Brian Clegg's Blog, page 82

Bestseller lists? Nah

I'm taking part in a radio discussion tomorrow about science books of 2014. It's for a US radio show, and they've provided me with an extensive (and really interesting) set of topics to discuss from 'A book that pleasantly surprised you' to 'Which genres do you grab and which do you tend to overlook?' But one section left me absolutely cold - we're going to discuss the New York Times Bestseller List.

As the only newspaper I read with any regularity (about once a week) is the i, I never see bestseller lists. I have no clue what has been on the NYT list (or the Sunday Times, or whichever newspaper in the UK does them - I have no idea about that either). And, frankly, why should I care? Of course if one of my books was on one of those lists I would inevitably be rather more interested for my own purposes, but of itself it tells you nothing but sales figures. It certainly doesn't identify the best books - or books I would particularly want to read - so why should I bother to hunt it down? Specifically I have no interest in slavishly following the masses. After all, if I did that in TV viewing I would have a continuous diet of soap operas and reality TV shows. Is that a recommendation for an approach?

As I describe in Dice World , the process by which a book becomes a true bestseller (as opposed to the category bestsellers most of us authors claim, for instance when a book gets the top ranking on Amazon in the popular science category) is one that is inevitably shrouded in mystery as it's a chaotic process. Just like you can't forecast the weather months ahead (take note, Daily Express), you can't forecast what will be the next Harry Potter or Brief History of Time. And what being a 'bestseller' certainly doesn't indicate is excellence.

So my answer will be simple - I don't look at these lists, I don't want to be guided on what I read or review on popularscience.co.uk by what is primarily a marketing tool, and it seems to be a way that many books get overlooked because there becomes too much focus on a handful of titles that simply happen to have been in the right place at the right time. It's the Richard and Judy bookclub all over again. Sorry NYT, you're not for me.

Computers as commodity

An early Apple Mac - how do you open the case?
You don't.I'm currently reading for review an interesting book by Matt Nicholson called When Computing Got Personal. I was reminded strongly of the debates back in the mid 1980s over the decision to make Apple's Macintosh computer a sealed unit, which the user was not expected to open up and fiddle inside. At the time, pretty much all PCs could be opened so you could add in 'expansion cards' to improve graphics handling, add network connectivity, beef up memory or whatever. The general feeling amongst professionals was that Apple were making a huge mistake. You had to be able to stick expansion cards into the chassis: it was almost part of the definition of what a personal computer was.

In the end, though, it was spiky, irritating Apple that got it right and the industry heavies that got it wrong. Because the sealed unit is exactly the way the business has gone. I'm writing this on an (Apple) all-in-one that only allows you to do one thing inside it: add memory. The vast majority of domestic computer hardware these days is either in the form of a laptop, with similarly limited abilities to open it up, or a tablet (or phone) where opening up isn't even an option for the owner.

The change has been driven from two directions. One was the philosophical vision behind the Macintosh, which was computer-as-commodity. No one expects to be able to open up their TV and fiddle around inside it - why should you have that expectation for a computer? It's simply not a very sensible thing to do. The other is the simple fact that we really don't need to open up computers any more. This is partly because so much that you used to have to add in is built in anyway. And also because USB, Firewire, Lightning and the like have provided external connectors that are so fast that if you want to add something you just plug it into a connector. No need to have your sticky fingers straying near delicate integrated circuits and panicking about doing damage with static charges.

So it's not just the mass use of graphical interfaces and high resolution printers that we have to thank Apple for. They realised long before their competitors that most people don't want to be hardware engineers, tinkering around with circuit boards and such. They just want to turn the thing on and use it. (And count me amongst them.)

Strangely, a company began as a hobby business taught the more 'serious' computing manufacturers how to move a product from being something for techies and hobbyists to something for a true mass market.

Image from Wikipedia

Self-selecting jokes

Jokes are notoriously subjective. Some find a simple pun hilarious - many wince and move on. But there are some jokes that work in some parts of the country, but don't in others - which is an interesting reflection on the regionality of words and their pronunciations.

Of course, the UK/US divide is an infamous one for making different use of words, even with today's shared culture. When I write a book for my US publisher, I quite often get a query about a term I've used that they simply don't get over in New York. The most recent manuscript (just in), had two such queries. What, they wanted to know is 'dross'? And for that matter, what are 'holiday snaps'? (I corrected the latter to holiday photographs, though really I should, I suppose, have made it vacation photographs.) And inevitably you say tom-ate-oh and I say tom-aht-oh.

