rate of change

A while back I came across a blog post discussing the teaching of mathematics in schools. (I think the link is buried somewhere deep in the Drafts Folder. Along with 90% of all posts. Not convinced 99% would not be a better number. Anyway.) A commenter said he did not need his lawyer to know algebra.

Hm.

I've dealt with a lot agents and lawyers and accountants over the years. Algebra, no, I don't think my life would have been better if they had demonstrated competence in algebra. Exponential growth and decay, though, this is a concept that would have been helpful. Helpful as in enabling me to publish a book as a year rather than having a 9-year gap.

It's 2.38 am in Berlin. I'm sitting in Drama, a breakaway bar founded by Peter, who used to be a partner at Prinz Eisenherz, the gay café two doors up, before he got fed up. He wanted a place that would not be just for gays, but for everyone. So he went for a decor of fuchsia and gilt and faux leopardskin. As one would.

When one works on a book it has a momentum. It reaches a point where it can be finished a month, if one has a clear month at time t. If it's disrupted for a month, though, it will probably take two months to complete. If it's disrupted for six months it may well need a year to complete. If it's disrupted for a year it may not be possible to finish within the author's lifetime. Accelerating deceleration.

There's an obvious cost to leaving a book unfinished. There's a cost to having a gap of 10 years rather than 1 between books. And the latter, unfortunately, also requires some kind of seat-of-the-pants understanding of basic calculus, because fame is also subject to exponential growth and decay. The number of people who recognize an author's name falls off not just rapidly, but increasingly rapidly. (After 10 years everyone between the ages of 20 and 30 was under the age of 20 when the last book was published; these are not people, for the most part, with whom the first round of readers would have bothered to discuss it.)

So, from a strictly financial view, which is where one might hope to find understanding among the moneyminded, there's a value to simple, easily concluded deals; there's a value to the kind of editor who wants only minor changes and hands in comments in a week; there's a value to the kind of lawyer who not only says permissions won't be a problem but lays on clerical support to clear them; there's a value to the kind of copy editor who discusses the text with the author before getting to work, and who then respects the author's mark-up; there's a value to a typesetter who is competent to set the text. There's a value to the kind of publicist who sets up a timetable and sticks to it. And there's a value, consequently, to any kind of representative who is not only frugal with the author's time him- or herself, but who encourages such frugality in everyone dealing with the book.

What's interesting.

If you look at the British and American educational systems, America looks like a country with a much higher general level of numeracy. In Britain, only 12% of 17-year-olds do Maths A-level, which is where calculus and, for that matter, probability are studied. It's not just perfectly possible to be a lawyer or an agent or an editor in Britain and have studied no mathematics after the age of 16; it's highly probable that people holding those jobs have never seen a delta in their lives. In America, on the other hand, a year of calculus is commonplace for all kinds of people who don't plan to do further work in mathematics or the sciences. What I might expect, in other words, is a dramatic difference between my British and American contacts. In Britain I might expect the mere phrase "exponential decay" to bring on glazed eyes and wild terror; in America, on the other hand, I might expect to -- that is, if I explained the problem in terms of exponential decay I might expect instant recognition, but in fact I might expect not to have to explain. It's not my job, surely, to explain the underlying mathematics to the business people? Isn't it their job to know these things, and bring them to bear whether I understand them or not? (A knowledge of calculus may be helpful for some works of fiction, but it's surely not a prerequisite? Shouldn't all writers have the benefit of numerate business advisors?) Anyway, it does seem to me that I might reasonably expect to find common ground with the mathematically superior Yanks. But. Well. Hm.

A reader told me a while back that he thought most people had a romantic idea of writers, which writers, for the most part, maintained, and that writers did not talk about money, either because they were themselves romantics, or because they thought talking about it would look pedestrian and unromantic. But it's not, actually, that money is the thing that I'm thinking about. I'd like to avoid going insane. Having a book go dead does something to the mind; you stand on railway platforms and you don't know whether the body will throw itself in front of the train. I think Leonard Cohen is right - it's not in the same class as having your fingernails pulled out - but it still makes falling in front of a train look good.

The thing is, though, that I don't expect a lawyer or an agent to understand what it feels like to have a book go dead. I don't expect them to understand what it's like to hold a Stanley knife in the hand and not know what will happen next. (Will it slash a wrist? The throat? What's going to happen?) With money, though, we're talking about the quantifiable, we have (I think) common ground. I can talk about this in their terms, and they'll get it, and because maximization of money is on my side I won't have any problems.


Well. Um. Hm.

Should probably consign this to the Drafts Folder. Drama is closing for the night. The staff are stacking chairs, they want to go home. I'm outstaying my welcome.

Pip was right

In contrast, a number of other Enlightenment theorists (Adam Smith, Condorcet, Mary Wollstonecraft, Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill, for example) took a variety of approaches that shared an interest in making comparisons between different ways in which people's lives may go, jointly influenced by the working of institutions, people's actual behaviour, their social interactions, and other factors that significantly impact on what actually happens. The analytical, and rather mathematical, discipline of "social choice theory" – which can be traced to the works of Condorcet in the 18th century, but has been developed in the present form under the leadership of Kenneth Arrow in the last century – belongs to this second line of investigation. That approach, suitably adapted, can make a substantial contribution, I believe, to addressing questions about the enhancement of justice and the removal of injustice in the world.

