pair of countries, help explain the likelihood that these countries will be at war....Among these factors, Russett and Oneal found economic interconnectedness to be the most important...measured by volume of trade flows relative to GDP." Professor Shiller links this to the 1773 work of Charles de Montesquieu: "Montesquieu argued centuries ago that "movable wealth" prevents wars by creating a sudden and intense consequence for any military action. If countries are financially free to invest in each other, and have done so but have the freedom to withdraw these investments, then the situation creates an incentive for owners of that capital to use their influence to prevent war." Finally Professor Shiller brings this all together:

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"Financial interconnectedness may help prevent war for deeper reasons than those associated with the perceived risk to capital movements. Financial interconnectedness provides another outlet for aggressions,

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a civilized stage for the playing out of aggressive impulses and an environment in which exposure to risk is carefully chosen by each player, not determined arbitrarily by a military commander." His message: "Thus financial development may lead to a kinder and gentler - if not altogether kind and gentle - society." Aristocracy, High Society, Caste Systems & Financial Democratization

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Today, we see a "financial aristocracy" of sorts in American society. A few, only a few, can aspire to reach the levels of high finance that offer rich rewards, rewards far beyond those available to the majority of American workers. This may be one reason American society now views financial firms as intrinsically unfair and even detrimental to society at large.

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Professor Shiller takes an opposite view. He argues that the concept of "aristocracy" or "high society" is fading around the world. He is right. For example, the New York Times reported recently that access to jobs and financial support is creating upward social mobility for Indian people from "lower castes", to use a British-Portuguese word. Shiller himself gives the example of Yale, the university where he has taught for some thirty years:

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"Even my own university has seen a gradual transformation over the centuries from a training center for elite American families to an educational institution serving the people of the world. It has also become a financially sophisticated institution, given its success in investing its endowment....[its] goals are substantially social and benevolent, and reflexive of the views of a unique intellectual community." This financial sophistication is unique to American Universities. Their counterparts in the rest of the world do not manage their own finances and rely instead on funding from their Governments. This may be the best illustration of how financial sophistication facilitates excellence in other fields, even in the unrelated ivory tower arena of University Education. This brings Professor Shiller to his cherished goal - democratization of finance: The democratization of finance as spelled out in this book calls for an improvement in the nature and extent of participation in the financial system, including awareness of the fundamental information about the workings of the system. The democratization of finance works hand in hand with the humanization of finance....The rise of behavioral economics and neuroeconomics in recent decades provides a foundation for such an approach, for understanding how people really think and act.

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Professor Shiller concludes his book with: The key to achieving our goals and enhancing human values is to maintain and continually improve a democratic financial system that takes into account of the diversity of human motives and drives. Read this book.

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GAME CHANGERS

THE MONEY INTERVIEW

WHEN THE EOUITY AND REAL ESTATE PARTIES WERE JUMPING, ROBERTSHILLER SAW THE HANGOVERS TO COME. WE ASKED HIM WHAT TO EXPECT NEXT. ........................................

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Interview by Penelope Wang

HE BURSTING BUBBLES of the 1990s and 2000s caught most of the experts by surprise. Not Robert Shiller. The Yale economist isn't so much a forecaster as a historian of financial data. His work on the history of stocks led him to advocate a market valuation tool now popularly known as the "Shiller P/E." Traditional price/earnings ratios compare today's share prices with often overly bullish estimates of future profits and can sometimes make stocks look more reasonably priced than they really are. Shiller looked instead at the averaged 10-year history of earnings, which captures both the ups and the downs of the business cycle. This P/E flashed red warning lights as it reached new highs during the tech boom. Next, Shiller's research into home values led him to conclude in 2005 that real estate looked bubble-like. Today he still isn't much of a stock market optimist. But in his new book, Finance and the Good Society, he argues that Wall Street can be a force for progress; his conversation with editor-at-large Penelope Wang has been edited.

Photographs by JOE PUGLIESE

You have become famous for your cyclically adjusted 10-year price/earnings ratio. What do the latest numbers say about future stock market returns?

mWhen my former student and I did the original analysis-I was working with John Campbell, now economics department chairman at Harvard-we found a correlation between that ratio and the next 10 years' return. If

APRIL 2012 [ CNNMONEY.COM

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you plug in today's PIE of about 22, it would be predicting something like an annualized 4% return after inflation. Not so bad when you look at the 20-year Treasury bond yield of 2.8% and the likely capital losses if interest rates go up.

A real4% return seems like a worthwhile investment. 12 Then again, I don't know that I trust that number. It goes back to this whole academic literature on the outperformance of equities. My old friend Jeremy Siegel [Wharton professor and author of Stocks for the Long Run] makes the strongest claim about this. He has data going back 200 years showing that the market has had a real 7% return over that period. But there's no solid reason it should do so well. Things can go for 200 years and then change. I even worry about the 10-year PIE-even that relationship could break down. But I believe I'm on better ground thinking that the

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PIE forecasts returns than thinking one asset just always outperforms. Are you saying that there's no reason stocks should outperform bonds at all? 12 Oh, no. If you go back to textbook finance and make some assumptions about investors' risk aversion and that assets should be priced to pay investors for added risk, you would get some outperformance for.stocks. But not as much as it's been; it looks as if past high returns were a historical anomaly. So when I said the 10year PIE predicts a 4% return, that's conditional on past returns . being a guide to future returns, and the truth is, we don't know. Maybe it will be only 2%. The S&P Case-Shiller housing index, which you helped create, recently showed another drop. Are you surprised the housing decline has gone on this long?

20 12

12 I'm not surprised, no. There have been long periods when home prices declined, including the first half of the 20th century. The National Association of Home Builders housing market index is sharply up. It's a sign of a possible turning point. But there's another side of me that says that the housing market decline hasn't overshot yet, really. It could do that.

You've arguedfor changing the home mortgage deduction. Why? 12 There are good reasons to promote home ownership-it's a way to stake people in citizenship. But I think it makes sense to phase out the home mortgage deduction and instead offer a tax credit [which would be worth the same amount to low- and high-income taxpayers]. Many low-income people don't itemize and claim the mortgage deduction, even after they buy a home, because the standard deduction looks better to them. Even if they do use it, the benefit is smaller

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THE MONEY INTERVIEW

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THE SURGERY?" your donation would pay dividends. And at your discretion you can reinvest them in that company or in another nonprofit.

because they're in a lower tax bracket. So we're giving a big incentive to high-income people and not much to lower-income people. Why do we give a tax incentive for people to build McMansions?

is that they create a serious, playable game. It's like gambling, but it's not. Having a stock market provides excitement and lets people think about real things. It was a wonderful invention, behaviorally.

Your new book is called Finance and the Good Society. What's

So how do you tum that invention to broader social ends?

one got to do with the other?

mOne problem with philanthropy

mFinance has become unpopular today-a little like being on campus teaching ROTC a generation ago. I wanted to clarify what finance does and remind people it does have a social purpose. The thing about stock markets, and why they have been so successful,

is that it's unrewarding: You give away the money, and that's it. So as an example of ways to humanize finance, I have a notion of a different form of philanthropy that would have shareholders. You're still basically giving away the money, but the shares you bought through

You're just back from an economic conference in Europe, where policymakers are pushing budget austerity. Any lessons we can take from that?

mThere's a debate about the merits of austerity among economists. It's like a medical judgment: We have to deal with the debt eventually. Do we let the patient rest before we do the surgery? I think probably austerity is bad at this time. Confidence and market psychology are important in promoting consumer spending and growth. The only way we can collectively decide, "Okay, we need to spend," is to tax arid spend. The problem is, those words are loaded ideologically-and they raise fears that once spending goes up, it won't come down. And that's a legitimate fear. m

APRIL 2012

i CNN MONEY. COM 1103

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Heard on the Street

[Financial Analysis and Commentary] Yale University economics professor Robert Shiller is closely associated with housing. Not only does the S&P/CaseShiller home-price index bear his name, but in 2005 he warned of a housing bubble in the second edition of his book, "Irrational Exuberance." So how does he feel about housing today? Still pretty glum. Speaking Tuesday as he promoted his latest book, " Finance and the Good Society ," Prof. Shiller said that while housing data have shown signs of improvement, the signals still are very mixed. And beyond the question of where prices will go in 2012, Prof. Shiller is worried that broader societal moves may alter housing dynamics. "Young people don't read newspapers today, they don't have landline phones and maybe they won't buy suburban houses anymore," he noted. That is the kind of attitude that could send shivers down Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's spine. As the central banker is quick to point out, there are some things even aggressive monetary policy can't change. License this article from Dow Jones Reprint Service [http://www.djreprints.com /link/DJRFactiva.html?FACTIVA=wjco20120328000057] Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Document J000000020120328e83s0001k