However, my favourite example of this is much more subtle. One of the few clear memories I have of junior school is our teacher reading The Hundred and One Dalmatians aloud to us. Although now a little dated, the original Dodie Smith book has far more to it than the films, and it was a wonderful experience. But there was a joke in the book that flew straight over our heads up in Rochdale (or, to be precise, Littleborough), because it simply didn't work the way that we pronounced words.

Unfortunately my cherished 1960s paperback of THaOD has gone walkabout, so I am having to remember the wording from memory - feel free to give me the exact version if you have it to hand. The joke comes when the puppies have been rescued and the dog family are on the run. To avoid detection, the dogs all roll in soot so that they no longer look like dalmations. Missus says to the now black-coated Pongo: 'Suit soots you.' Hilarity ensues from her slip-up in many a southern household. Queue puzzled faces in our northern classroom.

Why? Because with a Rochdale accent 'suit' and 'soot' are homophonic. Both are pronounced approximately like the name 'Sue' with a T on the end. And so the joke fell flat, because when read aloud there is nothing wrong with what Missus said.

So there we have it. Some jokes can be used to tell which part of the country the reader comes from.

Christmas Gift Guide

As we enter that time of year when many of us have lots of presents to buy, I thought it would be a good idea to highlight some of my titles that make useful gifts - especially for those difficult-to-buy-for people. When you consider what many presents cost these days, I honestly think you can't beat a book for value. So here's my top six, in no particular order:

Introducing Infinity : a great stocking filler (just £5.99 currently on Amazon, and pocket-sized), Introducing Infinity brings the mind-boggling subject of infinity alive with powerful illustrations in a unique graphic guide. Suitable from about 14 upwards for anyone with an inquiring mind. See at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. If your gift recipient would prefer a more in-depth, though still approachable read, there is also A Brief History of Infinity .
Xenostorm: Rising : a faced-paced science fiction novel, technically for a young adult audience (12+), though it works as well for adults who like SF. (Currently £7.75 on Amazon.) Fourteen-year-old Davy comes home to discover his parents have disappeared - and then a voice in his head tells him that he will be shot if he doesn't act immediately. Davy finds himself facing a powerful underground group who have lived for hundreds of years - and want to see him dead. The future of human existence is in the balance. What that future is – only Davy can decide. See at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.
The Universe Inside You : an entertaining exploration of science, using your body as a starting point to look at everything from bacteria to the scale of the universe. Bursting with eye-popping facts, and a great way to introduce science to someone who is reluctant to read about it - but equally for anyone who enjoys exploring the true sense of wonder of science. Written for adults but suitable from about 13 up. (Currently £7.19 on Amazon.) See at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.
Build Your Own Time Machine : the subject I get asked to talk about most is time travel - because it's something that fascinates everyone, yet many are surprised to learn that there is nothing in the laws of physics that prevents it. This is one for the slightly more dedicated science lovers as it goes into more detail than some of the other books. But if you have a science fan, from 15 to adult, on your gift list, they will love this one. (Currently £7.61 on Amazon.) See at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.
The Quantum Age : my latest book and a chance to explore the weirdest aspect of science, quantum theory. The book introduces the basics of quantum physics in a highly approachable way, but it focuses mainly on the amazing applications of quantum physics, from lasers to electronics to superconducting magnets... and even the way that strange quantum effects take place in the natural world. Despite the subject, this is not an overly-technical read, but opens up the topic they're usually too scared to teach you at school for anyone from 14 to adult. This is a hardback, so a little more expensive (currently £11.99 on Amazon), but that does make it more attractive as a present. See at Amazon.co.uk - sorry, not available on Amazon.com until February 2015.
Dice World : recently on the longlist for the Royal Society Prize, Dice World gives the reader a chance to have his or her mind boggled by the aspect of maths that we seemed designed to be fooled by: probability and randomness. Find out how to toss a head ten times in a row, how to make predictions with impossible accuracy, why people volunteer to give up thousands of pounds for no good reason, and how a game show left the woman with the world's highest IQ being reviled by a whole list of academics... until they discovered she was right. Inquisitive minds from 15 to 99 will be fascinated - and it's currently £7.19 on Amazon. See at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.



... if there's nothing here that catches your fancy, take a look at my entire collection of science books, or if you want something special, I have many of my books available direct, signed and with an inscription of your choice.

The Many versus The Few

View from the A303 (looks better than this in reality)It might seems strange, but some British road planners have just faced the kind of dilemma beloved of Star Trek - and have made a decision I find quite sad.

