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25th out of 26 books
—
5 voters
Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do
A revolutionary new theory showing how we can predict human behavior-from a radical genius and bestselling author
Can we scientifically predict our future? Scientists and pseudo scientists have been pursuing this mystery for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. But now, astonishing new research is revealing patterns in human behavior previously thought to be purely r...more
Can we scientifically predict our future? Scientists and pseudo scientists have been pursuing this mystery for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. But now, astonishing new research is revealing patterns in human behavior previously thought to be purely r...more
Hardcover, 272 pages
Published
April 29th 2010
by Dutton Adult
(first published 2010)
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Kind of a nerdy book, but a good one. The main idea is that things don't just happen all the time in sequence or even exponentially, sometimes surprises take place and this has an underlying mathematical model also. These 'bursts' occur in other places and times, not only in math. Many things in the modern world follow this pattern and other things that seem that way don't. The author does get a bit obscure in using a historical model for his idea: An uprising in Hungary in the 1500's. He altern...more
Albert-laszlo Barabasi the Author of "Bursts" asks the question: "Can human behavior be predicted by applying the quantum physics principles of the Dispersion Theory of Particles?" If the answer is yes, then the trajectory of disease, ideas, innovation, and human activity could be predicted with a reasonable amount of confidence.
The book weaves the story of a medieval hungarian knight, who when appointed to lead a crusade to the Holy land, turns his army of peasants against the Hungarian nobilit...more
The book weaves the story of a medieval hungarian knight, who when appointed to lead a crusade to the Holy land, turns his army of peasants against the Hungarian nobilit...more
This one was a disappointment for me. I found the basic idea interesting--that the daily pattern of human activity is bursty--short flourishes of activity followed by randomness because I have noticed that pattern myself but I did not learn any more about that pattern from reading this book. Barabasi uses long drawn out examples to prove his point--I lost interest in the examples and skipped to the straight science. It was almost like he was trying to be Malcolm Gladwell, pulling together dispar...more
I should have given up on this book but I finished it anyway, expecting a payoff late in the text. Unfortunately, my initial impression was correct, and this is a magazine article pretending to be a book.
The basic idea - that most human activity occurs in short, concentrated bursts - is interesting enough, but all the author's supporting evidence could have fit into about three pages. The alternating chapters may be interesting to someone really into Eastern European history, but to me they read...more
The basic idea - that most human activity occurs in short, concentrated bursts - is interesting enough, but all the author's supporting evidence could have fit into about three pages. The alternating chapters may be interesting to someone really into Eastern European history, but to me they read...more
I liked this book a lot, but not for the reasons I was expecting. I thought I wanted to read it so I could learn something. (Who doesn't want to be smarter?) But in the end, I kept with it because it was so gosh-darn entertaining.
There are several things going for this book. One is that the author is very good at writing. He has an engaging style that makes reading his book FUN. It was great when out of the blue he would illustrate what he was trying to explain with a funny yet clearly relevant...more
There are several things going for this book. One is that the author is very good at writing. He has an engaging style that makes reading his book FUN. It was great when out of the blue he would illustrate what he was trying to explain with a funny yet clearly relevant...more
I'm not really sure what to make of Bursts. I loved Barabasi's last book, and was excited for this one. But whereas Linked was a fascinating and focused scientific investigation, Bursts is a confused jumble of disconnected material.
For some unfathomable reason, Barabasi spends almost half of the book talking about a Romanian historical figure named Gyorgy, who led a peasant rebellion. The forced ways in which Barabasi tries to tie this material to his thesis are laughable. Another quarter of the...more
For some unfathomable reason, Barabasi spends almost half of the book talking about a Romanian historical figure named Gyorgy, who led a peasant rebellion. The forced ways in which Barabasi tries to tie this material to his thesis are laughable. Another quarter of the...more
This book would've been far more interesting had it been about a third the size. Every other chapter was the author telling the tale of some cardinal in the Crusades and a battle and.. well, I can't accurately describe it, because by about the third time this happened, I stopped reading them. I was intending to skim them, but I couldn't bring myself to even do that. Even if it did have something to do with Transylvania!
Now, he does refer to this incident from time to time, but it wasn't importan...more
Now, he does refer to this incident from time to time, but it wasn't importan...more
What's most interesting about this book is the fact that it reads like fiction. It tells the story, not only of bursts and new ideas around human behavior, but also how those new theories came into being. Writing papers never sounded so captivating - I found myself paging through the book just to see what came next. Unfortunately, I think all the story telling is hiding the fact that there's not yet that much there. The most interesting part of the book comes towards the end, when Barabasi write...more
The organization of this book frustrated me. Barabasi seemed to try to emulate his title by writing in short snippets, each following a different topic and story line. Halfway through the book, he acknowledged this by asking how it would be possible for all of these snippets to come together, but that it was time to bring them together. Nothing changed, however, and the book continued to its end fragmented, disjointed, and difficult to understand.