3/28/2012 11:11 AM

Book Review: Free Market Fairness - WSJ.com#printMode

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March 29, 2012, 5:24 p.m. ET

Occupy Common Ground "Free Market Fairness" argues that we needn't choose between laissez-faire and social justice. The choice is not so simple, or so stark. By ADAM WOLFSON

Today's political debate seems frozen in time, pitting the party of social justice against the party of economic liberty. The contours of the debate were set as early as the first half of the 20th century, with the Progressive and New Deal challenges to laissez-faire economics, though some people might locate the roots of the debate much earlier—say, in Karl Marx's critique of commercial society, or even Rousseau's. To discover when this debate took its modern form, we need look no further back than the 1970s. It was in 1971 that John Rawls's "A Theory of Justice" appeared, laying out the precise requirements of social justice. The gist of Rawls's argument was that society's institutions should be arranged to benefit the least advantaged. "A Theory of Justice" quickly became the template for left-liberal thinking in America. Five years later, Friedrich Hayek published "The Mirage of Social Justice," a defense of the free market that denounced the whole notion of social justice, describing it as a "will-o'-the-wisp"—a "quasi-religious superstition." Not only is the phrase "empty and meaningless," Hayek said, but it is a "mark of demagogy." As John Tomasi observes in "Free Market Fairness," we have been forced, ever since, to choose between social justice and economic freedom, often in reductive forms governed by moralistic absolutes. On one side is a frequently "bullying (and morally condescending)" left-liberalism; on the other an often "cold and heartless" libertarianism. It is widely thought, Mr. Tomasi says, that there can be "no common ground" between the two sides. The antagonists enter the fray believing that "when the dust settles, one side will win and the other will lose." Mr. Tomasi, a political theorist at Brown University, is unhappy with this stark choice. He confesses that he is attracted to the ideals of both camps. He also observes that much has changed since the 1970s. As we move into a postindustrial, Internet economy, it becomes increasingly clear that people of all income levels value the right to make economic choices. Yet most people also believe in something like social justice, supporting programs that adjust for inequalities. With "Free Market Fairness," Mr. Tomasi proposes an alternative to both points of view. He christens it "market democracy," a mix of economic liberty and social justice that, in his view, supports a morally superior ideal than either the minimal state or welfare-state liberalism. Market democracy is not meant to be a mushy compromise or mere middle way, he says, but a "hybrid" that stands on its own merits. Mr. Tomasi's idea of a market democracy breaks with key ideas on both sides of the debate. First, he argues—against the socialist ethic of Rawls—that economic liberty is among the basic rights of individuals, as fundamental as the right to free speech. That is, we value economic liberty not merely for reasons of utility but for the ways in which it enables us to be the authors of our own lives. As Mr. Tomasi eloquently explains:

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"Restrictions of economic liberty, no matter how lofty the social goal, impose conformity on the life stories that free citizens might otherwise compose." Second, market democracy breaks with modern libertarian thinking by taking the claims of social justice seriously. Unlike Hayek, Mr. Tomasi does not believe that social justice is a mere will-o'-the-wisp. Nor does he believe that society is little more than the sum of private transactions. For Mr. Tomasi, society is "a public thing," and thus all citizens should be able to affirm that its arrangements are fair. "A set of institutions is just," he writes, reworking Rawls, "only if it works over time to improve the condition of the least well-off citizens." Market democracy recognizes that the question of social justice is a real one but without assuming that ordinary people don't value economic liberty. Thus Mr. Tomasi believes that health care is a matter of social justice, but he prefers market-based approaches (with a safety net). "In seeking to benefit the least well off," he says, "we must take care to do so in ways that respect the autonomy and dignity of those citizens." But he notes that economic liberty, as a triumphant principle, can lead to repellent results. To take a classic example, a person By John Tomasi has no right to sell himself into slavery. Nor, Mr. Tomasi (Princeton, 348 pages, $35) suggests, should the state sit idly by while sectors of society fall into grinding poverty and social dysfunction. The state has an obligation, he argues, to intrude upon laissez-faire arrangements so that "the exercise of responsible selfauthorship" is possible. Free Market Fairness

It isn't entirely clear how market democracy would function in the policy debates of the moment. Mr. Tomasi's book is emphatically a work of political theory, not a blueprint for political action, much less a catalog of policy solutions. He does believe though that market democracy offers a way out of our either-or political debate, which at its extremes pits the Tea Party against the Occupy Wall Street movement. Market democracy would make the welfare of the very poor a top concern but would find little justice in mere wealth redistribution. Yet choosing sides is not what "Free Market Fairness" is about. Its aim is to question opposed modes of thought and find a way between them. Saying that his book was written for "ideologically uncommitted readers," Mr. Tomasi invites them and others to join him in exploring the ideas he has outlined. It is an invitation well worth accepting, especially in an election year. Mr. Wolfson is the author of "Persecution or Toleration" (Lexington, 2010). A version of this article appeared Mar. 30, 2012, on page A13 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Occupy Common Ground.

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News Chagos: The heart of an American empire? Staff Reporter 1,681 words 24 March 2012 Weekly Cutting Edge PMCUTE English Copyright ÂŠ 2012. Weekly Cutting Edge. Karachi: In the middle of the Indian Ocean, a thousand miles south of India, the nearest landmass, about halfway between Africa and Indonesia and far away from everywhere, is a small group of coral islands called the Chagos Archipelago. Forty years ago, its people, the Chagossians, were unceremoniously removed from their homeland by a joint operation of the United Kingdom and the United States, and essentially left beached in Mauritius as human detritus. The reason for their expulsion was that the US and the UK had decided to use the islands as a joint military facility in the post-colonial world, as they feared being booted out or needing to repeatedly renegotiate base facilities with non-Western governments coming to power in newly independent countries across Asia and Africa. Technically a joint US-UK venture, Chagos now houses a massive US military base at Diego Garcia. It was used for reconnaissance in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and saw wartime use in the first Gulf War. After 9/11 it was key to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It may house nuclear weapons and may be a "black site" for detaining prisoners. It is more secretive than Guantanamo Bay - which is probably why most people have never heard of it. Now an impressively researched book that details its secret history goes even further and argues that Diego Garcia, and what happened in the Chagos Islands, lies at the heart of a global American empire that employs some 1,000 bases outside the United States. Their purpose: To ensure that no matter who governs in Asia, Africa or around the world, the US military would be in a position to "run the planet" from its chain of strategic island bases. For several decades, the shadowy presence of Diego Garcia and a whiff of its disreputable acquisition lurked in the misty fringes of Western security studies. David Vine's meticulously researched Island of Shame: the Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton University Press, 2011) enables us to engage with the "strategic islands concept" and its consequences for the Chagossians and others. It provides a level of information about both the US and British policymakers and the human beings at the receiving end of their global power ambitions that had not been accessible before. Coincidentally, a stage production in London, A Few Man Fridays, directed by Adrian Jackson, charts the story of the Chagossians' expulsion, destitution and desperation through the fictional character of an abandoned Chagos Islander child who washes up as a homeless man in Britain and "hears voices" from his past. I saw the production this week, it is a hard-hitting dramatisation of the duplicity, hypocrisy and complete callousness of the empire-builders - old and new - who thought nothing of breaking international laws and U N rules to stamp out a few indigenous people standing in the way of their militaristic fantasies. In context The Island of Shame is particularly interesting as it does not stop at merely charting in painful detail the forcible and duplicitous expulsion of the Chagossians by the British in order to provide the US with the "sanitised" islands they sought. It places the story of the couple of thousand Chagos Islanders in the context of larger global events: the expulsion of indigenous populations in many other places by the United States or other aggressive imperial forces; the worldwide chain of "strategic" bases built and maintained by the US; and addresses not just whether the US is an empire, but also what kind of empire it is when compared to those of bygone eras. The people of the Chagos Islands are the descendants of enslaved Africans and indentured labour from south India brought to work on the coconut plantations in the 18th century. With the emergence of newly independent countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the US, which was allied to the former colonial powers, was thought by some of its security analysts to be in need of an alternate strategy to be able to combat the Soviet Union's reach around the world. The idea of a "strategic islands concept" was apparently dreamed up by Stuart Barber, in which American military bases would be located in remote islands under Page 1 of 3 ÂŠ 2012 Factiva, Inc. All rights reserved.