Anyone who has watched shows like Star Trek, Buffy, Battlestar Galactica etc. (basically any ensemble show where the characters' lives are put at risk) will be familiar with the 'Many versus the Few' dilemma. Our heroes get in a situation where they really ought to apply the dictum 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few'. It's what Mr Spock usually wants to do. But in this case, the 'few' at risk are their comrades, and so they invert the rule and put the lives of many at risk to save a few. (This is, of course, related to the trolley experiment I've referenced before.)

What has this to do with road planners? I have just read that the go-ahead has been given to construct a tunnel so that the A303 is not visible from Stonehenge. The result will be that visitors to our local ancient monument (though not the best - don't forget Avebury!) will have a more 'authentic' view as they look over the much-farmed Wiltshire landscape from the roped-off perimeter of the stones. What no one seems to have noticed is that this also means that Stonehenge will not be visible from the A303 - and I think that's a real pity.

Seeing Stonehenge appear as you pass it by is, for me, one of the greatest driving experiences in the UK. I have regularly rerouted a drive to make sure I go along this stretch of the A303 just to see it. Particularly near sunset in summer it is a wonderful sight. And, of course, far more people get this amazing experience as a result of driving past than ever take the trip to the visitors' centre to plod around that perimeter barrier.

So what they have decided to do is sacrifice the experience of the many for the experience of the few. Is it justified? Possibly. But my suspicion is that they never gave any consideration to the benefits of the majority. And that is a shame.

Health and safety requires me to point out that if you are a driver, you should only allow yourself a passing glance of Stonehenge - but the passengers can drink it in as long as they like.

You get what you pay for in publishing

The publishing world is very different now to the way it was 20 years ago. Some of us still work with traditional publishers. We appreciate the professional services they offer, from editing and typesetting to getting our books into bookshops. Others choose to do it themselves with mixed results - the best self-published authors do superbly well others sell to their aunty and that's about it. But there's an interesting in-between scenario.

What if you want your book professionally produced, but it's rejected by traditional publishers? It might seem there's a ideal alternative in companies that do the work the traditional publisher does, but  will accept pretty well any manuscript as long you are prepared to defray costs. This kind of operation has been going a long time, and is traditionally described as 'vanity publishing'. In principle there's nothing wrong with it - but a recent experience I've had with just such a publisher (I won't name them as there are plenty of their ilk) shows the dangers for the author.

We'll leave aside the price that authors face - these are typically too high for the services offered, but I'm sure there are some competitively priced vanity publishers out there. It's more about what the author expects to get for their money.

What started this was receiving a press release from a vanity publisher. I had no illusions about what they were, and treated it as I would a self-published book. 99 times out of 100 I ignore these. But this real world fantasy with a historical twist sounded quite intriguing, so I thought I'd give it a go. The book arrived, and you could see that the author had got some serious work done for his or her money:
It was a professional produced paperback without that rather cheap look of print on demand.It had clearly been proofread - there were no obvious typos.The publicist had managed to get it in front of a reviewer.All in all, not bad. Of course it's unlikely it would ever be in a bookshop, but with Amazon etc. this isn't strictly necessary. But then I started to read the book. I tried. I really did. But it was practically unreadable. Poor use of English, badly structured... it was well produced, but a very bad book. I pointed this out to the publicist be told that some authors are trickier to deal with than others.
Okay, I should have left it there. But I was then offered something more down my usual line - a popular maths book, written by someone who had a background that made it possible that it could be a decent text, and on a subject I find really interesting. So I thought I'd give them another go.
Again, the presentation was excellent. This was a chunky hardback produced to excellent quality - it could easily have been from one of the big publishers. And again it had clearly been proof read. There was even a lot of worthwhile content. But it was a book that was crying out for a proper edit. The text wandered here and there, had stylistic issues and, most worryingly for a popular science book, repeatedly made reference to concepts and people it had yet to introduce, so unless you already knew the subject it was baffling.
This was by no means a total disaster, so I wrote a review on popularscience.co.uk concluding: 'Overall, then, the idea behind the book is excellent and there is sometimes some rather poetic, readable material, but there is a total lack of understanding narrative flow - the writing jumps around without consideration for what the reader already knows - and the whole is in need of a serious edit. The book is handsomely produced, but from a publisher that only seems to do copy editing without any true editorial input, and it shows. I can't really recommend the book unless you like a challenge, but that's a pity because there is good material in it.'
I thought the publicist would think any publicity is good publicity, but instead got a hurt email saying 

Thank you, but the bad aspects of your review outweigh the good so I would have preferred it if you had warned me that you found the book poor as I would have asked you not to put it up on your site.

