Matthew Zagaja

The Freakonomics Blog tackles the question. They did make a difference to me at least once. Due to the blurb on Stumbling Upon Happiness by one of the authors of Freakonomics, I decided to pick it up.

Blink is a look at the human subconscious and the how people use it to effectively make decisions in a split second that are just as reliable as decisions made after long periods of study. Gladwell actually makes the case that often these split second decisions are in fact superior to ones made after a long period of self-deliberation. He explains that this decision making process, he refers to as thin slicing, allows us to ignore extraneous information that might confuse us if we study something carefully.

The WPI ECE Department compiled an interesting reading list. If you are looking for something new to read, I recommend checking it out.

From the New York Times website I discovered the Freakonomics Blog which lead me to buy the book the blog is based off of. I also managed to finish the book today, and I must say it is as good as I expected. A collection of interesting anecdotes, data, and adventures that challenge preconceived notions about a large variety of things. It emphasizes the importance of properly looking at data and its context, not just using correlation.

If you are looking for a good read I highly recommend Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness. It is an interesting and fun read, with lots of insights on the human mind that I did not know about. It explains why and how we are happy, and the value of that happiness. It manages to be entertaining yet serious at the same time. You can also watch his talk at TED, which covers the basic idea of the book below.