direct US or continuing Western colonial control. What actually happened, as detailed in Vine's book, is that the British and the US made secret agreements in the 1960s to deliver the islands "swept" of any people. The policy was pursued through means such as exchange of notes (rather than treaties), or Orders in Council, to avoid parliamentary and congressional scrutiny. The islands were detached by the British from Mauritius prior to its independence to form the "British Indian Ocean Territory", using the archaic procedure of royal decree and violating UN rules on decolonisation. Supply of provisions was cut and Chagossians visiting Mauritius on vacation or for medical treatment suddenly started to be told they could no longer return home. Each island family used to have a number of dogs as pets, who would go fishing. In the final forcible expulsion, hundreds of these pet dogs were shut in a shed and gassed. Their owners were then herded into cargo boats and ditched in Mauritius and Seychelles. Other aspects Several other aspects of the mindset of the empire-builders emerge now and then in the story of the Chagos Islands. For instance, the plans for strategic island bases had included Diego Garcia (then part of Britishcontrolled Mauritius), Aldabra in the Seychelles and Cocos/Keeling Islands of Australia. While US officials wanted the post-colonial (non-white) governments of Mauritius and Seychelles to give up sovereignty over Diego Garcia and Aldabra, they were willing to continue to have Australian sovereignty over the Cocos/Keeling Islands. Australia's own notorious history with regard to indigenous peoples is well-known. Vine terms this Anglo-American-Australian alliance "the coalition of the pale" and points out that it endures to the present day. Another curious fact is that while the US and UK authorities do not allow journalists or independent observers to visit Diego Garcia, two other groups of outsiders are allowed. Dozens of people sailing in yachts are allowed to visit the other islands of Chagos, far away from the military base. Several thousand workers from other countries such as the Philippines and Sri Lanka are also employed on the base. Chagossians could have been so employed instead of being expelled, but it appears "locals" are not favoured, in case they start demanding "self-determination" and "democracy". It is important not to think of the Chagossians' fate solely as an exceptional tragedy that befell a small number of people. As Vine points out, powerful groups or states have displaced "native" peoples elsewhere for a variety of reasons. The US itself is built through a process of displacing and impoverishing its indigenous peoples. The Bikini Atoll was "cleansed" of its people in order to be used for nuclear testing. Vine argues that Diego Garcia belongs to another larger phenomenon as well: It sits at the heart of a system of strategic bases which serve as the instruments to project US military power. This in turn illuminates what kind of imperial power the US actually is. As he correctly points out, most Americans do not think of themselves as having an "empire" and indeed, the US is not a traditional territorially based empire. It emerged in the post-colonial age as an economic superpower and the world's most successful "soft" power, with unparalleled intellectual and cultural hegemony. But its vast global base network, mapped by Vine with caveats about the uncertainties surrounding exact numbers and locations, may well beg the question: Who needs this and for what? Reflection of today The Island of Shame is a discomforting read, especially for British and American readers who will probably find themselves cringing at the well-documented account of the deceit and inhumanity, not only of their forbears in the past, but also of policymakers today. For many years, now the Chagossians have been fighting an uphill battle to obtain justice through the courts. Verdicts in the English courts had gone in favour of the Chagossians in 2000, 2006 and 2007 until the House of Lords overturned them all and ruled in favour of the British government. The Chagossians have now petitioned the European Court of Human Rights. Possibly as a pre-emptive action in case they win at the European Court, the last Labour government declared the Chagos Archipelago a "marine protection area", which would restrict fishing and therefore human re-settlement. The Chagossians have had to take legal action against this "green" initiative as well. The "government" is not a monolithic entity, however. Robin Cook, the former British Foreign Secretary, apparently had been in favour of the Chagossians' right of return, but his successor reversed the policy. There is also the usual tendency of politicians to say one thing before an election and do something else later. Before the last British general elections leading Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians in the UK had acknowledged that the Chagos Islanders' case was a moral issue, but once in government they continued to fight the case in the European Court and support the "marine protection area". David Vine describes the Obama administration's response to the Chagos Island case as "silence", though many former members of the US government have expressed to him their personal embarrassment over Diego Garcia. The story of what happened to the Chagos Islands and the long struggle of its displaced people is more than a calamity that struck a small group of people who happened to be in the wrong place (their own homes) at Page 2 of 3

the wrong time (the era of decolonisation and the Cold War). It is a documentation of how the long tentacles of slavery and colonialism endure and flourish in our times, in new avatars, amidst the distractions of the supposed global triumph of democracy and self-determination. Document PMCUTE0020120324e83o00005

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Fear vs. Greed at Facebook Posted in: Latest News | By Administrator | March 27, 2012 | 0 Comment Mark Zuckerberg and his executive team have been extremely successful at retaining equity in their company. But how well do most other founders do?

deneyterrio via Flickr | Mark Zuckerberg Facebook Even as Facebook prepares to go public, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO, still owns 28% of his company. As a whole, Zuckerberg, his co-founders, and his former and present employees, own about 55% of Facebook. How did they do this? Fear vs. Greed Each time founders seek capital they face what my colleague Bill Sahlman refers to as the fear versus greed tradeoff. On the one hand, founders fear that they will be forced to shut down their startup if they run out of money, which leads them to rush to raise new capital. On the other hand, they are also understandably greedy about maintaining a high equity stake, by minimizing their dilution. (Dilution is the progressive shrinking of each executive’s equity percentage as the startup raises each round of financing.) When founders delay raising each round, they are typically hoping to achieve certain milestones that will raise the startup’s valuation. That will reduce the percentage of stock they will have to cede to their financiers, and thus reduce their dilution. In every round of financing, Zuckerberg and his Facebook team have impressively minimized their dilution. Our CompStudy data, which allows us to compare Facebook’s equity dilution

against that of some 2,500 technology startups, shows how successful the team has been. To estimate how much the founders and other insiders owned after each of the startup’s first three rounds of financing, we used the two major factors that affect dilution: the capital raised by the startup and the pre-money valuation it received. As shown in Figure 9.5 of my book, The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, the averages for technology startups are as follows:   

First round: Raise $3 million, with a pre-money valuation of $5 million. Second round: Raise $5.5 million, with a valuation of $10 million. Third round: Raise $7 million, with a valuation of $15 million.

We then compared those numbers to Facebook’s numbers for its first three rounds:   

First round: Raise $500,000, with a pre-money valuation of about $5 million. Second round: Raise $12.7 million, with a valuation of about $100 million. Third round: Raise $27.5 million raised, valuation of about $525 million.

The resulting difference between the dilution experienced by the Facebook team versus that of the average technology startup is striking across all three rounds, as shown below.

After his first round of financing, Zuckerberg and the other Facebook insiders still owned about 91% of the equity. Insiders in the typical startup own only 63% after round one. As each round progressed, Zuckerberg widened the dilution gap, to the point where after the third round of financing, 77% of Facebook’s equity was owned by insiders, compared to only 27% in the typical startup. One of a Kind We then analyzed nearly 2,000 technology companies that submitted data to our CompStudy survey from 2008 through 2011, focusing on the software startups that had raised three or more rounds of financing. When they had finished raising their third rounds, in not a single startup did the founders still own 77%:

with a pre-money valuation of $5 million is raising $3 million (and thus relinquishing 38.5% of the company to outsiders), Zuckerberg raised only $500,000, retaining a far higher percentage of his startup for himself and his team. In the quest to minimize dilution and maximize control, Facebook skated to the edge of the “fear” cliff multiple times in their early days. An Underappreciated Dilutor: Founders’ Equity Splits In truth, Zuckerberg was minimizing his dilution even before the first round of outside financing. A founder’s first real dilution – and often the most powerful – occurs when equity is split with cofounders. Compared to raising a typical round of outside financing, a founder is more diluted by adopting a 50/50 co-founding split instead of founding solo, or even taking 70% and giving a co-founder 30% (as Zuckerberg did, regretted, and sought to change). By co-founding, a founder is betting that the value added by a co-founder will justify the relinquished equity. Throughout one’s entrepreneurial journey, there is a tension between amassing resources and wealth versus retaining control of the startup. I call this tension the “Rich vs. King” tradeoff– a topic to be explored in a future column.