In this alternative approach, we don't begin by asking what a perfectly just society would look like, but asking what remediable injustices could be seen on the removal of which there would be a reasoned agreement. "In the little world in which children have their existence," says Pip in Great Expectations, "there is nothing so finely perceived, and finely felt, as injustice." In fact, the strong perception of manifest injustice applies to adult human beings as well. What moves us is not the realisation that the world falls short of being completely just, which few of us expect, but that there are clearly remediable injustices around us which we want to eliminate.

Terrific piece by Amartya Sen in the Guardian, here.

the 66% solution, or: baked beans are off

Martin Amis, Al Alvarez and Melvyn Bragg discussed suicide last week at an event at the University of Manchester's Center for New Writing (podcast here). Reminded me of a book killed off by my very dear friend and admirer Steve Gaghan.

:: ::

In the chocolate-houses of Eleazar these challenges are uttered: Define Zoroastrian. Define Jansenist. Define silversmith.

In the courtyards and bazaars of Eleazar residents are constantly updating their signs, and if a Maronite tattooist with a brace of parrots moves from the street of the rug merchants to the street of the glassblowers those in the new street and the old rush to correct the probability distributions on the signs which greet the visitor.

It is recognised that the business of a silversmith may require him to leave the premises, thereby rendering inaccurate the probabilities for encountering silversmith, Zoroastrian, marmoset owner. Their convention is to leave a dummy as a courtesy to visitors. The silver mask of a silversmith’s dummy, the golden mask of the goldsmith’s testify to the art of the maker more truly than the presence of the maker could do. The owner of a marmoset acquires as a matter of course a stuffed marmoset to represent the living animal when it is being taken to the bamboo grove south of the city. A cockatiel, which is always in its cage, is seen as an inferior sort of pet as requiring no double - though some owners will display, as a matter of pride rather than necessity, a stuffed bird on the pretext that even a cockatiel must sometimes seek medical attention.

It has been said that when the barbarians attacked Eleazar they found a city of masked effigies whose owners had fled long before.

It has been said that when the barbarians attacked many Eleazans fled and perished through their attempts to take with them the facsimiles in whose company they had spent their days. These replicas, it was thought, were the finest expression of their chance-loving civilisation, and the poverty of a life that must carry its chances on its back could not be contemplated. It has been said that the barbarians, having slaughtered the owners, took home the replicas and set them senselessly on display.

It has been said that some refugees fled across the ocean with their complement of copies intact. It was not always possible for a silversmith to find work as a silversmith; to practise Zoroastrianism was not easy. They could not bring themselves to create replicas of the practitioners of the trades they were forced to adopt. A man who was once a silversmith sweeps a floor; he does not place a broom in the arms of the dummy, nor strip it of its silver mask.

In this way do the arguments of the chocolate-houses return to him. Define silversmith. Define Jansenist. Define Zoroastrian.

:: ::

Or. But of course, as so always, Monty Python gets it best:

(You know the sketch I mean. From our very dear friends at YouTube, here.)

Man:	Well, what've you got?
Waitress:	Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam;
Vikings:	Spam spam spam spam...
Waitress:	...spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam...
Vikings:	Spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam!
Waitress:	...or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.
Wife:	Have you got anything without spam?
Waitress:	Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Wife:	I don't want ANY spam!
Man:	Why can't she have egg bacon spam and sausage?
Wife:	THAT'S got spam in it!
Man:	Hasn't got as much spam in it as spam egg sausage and spam, has it?
Vikings:	Spam spam spam spam... (Crescendo through next few lines...)
Wife:	Could you do the egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam then?
Waitress:	Urgghh!
Wife:	What do you mean 'Urgghh'? I don't like spam!
Vikings:	Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Waitress:	Shut up!
Vikings:	Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Waitress:	Shut up! (Vikings stop) Bloody Vikings! You can't have egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam.
Wife:	I don't like spam!
Man:	Sshh, dear, don't cause a fuss. I'll have your spam. I love it. I'm having spam spam spam spam spam spam spam beaked beans spam spam spam and spam!
Vikings:	Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Waitress:	Shut up!! Baked beans are off.
Man:	Well could I have her spam instead of the baked beans then?

everybody knows

What do you consider your darkest hour?

LC: Well I wouldn't tell you about it if I knew. Even to talk about oneself in a time like this is a kind of unwholesome luxury. I don't think I've had a darkest hour compared to the dark hours that so many people are involved in right now. Large numbers of people are dodging bombs, having their nails pulled out in dungeons, facing starvation, disease. I mean large numbers of people. So I think that we've really got to be circumspect about how seriously we take our own anxieties today.

Terrific interview of Leonard Cohen in the Guardian, here.

the pleasures and sorrows of singular they

Are you an excellent primary teacher who prides themselves in their method of delivery of the national curriculum?

If so, a cool job awaits: this popular two form entry primary school has had recent extensions and a nursery added to its footprint.

More here

[A commenter has taken this to imply that I think singular they is incorrect. I don't. I think it runs into problems when it needs a reflexive form. We have both a singular and a plural reflexive form for you: If you pride yourself (singular); if you pride yourselves (plural). The form themselves, in this context, seems to me as a result to revive the plural connotations of they; this strikes me as stylistically infelicitous after a singular verb. It is presumably correct, since the alternative would be themself (v. Arnold Zwicky on Language Log on singular themself), but it's clumsy.]

more more more

Courtesy Mark Sarvas on the Elegant Variation, piece on a Boston book club for the homeless.

head to head

Over on Learning R, the intrepid RLearner is going through Deepayan Sarkar's book on data visualization using Lattice and replicating the graphics using Hadley Wickham's ggplot2. It's completely enchanting.