Many of the storylines fascinated me. The story o...more
Many of the storylines fascinated me. The story o...more
What a waste of time and paper! The whole book boils down to: "humans pursue activity in bursts", and "if you know someone's past, you can use that to partially predict their future". The rest of it is a mix of Hungarian/Transylvanian history which was boring and pointless, some anecdotes that weren't very interesting for the most part, and even a made up company, LifeLinear, just to alarm readers who were probably falling asleep by that point like I was. This book reads like it was promised to...more
The author has another book out called Linked, which i have and plan on reading and I also hear is a much better book. In fact, one of the reasons I picked this book up was because Linked looks really good and this book has the subtitle: The Hidden Power Behind Everything We Do. Given that subtitle, how could one not have any interest at all in reading it?
Having read it...i wish i hadn't picked it up. He intertwines history with science and doesn't accomplish either one particularly well. Especi...more
Having read it...i wish i hadn't picked it up. He intertwines history with science and doesn't accomplish either one particularly well. Especi...more
Did not enjoy. Read over a 4 week period perhaps better if read in a smaller time frame. Did learn about the crusades and hungary which i did not know before. Bothered by the constant story switching and time periods movement. Great quote that redeemed the book for me:
"Are we fated to be forever at the whim of leaders whose private priorities drive their - and hence our - next moves, dragging us time and again into bloody quarrels? I heartily hope not. I hope that instead one day Lewis Robertso...more
"Are we fated to be forever at the whim of leaders whose private priorities drive their - and hence our - next moves, dragging us time and again into bloody quarrels? I heartily hope not. I hope that instead one day Lewis Robertso...more
I have mixed feelings about this book. It has it's good moments and now and then I get the same feeling of awe and inspiration as I got with his "Linked" book, but by mixing the historical background story with his personal exploration of the importance of bursts in nature, science and humanity, the cocktail didn't really work for me.
I often get the impression it's more of a personal diary of glorification instead of a scientific exploration. If it had been written by another person than himsel...more
I often get the impression it's more of a personal diary of glorification instead of a scientific exploration. If it had been written by another person than himsel...more
I'm torn in my opinions. The book was well written, the prose flowing, even a "page turner" in places. The content is an odd hybrid of popular-press level discourse on patterns in human behavior juxtaposed with a dramatic narrative of a 16th century Hungarian rebellion. As other reviewers have noted, in spite of the author's attempt to link the two, the book could have done quite well without all of the space devoted to the rebellion.
Regarding the scientific meat of the book - the author left me...more
Regarding the scientific meat of the book - the author left me...more
Wow…. This book has my vote for book of the year in the “Huh?” category. Most of the book is devoted to the history of 16th century Hungary. One immediately gets the feeling that the author is very proud of his heritage and wants people to hear his story… despite the fact that the history is only marginally related.
If you are willing to wade through the history you will learn some real scientific jewels… For example: Most email users don’t send emails at the same rate hourly rate during a 24 ho...more
If you are willing to wade through the history you will learn some real scientific jewels… For example: Most email users don’t send emails at the same rate hourly rate during a 24 ho...more
Barabasi's previous book, Linked, was one of the most mind-blowing books I've ever read. It made me glad to have taken mathematics in college so that I was truly able to understand the math.
In Bursts, Barabasi hints at similarly mind-blowing discoveries, but never lays them out. Instead he wanders into the moral/ethical problems with his research, and a pointless history lesson.
The entire thing felt like he had a contract with a publisher, had to turn in a book, and so summarized his current res...more
In Bursts, Barabasi hints at similarly mind-blowing discoveries, but never lays them out. Instead he wanders into the moral/ethical problems with his research, and a pointless history lesson.
The entire thing felt like he had a contract with a publisher, had to turn in a book, and so summarized his current res...more
I haven't read this yet.
However this book has one of the most unusual web promos, I feel compelled to share it.
Found here
http://brsts.com/
However this book has one of the most unusual web promos, I feel compelled to share it.
Found here
http://brsts.com/
In fairness, I didn't finish it. However, if I HAD finished it, I would have ran out of ink in my pen from writing in the margins, over and over again, "NO! That's not how it works!" or "Um, yes, of course." Using the fact that we make more phone calls at 9:30am than 2am as proof that we don't live life randomly is obvious to anyone who's looked at a cell phone pricing plan. If you're someone that truly believes that every facet of human existence is "random," then maybe you'll be interested to...more
The overall concept of this book is interesting - and the chapters that actually focus on the math and science of human predictability were very interesting and informative. However, these chapters could have been developed a lot more, easily displacing the historical thread that just didn't seem to fit. Essentially, there are two 'books' here. One is the history lesson - which if further developed could have provided a bit more foundation for those of us having no knowledge of the crusades. The...more
Here is my dilemma; I truly did enjoy reading this book. Every page of it. But the author seems to be schizophrenic. In the beginning of the book Barabasi shows that so many seemingly random events behave, not as from a Poisson distribution, but obey a power law distribution, instead. This is very interesting; so many events in our lives and in nature, occur in bursts, rather than at random intervals in time.