Noam Wasserman and Furqan Nazeeri: Dr. Noam Wasserman is a professor at Harvard Business School. His book, The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, will be published in March. Furqan Nazeeri is a Partner at ExtensionEngine, LLC with more than 15 years experience building and managing high growth software companies. @noamwass @altgate

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HBS prof Noam Wasserman talks about his new book, Founder's Dilemmas [Audio] E-mail | Print | Comments (0) Posted by Scott Kirsner March 27, 2012 08:36 AM By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman is one of the writers and teachers who best captures the high stakes decisions that entrepreneurs face every day. His new book, out this month, is called "The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup." He teaches the "Founders Dilemma" course at HBS (it was so popular that it had a wait-list of 170 students last year), and maintains a blog called Founder Frustrations.

The book reads like a catalog of all of the choices that can either sink a start-up, or help it build momentum â&#x20AC;&#x201D; choices around how to divide ownership among the founding team, who should serve on the board, and whether to take money from "friends and family" or professional investors. Wasserman has spent hours interviewing the founders of companies like Zipcar, Proteus Biomedical, Pandora, and Twitter, and he shares their experiences in the book, without sugar-coating them. I sat down with Wasserman last week in his office at HBS. We talked about founder's dilemmas in general (65 percent of them, he said, have to do with interpersonal issues among founders), and some of the specific companies he has studied, including Sittercity (founded by Genevieve

Thiers, a Boston College grad), 38 Studios (the gaming company started by Curt Schilling), and Twitter. The audio runs about a half-hour. You can click play, or click "mp3" to download the file for later listening. Noam Wasserman interview, on his new book (mp3)

Founder's Dilemmas - And There Are Many

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Jeff Bussgang, Seeing Both Sides | Mar. 25, 2012, 4:07 PM | Recommend

24 |

In the very first year of a company, there are a few very tough, make-or-break decisions that founders need to make. My colleague and friend, Professor Noam Wasserman, teaches a class called "Founder's Dilemmas" at Harvard Business School that delves into these decisions and has become a "must-take" session for aspiring entrepreneurs. Noam has turned the materials and research from his class into a new book: The Founder's Dilemmas, where he analyzes the fundamental trade-offs such as when to found a company, who to found it with (if anyone), how to determine roles and responsibilities, equity splits, choosing investors and many more sensitive issues. This is a serious book for a serious endeavor: creating a company from scratch that can be a world-beater and life-changer. Analytical, insightful and even a bit wonky at times, Wasserman's story arc is less about war stories - although the books is chock full of them, featuring the founders of Twitter, Pandora and others - and more about the decision tree every founder must climb. Rather than having these decisions happen by chance, Wasserman's book is a towering guide to making these decisions thoughtfully and purposefully.

Jeff Bussgang Jeff Bussgang is a former entrepreneur turned venture capitalist at Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston Recent Posts

Email W: 617 307-9295

Keep the Good News Flowing - Pass the JOBS Act, Now Signal to Noise - How to Cut Through the Clutter Fred Wilson comes to Harvard Business School

Seeing Both Sides Founder's Dilemmas - And There Are Many Keep the Good News Flowing - Pass the JOBS Act, Now Signal to Noise - How to Cut Through the Clutter

Every founder should read it - and take the time to digest its rich data and lessons. Read more posts on Seeing Both Sides Âť Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook. Follow Jeff Bussgang on Twitter.

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Mark Zuckerberg and his executive team have been extremely successful at retaining equity in their company. But how well do most

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other founders do? Even as Facebook prepares to go public, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO, still owns 28% of his company. As a whole, Zuckerberg, his co-founders, and his former and

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present employees, own about 55% of Facebook. How did they do this? Fear vs. Greed Each time founders seek capital they face what my colleague Bill Sahlman refers to as

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the fear versus greed tradeoff. On the one hand, founders fear that they will be forced to shut down their startup if they run out of money, which leads them to rush to raise new capital. On the other hand, they are also understandably greedy about maintaining a

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high equity stake, by minimizing their dilution. (Dilution is the progressive shrinking of each executive’s equity percentage as the startup raises each round of financing.) When founders delay raising each round, they are typically hoping to achieve certain

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milestones that will raise the startup’s valuation. That will reduce the percentage of stock they will have to cede to their financiers, and thus reduce their dilution.

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In every round of financing, Zuckerberg and his Facebook team have impressively minimized their dilution. Our CompStudy data, which allows us to compare Facebook’s equity dilution against that of some 2,500 technology startups, shows how successful

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the team has been. To estimate how much the founders and other insiders owned after each of the startup’s first three rounds of financing, we used the two major factors that affect dilution: the capital raised by the startup and the pre-money valuation it received. As shown in Figure 9.5 of my book, The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, the averages for technology startups are as follows: First round: Raise $3 million, with a pre-money valuation of $5 million. Second round: Raise $5.5 million, with a valuation of $10 million. Third round: Raise $7 million, with a valuation of $15 million. We then compared those numbers to Facebook’s numbers for its first three rounds:

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First round: Raise $500,000, with a pre-money valuation of about $5 million. Second round: Raise $12.7 million, with a valuation of about $100 million.

Third round: Raise $27.5 million raised, valuation of about $525 million.

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The resulting difference between the dilution experienced by the Facebook team versus that of the average technology startup is striking across all three rounds, as shown

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Of the world’s top multinationals operating in Africa, there are 7 African head offices in South Africa, 1 in Nigeria and 1 in Kenya. 6 of the world’s top 30 multinationals have Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) divisions that are headquartered in Europe.

As multinationals move head offices from EMEA into Africa, which country will they choose?

insiders, compared to only 27% in the typical startup. One of a Kind We then analyzed nearly 2,000 technology companies that submitted data to our CompStudy survey from 2008 through 2011, focusing on the software startups that had

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raised three or more rounds of financing. When they had finished raising their third rounds, in not a single startup did the founders still own 77%:

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Harvard, then to a hand-picked group of schools, and then to a steadily widening net of potential users. Yet at the point where the typical startup with a pre-money valuation of $5 million is raising $3 million (and thus relinquishing 38.5% of the company to

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outsiders), Zuckerberg raised only $500,000, retaining a far higher percentage of his startup for himself and his team. In the quest to minimize dilution and maximize control, Facebook skated to the edge of the “fear” cliff multiple times in their early days.

Of the world’s top multinationals operating in Africa, there are 7 African head offices in South Africa, 1 in... http://t.co

An Underappreciated Dilutor: Founders’ Equity Splits

/jkZ7QSab - posted on 20/03/2012 13:41:22

In truth, Zuckerberg was minimizing his dilution even before the first round of outside financing. A founder’s first real dilution – and often the most powerful – occurs when equity is split with cofounders. Compared to raising a typical round of outside financing, a founder is more diluted by adopting a 50/50 co-founding split instead of founding solo, or even taking 70% and giving a co-founder 30% (as Zuckerberg did,

New post: Where are the world’s top 30 multinationals’ African operations headquartered? http://t.co/y5a0lBdd - posted on 20/03/2012 13:38:37

regretted, and sought to change). By co-founding, a founder is betting that the value added by a co-founder will justify the relinquished equity. Throughout one’s entrepreneurial journey, there is a tension

New link: - posted on 26/02/2012 20:04:05

between amassing resources and wealth versus retaining control of the startup. I call this tension the “Rich vs. King” tradeoff– a topic to be explored in a future column.

The penetration of Islamic banking in African countries with high Muslim

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Each week First Look summarizes new working papers, case studies, and publications produced by Harvard Business School faculty. Here readers will be able to get a "first look" at cutting-edge ideas before they enter the mainstream of business practice. For complete details on faculty research, see our Working Papers section.

March 27 Addressing entrepreneurial dilemmas From deciding whether to launch a company to deciding when to leave it, the entrepreneurial journey is full of choices that can lead a startup to thrive or fail. Mining quantitative data on nearly 10,000 founders, Noam Wasserman addresses these issues in his new book, The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup.

Looking at critics critically A new working paper delves into the world of book critics, investigating the factors that determine whether a media outlet will review a book—and whether the review will be favorable. As it turns out, it's not just about the quality of the book, but also about industry connections. "When a book's author also writes for a media outlet, that outlet is 25% more likely to review the book relative to other media outlets, and the resulting ratings are roughly 5% higher," write Loretti I. Dobrescu, Michael Luca, and Alberto Motta. Read What Makes a Critic Tick? Connected Authors and the Determinants of Book Reviews

Thwarting sexism in hiring To avoid gender bias during the hiring and promotion process, managers might do well to evaluate candidates in groups rather than individually. So say Iris Bohnet, Iris, Alexandra van Geen, and Max H. Bazerman in a new working paper, When Performance Trumps Gender Bias: Joint versus Separate Evaluation. Ironically, they write, "evaluators are more likely to focus on individual performance in joint than in separate evaluation and on group stereotypes in separate than in joint evaluation, making joint evaluation the money-maximizing evaluation procedure." — Carmen Nobel

Working Papers

Cases & Course Materials

Publications

When Performance Trumps Gender Bias: Joint versus Separate Evaluation

Scaling a Startup: People and Organizational Issues

The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup

Breaking Them In or Revealing Their Best? Reframing Socialization Around Newcomer Self-Expression An Exploration of Luxury Hotels in Tanzania What Makes a Critic Tick? Connected Authors and the

Hypothesis-Driven Entrepreneurship: The Lean Startup Fiji versus FIJI: Negotiating Over Water PAREXEL International Corp. (A)

The Organization of Firms Across Countries Free to Punish? The American Dream and the Harsh Treatment of Criminals

PAREXEL International Corp. (B) Music and the (Real) World: Thirty

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Determinants of Book Reviews

Years of MTV

Technology Choice and Capacity Portfolios Under Emissions Regulation

Speeding Ahead to a Better Place

Lords of the Harvest: Third-Party Signaling and Regulatory Approval of Genetically Modified Organisms Brides for Sale: Cross-Border Marriages and Female Immigration

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6986.html

Assembling the Startup Team Career at a Crossroad: Akhil Patel Career at a Crossroad: Roopa Rao Career at a Crossroad: Packing Up "Playing with Fire at Sittercity (B)

Authors: Noam Wasserman Publication: The Kauffman Foundation Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Princeton University Press, in press

Abstract Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face: Should they go it alone or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business? More than just financial rewards are at stake. Friendships and relationships can suffer. Bad decisions at the inception of a promising venture lay the foundations for its eventual ruin. The Founder's Dilemmas is the first book to examine the early decisions by entrepreneurs that can make or break a startup and its team.

Drawing on a decade of research, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them. He looks at whether it is a good idea to cofound with friends or relatives, how and when to split the equity within the founding team, and how to recognize when a successful founderâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;CEO should exit or be fired. Wasserman explains how to anticipate, avoid, or recover from disastrous mistakes that can splinter a founding team, strip founders of control, and leave founders without a financial payoff for their hard work and innovative ideas. He highlights the need at each step to strike a careful balance between controlling the startup and attracting the best resources to grow it and demonstrates why the easy short-term choice is often the most perilous in the long-term. The Founder's Dilemmas draws on the inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, while mining quantitative data on almost 10,000 founders. People problems are the leading cause of failure in startups. This book offers solutions. Purchase the book: http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Dilemmas-Anticipating-Foundation-Entrepreneurship /dp/0691149135/

Authors: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen Publication: Quarterly Journal of Economics (forthcoming)

Abstract We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization

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of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from corporate headquarters to local plant managers in almost 4,000 firms in the United States, Europe, and Asia. We find that firms headquartered in high trust regions are more likely to decentralize, with trust accounting for about half of the variation in decentralization in our data. To help identify causal effects, we look within multinational firms and show that higher levels of bilateral trust between the multinational's country of origin and subsidiary's country of location increases decentralization, even after instrumenting trust using religious and ethnic similarities between the countries. Trust raises aggregate productivity through two channels: (1) trust facilitates reallocation between firms by allowing more efficient firms to grow as CEOs can decentralize more decisions and (2) trust complements the adoption of new technologies, thereby increasing productivity within firms during times of rapid technological change.

Authors: Rafael Di Tella Publication: CATO Papers on Public Policy 1 (2011)

Abstract We describe the evolution of selective aspects of punishment in the U.S. over the period 1980-2004. We note that imprisonment increased around 1980, a period that coincides with the "Reagan revolution" in economic matters. We build an economic model where beliefs about economic opportunities and beliefs about punishment are correlated. We present three pieces of evidence (across countries, within the U.S., and an experimental exercise) that are consistent with the model.

Authors: Iris Bohnet, Alexandra van Geen, and Max H. Bazerman

Abstract We examine a new intervention to overcome gender biases in hiring, promotion, and job assignments: an "evaluation nudge," in which people are evaluated jointly rather than separately regarding their future performance. Evaluators are more likely to focus on individual performance in joint than in separate evaluation and on group stereotypes in separate than in joint evaluation, making joint evaluation the money-maximizing evaluation procedure. Our findings are compatible with a behavioral model of information processing and with the System 1/System 2 distinction in behavioral decision research where people have two distinct modes of thinking that are activated under certain conditions.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-083.pdf

Authors: Dan Cable, Francesca Gino, and Brad Staats

Abstract Socialization theory has focused on enculturating new employees such that they develop pride in their new

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organization and internalize its values. Drawing on authenticity research, we propose that socialization leads to more effective employment relationships when it starts with newcomers expressing their personal identities. In a field experiment carried out in a large business process outsourcing company, we found that socialization focused on personal identity (emphasizing newcomers' unique perspectives and strengths) led to significantly greater customer satisfaction and greater employee retention after six months, compared to (a) socialization that focused on organizational identity (emphasizing pride from organizational affiliation) and (b) the organization's traditional approach, which focused primarily on skills training. To confirm causation and explore the mechanisms underlying the effects, we replicated the results in a laboratory experiment. We found that individuals working temporarily as part of a research team were more engaged and satisfied with their work, performed their tasks more effectively, and were also more likely to return to work when initial socialization focused on personal rather than organizational identity. In addition, authentic self-expression mediated these relationships. We call for a new direction in socialization theory examining how both organizations and employees benefit by encouraging authentic self-expression.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-067.pdf

Authors: Diego A. Comin

Abstract Tourism is a tradable service activity that could allow some African countries to generate significant growth. Tanzania, given its unique natural assets, is an ideal candidate. However, despite being so richly endowed in touristic resources, Tanzania receives very few tourists and revenues from tourism. To explore the determinants of this performance, I conduct an international survey for upscale hotel managers to measure supply-side constraints on the operation of hotels. The survey reveals that hotels in the safari area in Tanzania are more expensive than comparable hotels, and that this difference in price cannot be accounted for by differences in supply constraints. Further, using cross-country panel data, I show that upscale hotel prices account for a significant fraction of cross-country differences in tourists.

Download the paper: http://papers.nber.org/papers/w17902?ntw

Authors: Loretti I. Dobrescu, Michael Luca, and Alberto Motta

Abstract This paper investigates the determinants of expert reviews in the book industry. Reviews are determined not only by the quality of the product, but also by the incentives of the media outlet providing the review. For example, a media outlet may have the incentive to provide favorable coverage to certain authors or to slant reviews toward the horizontal preferences of certain readers. Empirically, we find that an author's connection to the media outlet is related to the outcome of the review decision. When a book's author also writes for a media outlet, that outlet is 25% more likely to review the book relative to other media outlets, and the resulting ratings are roughly 5% higher. Prima facie, it is unclear whether media outlets are favoring their own authors because these are the authors that their readers prefer or simply because they are trying to collude. We provide a test to distinguish between these two potential mechanisms and present evidence that this is because of tastes rather than collusion-the effect of connections is present both for authors who began writing for a media outlet before and after the book release. We then investigate other determinants of expert reviews. Relative to consumer reviews, we find that professional critics are less favorable to first time authors and more favorable to authors who have garnered other attention in the press (as measured by number of

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media mentions outside of the review) and who have won book prizes.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-080.pdf

Authors: David Drake, Paul R. Kleindorfer, and Luk N. Van Wassenhove

Abstract We study the impact of emissions tax and emissions cap-and-trade regulation on a firm's long-run technology choice and capacity decisions. We study the problem through a two-stage, stochastic model where the firm chooses capacities in two technologies in stage one, demand uncertainty resolves between stages (as does emissions price uncertainty under cap-and-trade), and then the firm chooses production quantities. As such, we bridge the discrete choice capacity literature in operations management (OM) with the emissions-related sustainability literature in OM and economics. Among our results, we show that a firm's expected profits are greater under cap-and-trade than under an emissions tax due to the option value embedded in the firm's production decision, which contradicts popular arguments that the greater uncertainty under cap-and-trade will erode value. We also show that improvements to the emissions intensity of the "dirty" type can increase the emissions intensity of the firm's optimal capacity portfolio. Through a numerical experiment grounded in the cement industry, we find emissions to be less under cap-and-trade, with technology choice driving the vast majority of the difference.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-079.pdf