But then the author starts a historical outline of a revolution attempt that occurred i...more
But then the author starts a historical outline of a revolution attempt that occurred i...more
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I wanted to like this more than I did. Was a fan of Barabasi's last book on networks but I couldn't help but find this one a bit weak. While the concept of "bursts" as a pattern to explain much of human activity over time is interesting it just doesn't seem to resonate like the power laws of the last book did. Also found the constant switching back and forth between the present time and some of the historical stories a bit annoying and staged. There were many interesting bits throughout the book...more
This book alternates between scientific research (odd numbered chapters) and a history lesson (even numbered chapters). The odd-numbered chapters are fascinating. The even-numbered chapters are boring, and after the first two or three, I began skipping them, which didn't, actually, impede my reading at all. Occasionally the odd-numbered chapters would reference the historical chapters, but I was mostly able to just gloss over and survive fine. So... anyway... even though I only read, arguably, 2...more
Oct 19, 2012
Fooch
added it
Social networks, random walks, Poisson processes, power law distributions, terrorism, revolution, cannibalism. All wrapped up in a tapestry of stories that include the random meandering travels of an installation artist and the accidents of history that turned a 16th Century Hungarian revolutionary into a martyr. And it ALL MAKES SENSE!! I've followed Barabásy's work on scale-free networks for a while and I'm delighted to see the threads come together in such an elegant and entertaining way. Rem...more
Barabasi manages to breath life and luster into a mathematical puzzle, one that explains human behavior not as Brownian motion, or random walks, but as "burstiness": bursts of activity punctuated by long, quiet intervals. He tackles the job through a clever parallel. One one path he builds the case with succinct cases drawn from modern life, each culminating (more or less) in an illustration of its "burstiness". On the other, he looks back to an epochal incident in Hungary during the early 16th...more
I picked this up on a whim and found it to be a fast read and compellingly written. The author covers various topics from (mostly present day) scientific inquiry relating to human and animal behavior that pertain to his interest in "bursty" behavior patterns. Alternately mixed in is a recounting of a story of a history-making Knight and a military campaign from 16th Century Hungary and Transylvania.
I'm interested in history, so this eastern European story was fascinating to me. I'm still not s...more
I'm interested in history, so this eastern European story was fascinating to me. I'm still not s...more
I found Mirak's review on this book to be very similar to my thoughts. I, too, liked Linked, and was hoping for as good a book. Despite being a history buff, the whole history lesson of his beloved country had nothing to so with the rest of the book, no matter how strained the analogy. Some good ideas, which would have made for a short, compelling article, but he did not reveal what was needed.
Nice try, but didn't put it together well.
Nice try, but didn't put it together well.
I thought this book was a fun read, and I liked it at first. But looking back on it, some of the science is pretty weak and the historical story (Hungarian revolution) doesn't tie in well. I would still recommend it as a fun/quick read. I did learn lots of interesting facts, like how monkeys efficiently search for bananas! And personally I enjoyed the historical narrative, though its place in this book seems dubious.
Nowhere near as well written or thought provoking as his previous book "Linked". The factual scientific content of this book could be summarized in one chapter. Sure the author presents some interesting concepts, but never really discusses them in detail. Thus most of the book is a tortured and pointless historical parable. Seriously disappointed. Don't buy this, at most, just skim it at your public library.
May 03, 2011
Peter
added it
Interesting systems analysis of human behavior, interwoven with 16th century Hungarian history, to conclude that human activities happen in a "bursty" pattern that makes them far more predictable than we would think. Random bahaviors create outliers that attract attention by their uniqueness, even as they defy the predictability of normal activity.
Being in the middle of a neurology/psychology book spate when I picked this up, I figured it would be more or less something between the two.
Instead, it was a clumsy combination of historical tale tied to the drab thesis which basically stated that people do things in flurries of activity . Very uninformative. Two stars is potentially generous.
Instead, it was a clumsy combination of historical tale tied to the drab thesis which basically stated that people do things in flurries of activity . Very uninformative. Two stars is potentially generous.
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“Keep in mind that imagination is at the heart of all innovation. Crush or constrain it and the fun will vanish.”
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8 people liked it
“Today we know more about Jupiter than the guy who lives next door to us. We can predict where an election will go, we can turn a gene on or off, and we can even send a robot to Mars, but we are lost if asked to explain or predict the phenomena we might expect to know the most about, the actions of our fellow humans.”
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6 people liked it
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