Authors: Shon R. Hiatt and Sangchan Park

Abstract Little is known about the factors that influence regulatory agencies' decision making. We posit that regulatory agencies are influenced by the firms they regulate but not exclusively via political influence, as is argued in the traditional regulatory-capture literatures. Instead, regulatory decisions are indirectly shaped via third-party actors whose signals reduce uncertainty in the agency's pursuit of legitimacy. Focusing empirically on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's approval of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), we find that signals from salient stakeholders and peer agencies have a positive influence on product approval and that their effects vary under different dimensions of uncertainty. We also discuss the implications of these findings for businessgovernment relations and for nonmarket strategy.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-081.pdf

Authors: Daiji Kawaguchi and Soohyung Lee

Abstract Every year, a large number of women migrate as brides from developing countries to developed countries in

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East Asia. This phenomenon virtually did not exist in the early 1990s, but foreign brides currently comprise 4% to 35% of newlyweds in these developed Asian countries. This paper argues that two factors account for this rapid increase in "bride importation": the rapid growth of women's educational attainment and a cultural norm that leads to low net surplus of marriage for educated women. We provide empirical evidence supporting our theoretical model and its implications, using datasets from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-082.pdf

Thomas Eisenmann and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld Harvard Business School Note 812-100

This note discusses the organizational challenges that startups often encounter as they begin to scale rapidly, along with approaches to addressing these challenges suggested by scholars, investors, and experienced entrepreneurs. The challenges fall into five broad areas: the need to formalize organizational structure, executive transitions, the need for management systems/processes, evolution of the board of director's role, and preservation of an entrepreneurial culture.

Purchase this note: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/812100-PDF-ENG

Thomas Eisenmann, Eric Ries, and Sarah Dillard Harvard Business School Note 812-095

Firms that follow a hypothesis-driven approach to evaluating entrepreneurial opportunity are called "lean startups." Entrepreneurs in these startups translate their vision into falsifiable business model hypotheses, then test the hypotheses using a series of "minimum viable products," each of which represents the smallest set of features/activities needed to rigorously validate a concept. Based on test feedback, entrepreneurs must then decide whether to persevere with their business model, "pivot" by changing some model elements, or abandon the startup. This note describes, step-by-step, how to follow the hypothesis-driven approach when evaluating entrepreneurial opportunity; explains how the approach mitigates cognitive biases that otherwise can contribute to poor decisions; and considers conditions that are best suited for lean startup methods.

Purchase this note: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/812095-PDF-ENG

Francesca Gino, Michael W. Toffel, and Stephanie van Sice Harvard Business School Case 912-030

This case examines negotiations between a company and government over natural resources. The Fijian

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government proposed a substantial increase in its water extraction tax that would only apply to large extractors, and thus to FIJI Water and not to its competitors. FIJI Water responded by calling the increase "discriminatory" and threatening to shut down its operations, but in the end its negotiations resulted in its agreeing to pay the tax increase.

Purchase this case: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/912030-PDF-ENG

Regina E. Herzlinger and Natalie Kindred Harvard Business School Case 311-068

Despite severe market turmoil, in 2001, the biopharmaceutical contract research organization (CRO) PAREXEL is bucking calls for cost cutting by pursuing an expensive globalization and IT strategy. Under the leadership of founder and CEO Josef von Rickenbach, PAREXEL has made several bold investments over the past 20 years based on a vision of future industry dynamics and client demand. Indeed, over PAREXEL's sometimes-bumpy journey from an opportunistic two-person venture into a global company valued at $1 billion, Rickenbach's willingness to take calculated risks has kept it at the leading edge of the CRO sector. Now, despite slowing demand for CRO services and against the advice of some analysts, PAREXEL is betting that global capability and technology services will become its key competitive advantage in the decade to come. This case traces the evolution of the CRO sector from a small, secondary cluster of firms into a major player with essential capabilities for global drug development. The context of CROs' rise, highlighted in the case, is the biopharmaceutical industry's transformation from the mid-1970s through 2001, including the rising cost and complexity of drug development and the remarkably slow pace of IT adoption in clinical trials.

Purchase this case: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/311068-PDF-ENG

Regina E. Herzlinger and Natalie Kindred Harvard Business School Supplement 311-087

This case, the denouement to "PAREXEL International Corp. (A)," describes developments at PAREXEL and the biopharmaceutical industry from 2002 to 2011. Through an investment of $365 million over 10 years, PAREXEL has built a strong technology services business that is its key differentiator, although clinical trials remain its most lucrative segment. Additionally, PAREXEL, like others in the industry, has expanded its presence in lower-cost locations, especially the strategically important Asia-Pacific region. Another key change is the growing number of long-term strategic partnerships between CROs and their biopharmaceutical clients, reflecting the strengthened, more equal relationship between the two players. These developments have occurred against a backdrop of a persistent lull in R&D productivity and serious profitability concerns among large drug companies as some of their top-selling products face generic competition. With some observers forecasting an overhaul of the biopharmaceutical R&D structure, students are left to consider what the future holds for PAREXEL.

Purchase this supplement: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/311087-PDF-ENG

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Mukti Khaire and Eleanor Kenyon Harvard Business School Case 812-041

The case is useful for teaching students the structure of creative industries and the issues to consider when attempting disruptive innovation and entrepreneurship in these industries.

Purchase this case: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/812041-PDF-ENG

Elie Ofek and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld Harvard Business School Case 512-056

In mid-2008, Shai Agassi, CEO of Better Place, is in the midst of planning a paradigm shift in clean transportation. In an attempt to wean the world from using gasoline-powered vehicles, his company is playing the role of innovator and integrator for new vehicles, charging spots, and battery switch stations. The effort also requires aligning various parties, from governments to auto manufacturers to consumers. The fledgling company has made good progress in both Israel and Denmark as the first two launch locations but faces a series of decisions on the best course of action going forward. Agassi must decide how best to market in these two countries given the likely adoption challenges once the infrastructure and cars are ready, as well as decide how quickly to begin pursuing other countries (and if so, which ones). A big part of the Better Place solution relies on a novel business model that needs to be evaluated for its attractiveness and feasibility.

Purchase this case: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/512056-PDF-ENG

Noam Wasserman Harvard Business School Note 812-122

Nothing can bedevil a high-potential startup more than its "people problems." These problems typically result from choices that founders make as they add team members to their startup team. Three characteristics of startup teams must be aligned for these teams to function well: relationships, roles, and rewards (the Three Rs). Early decisions that founders make about the Three Rs can significantly affect their startup's direction and success. This note explores some of these choices and their long-term implications.

Purchase this note: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/812122-PDF-ENG

Noam Wasserman and Lisa Brem Harvard Business School Case 812-010

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Akhil Patel is passionate about his business idea: an innovative green technology fuel cell. He wants to dive in and commit to his startup, but his fiancée is much more risk averse, his parents don't approve of the startup, and Akhil has an enticing alternative offer from a prestigious consulting firm. Should Akhil follow his dream and become an entrepreneur? Or should he take the "safer" consulting job?

Purchase this case: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/812010-PDF-ENG

Noam Wasserman and Lisa Brem Harvard Business School Case 812-011

Akhil Patel is passionate about his business idea: an innovative green technology fuel cell. He wants to dive in and commit to his startup, but Roopa Rao, his fiancée, is much more risk averse, his parents don't approve of the startup, and Akhil has an enticing alternative offer from a prestigious consulting firm. Should Akhil follow his dream and become an entrepreneur? Or should he acquiesce to the other forces in his life and take the "safer" consulting job? This is a companion case to "Career at a Crossroad: Akhil Patel," HBS No. 812-010, giving Roopa Rao's point of view.

Purchase this case: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/812011-PDF-ENG

Noam Wasserman and Lisa Brem Harvard Business School Supplement 812-013

Purchase this supplement: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/812013-PDF-ENG

Noam Wasserman and Rachel Gordon Harvard Business School Supplement 809-010

To help her finance her aggressive expansion plans, Genevieve Thiers plans to raise venture capital for the first time. She has spent the last six long years building Sittercity into the nation's leading babysitting web service, larger than all of its competitors combined. In the process, she brought her boyfriend and his sister into the business to help her and ended up learning important lessons about mixing family and business. Now looking to raise venture capital, Thiers has just received an email from a general partner at a top venture

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capital firm, proposing another meeting and asking her to bring to the meeting an extensive list of proprietary information. This was a promising development, but Thiers was unsure whether she wanted to discuss Sittercity in such depth, especially when the venture capital firm had refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement. How should she respond?

Purchase this case: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/809010-PDF-ENG

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Inc. FOUNDERNOMICS | Noam Wasserman and Furqan Nazeeri Mar 27, 2012

Fear vs. Greed at Facebook Mark Zuckerberg and his executive team have been extremely successful at retaining equity in their company. But how well do most other founders do?

deneyterrio via Flickr | Mark Zuckerberg Facebook 31 inShare

Today's Editor's Picks

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Fear vs. Greed at Facebook

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5 Secrets of a Great E-Newsletter Business How to Work the Phone: 6 Tricks Develop More Leadership Charisma Made in USA: 6 Companies That Came Home

Even as Facebook prepares to go public, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO, still owns 28% of his company. As a whole, Zuckerberg, his co-founders, and his former and present employees, own about 55% of Facebook. How did they do this? Fear vs. Greed Each time founders seek capital they face what my colleague Bill Sahlman refers to as the fear versus greed tradeoff. On the one hand, founders fear that they will be forced to shut down their startup if they run out of money, which leads them to rush to raise new capital. On the other

hand, they are also understandably greedy about maintaining a high equity stake, by minimizing their dilution. (Dilution is the progressive shrinking of each executive’s equity percentage as the startup raises each round of financing.) When founders delay raising each round, they are typically hoping to achieve certain milestones that will raise the startup’s valuation. That will reduce the percentage of stock they will have to cede to their financiers, and thus reduce their dilution. In every round of financing, Zuckerberg and his Facebook team have impressively minimized their dilution. Our CompStudy data, which allows us to compare Facebook’s equity dilution against that of some 2,500 technology startups, shows how successful the team has been. To estimate how much the founders and other insiders owned after each of the startup’s first three rounds of financing, we used the two major factors that affect dilution: the capital raised by the startup and the pre-money valuation it received. As shown in Figure 9.5 of my book, The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, the averages for technology startups are as follows:   

We then compared those numbers to Facebook’s numbers for its first three rounds:   

The resulting difference between the dilution experienced by the Facebook team versus that of the average technology startup is striking across all three rounds, as shown below.

financing, 77% of Facebook’s equity was owned by insiders, compared to only 27% in the typical startup. One of a Kind We then analyzed nearly 2,000 technology companies that submitted data to our CompStudy survey from 2008 through 2011, focusing on the software startups that had raised three or more rounds of financing. When they had finished raising their third rounds, in not a single startup did the founders still own 77%:

Minimizing dilution can come with a stiff price. Zuckerberg and his team faced tremendous fear-vs.-greed pressures. At the time of Facebook’s founding, the pressures to quickly raise a lot of money were heightened by the prominence of its major social-networking competitor, MySpace, which had a head start and was better funded. In the first of Zuckerberg’s decisions to resist the call to grow his company quickly (which would have necessitated raising a lot of capital), he consciously limited the site first to Harvard, then to a hand-picked group of schools, and then to a steadily widening net of potential users. Yet at the point where the typical startup with a pre-money valuation of $5 million is raising $3 million (and thus relinquishing 38.5% of the company to outsiders), Zuckerberg raised only $500,000, retaining a far higher percentage of his startup for himself and his team. In the quest to minimize dilution and maximize control, Facebook skated to the edge of the “fear” cliff multiple times in their early days. An Underappreciated Dilutor: Founders’ Equity Splits In truth, Zuckerberg was minimizing his dilution even before the first round of outside financing. A founder’s first real dilution – and often the most powerful – occurs when equity is split with cofounders. Compared to raising a typical round of outside financing, a founder

is more diluted by adopting a 50/50 co-founding split instead of founding solo, or even taking 70% and giving a co-founder 30% (as Zuckerberg did, regretted, and sought to change). By co-founding, a founder is betting that the value added by a co-founder will justify the relinquished equity. Throughout one’s entrepreneurial journey, there is a tension between amassing resources and wealth versus retaining control of the startup. I call this tension the “Rich vs. King” tradeoff– a topic to be explored in a future column.

The Founder’s Dilemmas - Joel on Software

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Joel on Software

by Joel Spolsky

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/03/27.html

Wanted: Systems Engineer at Fog Creek Software (New York, NY). See this and other great job listings on the jobs page.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

My friend Noam Wasserman at Harvard Business School has spent years researching startups. His work is great, because he actually does real, quantitative research on the kinds of things that everybody has opinions about. Should you raise more money or maintain more control? Should you have a cofounder? Should your friends and relatives be cofounders? When and if should a founder be replaced by a “professional” manager? There are certainly a lot of blog posts about this stuff but not a lot of data... until now. Wasserman has finally put it all together in a great book called The Founder’s Dilemmas, which I highly recommend if you’re starting a company. (By the way, Wasserman will also be speaking at the Business of Software conference this fall in Boston.)

Want to know more? You’re reading Joel on Software, stuffed with years and years of completely raving mad articles about software development, managing software teams, designing user interfaces, running successful software companies, and rubber duckies. About the author. I’m Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable. Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted. We make FogBugz, an enlightened bug tracking and software development tool, Kiln, a distributed source control system that will blow your socks off if you’re stuck on Subversion, and Fog Creek Copilot, which makes remote desktop access easy. I’m also the co-founder of Stack Overflow.

Have you been wondering about Distributed Version Control? It has been a huge productivity boon for us, so I wrote Hg Init, a Mercurial tutorial—check it out!

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The Founder’s Dilemmas - Joel on Software

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Avoiding Founder Failure: 26 Quick Tips and Real Data 84 inShare Several years ago, I met with Noam Wasserman who had recently joined Harvard Business School as a professor. I initially came across Noam because he was doing some fascinating research on startups -- particularly in the arena of founder relationships. When I met him for lunch, he brought up some of the toughest issues I've ever encountered in my entrepreneurial career: Should you start a company with a close friend or family-member? Is it wise to divide equity in the startup equally among the founders? If you had to pick, do you want the cash (get rich) or the control (be queen/king)? What about your co-founders? Deep, deep, topics.

I've seen too many startups flounder and fail because of co-founder conflict. Everyone starts off with the best intentions -- and then things start unraveling. In many of these cases, the conflict could have been avoided -- or at least surfaced sooner, if the founders had confronted some of the potential issues and asked each other the hard questions early-on. I've written about this topic before in "Important Questions Startup Co-Founders Should Ask Each Other". There are only two times when lack of clarity and understanding between founders becomes a problem for a startup: when things are going well and when things aren't going well. So, back to Noam. He's taken the result of his years of research and conversations with founders and created what I think is the definitive book on the topic: "Founder's Dilemmas". If you are a founder or thinking about becoming one, you should read this book. I agree with most of what

Noam says in the book. Howver, it doesn't matter whether I agree with it or not, unlike me, Noam's actually collected data. Below are some quick tips and stats from the book, made ready for convenient tweeting. Tips and Insights From The Founder's Dilemmas 1) In 73% of founder-CEO replacements, the founder was fired rather than voluntarily stepping down. [tweet] 2) Founders feel like Lewis and Clark: Rough idea of where to go, but don't see a clear road ahead or upcoming pitfalls. [tweet] 3) Founding-team turnover increases dramatically when the startup raises its first round of financing. [tweet] 4) Unfortunate but true: If entrepreneurship is a battle, most casualties stem from friendly fire or self-inflicted wounds [tweet] 5) The chances of founder-CEO succession rise with each new round of financing. [tweet] 6) 65% of startups fail due to problems within the management team. [tweet] 7) Feel like a "people decision" is a no-brainer? You may be in for a nasty surprise later on. Decide rather than default. [tweet] 8) A dirty little secret of entrep: Many decisions along the journey push a Rich-and-King outcome further out of reach. [tweet] 9) Each additional social relationship within the founding team increases the likelihood of cofounder departure by 30%. [tweet] 10) Friend/family cofounders are often the least likely to tackle the elephants in the room (Relationships, Roles, Rewards) [tweet] 11) Playing with Fire by cofounding with friends and family? Carefully construct firewalls and discuss worst-case scenarios [tweet] 12) After a 6-month honeymoon period, teams with prior social relationships are the least stable. [tweet] 13) Founders often fail to realize when they are about to make a fateful decision. [tweet] 14) Examine the motivations of your potential cofounder to see if they are compatible with your own motivations. [tweet]

15) Motivational compatibility does not guarantee success, but incompatibility is asking for trouble. [tweet] 16) Founders often describe their equity-split negotiations as "war," "exasperating," or "stressful." [tweet] 17) Is pivoting a possibility? So why do more than 50% of teams split equity without allowing for adjustments? [tweet] 18) 73% of teams split equity within a month of founding: amazing given the big uncertainties they face. [tweet] 19) The Founder Discount: A labor of love can become a trap in which you're paid less than an equivalent non-founder. [tweet] 20) Within each of the 3Rs (Relationships, Roles, Rewards), the most common choices are often the most fraught with peril. [tweet] 21) The trial by fire of founding a startup often burns a team rather than forging a stronger team. [tweet] 22) Neglect the 3 Rs (Relationships, Roles, Rewards) at your peril. Misaligned 3Rs cause tension, dissension, and blow ups. [tweet] 23) Rich founders should be making very different investor choices than King founders; understand your core motivations! [tweet] 24) A founder-CEO's success at leading a fast-growing startup can accelerate his or her own obsolescence and replacement. [tweet] 25) 52% of founders are replaced as CEO by the time the startup raises its third round of financing [tweet] 26) Firing yourself as founder-CEO enables you to remain more involved with your startup after you're replaced. [tweet] Two quick notes: The links to the book are affiliate links. I donate all money made from such links to non-profits (I'd rather a worthy cause get the ~5% than Amazon keep it). So, what do you think? Have you run into any tough founder issues yet? How did you go about resolving them? What issues are you struggling with right now? Love startups? Join the OnStartups community on Facebook.

Posted by Dharmesh Shah on Mon, Mar 26, 2012

COMMENTS I have lived through/experienced 10 of the 26 :-( I won't say which ones to protect the innocent. Great, great, article. posted on Monday, March 26, 2012 at 9:03 AM by Karl

Some very interesting points that we'll take onboard. It's early day for us but so far things are working out fine. Thanks for the article though to keep us on our toes. posted on Monday, March 26, 2012 at 9:46 AM by Carl

Great article. I needed to learn more so I bought the book! Keep up the excellent posts!

posted on Monday, March 26, 2012 at 11:23 AM by sharon kane

Most of the articles you post are disheartening at best. Just finished reading a book by a famous billionaire and he said don’t tell people about your start-up until you are ready. Because of the negative factor of others influencing your idea. I get the same feeling reading your post. There is enough of the negative in life without always reading it here. I would like to see more post about how start-ups overcome all odds and where they are at now. Don’t tell me about the 70% that failed, tell me about the 30% that made it. posted on Monday, March 26, 2012 at 12:16 PM by Jeff Wilson

I agree with Jeff. I want to know what the success stories did right. I feel among the success stories, most of them went through a bunch of failures. So it will be interesting to know how and what they changed over time. posted on Monday, March 26, 2012 at 9:42 PM by pady

i like 3 point mentioned here above. It is only the basic important factor playing key role. posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 4:06 AM by harrietlucia

Maxim Thorne: How Howard Pew's Vision Gestated Rick Santorum -- an...

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Maxim Thorne Senior Executive, Lawyer, Motivational Speaker, Professor, Philanthropist and Consultant GET UPDATES FROM Maxim Thorne Follow Like 10

Posted: 03/26/2012 10:14 am Follow Rick Santorum , Yale , Citizens United , Clay Bennett , Howard Pew , Olivier Zunz , Pew Charitable Trusts , Pew Research Center , Nonprofit Advocacy , Nonprofit-Lobbying , Philanthropy In Action , Superpacs , Politics News Recently, a friend posted on facebook a Clay Bennett cartoon that captured the puzzling religious nature of the Republican platform --

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at least as it has been developing in the 2012 primaries. In the cartoon a woman is strapped to the "USA bed" and a priest seems to be doing an exorcism wearing a GOP embroidered stole. The woman cries out, "I distinctly asked for an ECONOMIST." In the 2012 Republican revival of a certain religiosity in politics, Rick Santorum and his ilk are but the new incarnations of the kind of right wing evangelical conservatives that Howard Pew loved. Of course, both Pew and Santorum hail from Pennsylvania. Pew, an inheritor of the Pennsylvania based Sun Oil Company, and a significant philanthropist, took a religious cast in opposing the jobs and other welfare programs of FDR's New Deal. Pew believed that "... Welfare-state-ism, Marxism, Fascism and any other like forms of government intervention ... antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, to our American way of life and to the dignity of the individual." And he spent his millions promoting just that vision. Santorum is embodying this old philanthropist's view against "state-ism" and offering again "Spiritual mobilization." Pew even railed against the "social gospel" believing that religion was only about faith and not about social issues. The Pew Trust promoted "the philosophy that we must first have faith in God before we can enjoy the blessings of liberty." As he opined, "Communism, crime, and delinquency are not caused by poverty, unequal distribution of wealth, bad laws, poor housing, or any other economic, social and political condition. They are caused by sin." Of course, the Pew Trust has now successfully manipulated to become a public charity and lobby (but that is another story). We should be amused when the Pew Research Center publishes -apparently impartially -- "that distrust of Washington is an American tradition, one which tends to rise and fall inversely with the economy." Of course, Howard Pew and his right wing philanthropist friends gestated just such distrust. Can America today lean backwards to Pew's version of a scripturally sound political economy at the expense of secular involvement in government? As we witness the tentacles of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizen's United v. the FEC, I wonder at the walls being torn down between corporation and individual giving. I wonder at the expansion of rightwing non-profit giving and church related giving. We are witnessing an increase in donations on the right -- to non-profits and the benefits of a tax deduction to the donors. And I suspect an increased transfer of nonprofit funds to advocacy, both religious and political and related political action. Some on the left pretend strategically, that Citizens United may be limited to only overturning Federal Election Law. They argue (if at all) that the tax regulations limiting nonprofit advocacy will hold. I think not -- and unless President Obama can get a different Supreme Court -- that train/crusade has left the station. And obviously the restrictions will end explicitly if Romney or Santorum become president. With Gates' and Buffett's philanthropy being relatively nonpartisan versus the Koch brothers', and with the Ford Foundation and others appearing more timid than in the past, the Right's opposition to political advocacy by foundations is dying. Gone are the days the Right feared foundations dabbling in overturning segregation or promoting women's rights. The new heirs to segregation -- or if not racial inequality -- then certainly gross income inequality and other forms of inequality -- seem sure that they control the money and can win on the playing field of great wealth players. When I was Executive Director of New Jersey Head Start our local program directors were horrified that the Bush administration (and his courts) allowed Head Start centers, though federally funded, when affiliated with churches to hire and fire based on religion. With the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United -- I see Howard Pew's theocratic vision being one step closer: first allowing churches openly to combine their religious and social work (which caused the recent contraception debacle) and now opening political advocacy to charities. Rick Santorum is probably the greatest beneficiary of these tumbling walls so far. The court has formally declared that churches can receive federal funds -- imposing religious beliefs in a previous secular partnership between charities and the government. And now with Citizens United, it empowers Rick Santorum's theocratic views and give nonprofits significant means to lobby. The end of the divide between education and advocacy and political action that prevailed so long is here. The right is running with this new understanding. Progressives needs to get off their butt and out of their self imposed straight-jackets. President Obama, at least, has said he will not unilaterally disarm -- and he's finally off to the races with SuperPACs. The progressive charities, for the moment anyway, should take what the Court has given them: we can use advocacy, whether religious or political, in our activities. I think we have not only our own progressive wealth holders but a majority of small donors who helped finance the Obama campaign -- and will do so in the new money regime. Olivier Zunz argues in "Philanthropy in America" that the majority of the Supreme Court believes that this is a necessary condition of freedom in a strong democracy. If progressives don't adopt to this new playing field -- at least in 2012 -- well then Santorum and the theocrats will change our democracy in ways too awful to contemplate -- and we have only ourselves to blame.

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