I hope the author will appreciate your review.

Taking that final remark as a veiled threat, I took the review down. I won't be taking books from them again. But this sorry debacle left me with two thoughts. First, what did they expect, putting out a book that clearly hadn't been edited? A glowing review? And secondly, and more importantly, what do the authors expect? Did they think their books had been edited, just because they had been proof read? Were they like those X-factor contestants who blithely believe in their own talent, despite all the evidence to the contrary, or did they think that by going to an apparently respectable publisher that their handsome looking books would have been turned their book into something more than they originally wrote?

I have been writing books for a long time, but I still get editor's notes and make changes to the first draft. I'm just doing such an edit right now, and, for instance, the editor suggested a change to the end of the book that I think has improved it immensely. Yet these people have missed out on this essential part of working with a publisher - something needed far more with a new writer.

You do indeed get no more than what you pay for with a vanity publisher (and in some cases considerably less) - but would-be authors who are thinking of using their services should check exactly what is on offer, and whether it will indeed make their book saleable.

I don't know much about robots, but I know what I like

Is it art?I've always had mixed feelings about the Turing test. This is (a variant on) the mechanism proposed by Alan Turing (you know, the one who looks like Benedict Cumberbatch) to decide if computers could be considered to be intelligent. As I've pointed out previously, the way the test is administered is far too lax. And part of the problem is the requirement of a judge to decide if the entity he or she is communicating with is a person. This is inevitably a subjective decision, and highly dependent on the quality of the dialogue the judge uses.

Now, though, we've got a whole new level of silliness, with a Georgia Institute of Technology professor suggesting that in testing for machine intelligence we should also 'ask a machine to create a convincing poem, story or painting.' What remarkable twaddle. Take the 'art' aspect. We can't agree on which humans can create a convincing painting, so how could we possibly use this as a test? By the standards of modern art, any random collection of paint marks on a canvas could be considered a 'convincing painting' - it purely depends on what those judging persuade themselves is valid and/or meaningful and important. There is no standard against which to measure what the computer produces.

Let's be clear - I am not saying this because I think that art that doesn't require skill and craft is worthless (although I do think this). Merely saying that there is no metric that could be possibly be used. What, for instance, if the computer produced the image shown here. If this had been done by, say, Mark Rothko, it would be classed as a convincing painting. As it happens I did it pretty randomly on an iPad in 2 minutes - so it's not classed as a convincing painting. The metric is not the nature of the artwork itself, but who produced it. Modern art is essentially a celebrity phenomenon. And that means the process is bound to fail.

Do You Still Think You're Clever? review

John Farndon, the author of Do You Still Think You're Clever?: Even More Oxford and Cambridge Questions! is, very sensibly, a believer in 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' In this follow up to Do You Think You're Clever? he takes exactly the same approach of collecting a series of the more bizarre questions asked in Oxbridge interviews and providing his own suggested answers.

As Farndon says, you may not always agree with his answer - but that's part of the fun, because when you're dealing with questions like 'What makes a strong woman?' in a theology interview, it's really up to you how you answer - and what the interviewer is looking for (if he or she is any good) is not so much someone who comes up with a pat answer, but someone who can demonstrate how to think through a question, and this is something that Farndon excels at.

Thankfully, the reader doesn't need to know too much about the subject. In fact I found questions like 'Was Shakespeare a rebel?' much more interesting than more science-based ones like 'Why does a tennis ball spin?' I have both taken a Cambridge entrance interview and interviewed for a company that used a fiendishly evil question in their interviews (or at least did until it got too well known) - in the latter case, it was always the interesting answers that came at the problem laterally that were considered to indicate better candidates rather than the straightforward attempts at a solution.

(As an aside, the company interviews had a senior and junior interviewer. The first time I took part, other than being interviewed myself, the senior interviewer said to the first candidate 'If you need to know any statistical formulae don't worry, just ask Brian.' (B*st*rd.) I was taken totally off guard. I'm not good at remembering formulae, and it's a red herring - the question doesn't require it. But of course the first person said 'What's the formula for standard deviation?' and my mind went totally blank and had to ask for help. Next interview I had a cheat sheet.)

In the end, the reader's thoughts are as interesting as Farndon's answers. I found, having put the book down part way through, that I was thinking about how I would answer the next question up - in fact probably the best way to read it is one question at a time, then put it down while you think about the next one. This makes it a great loo book - but also a great gift book (I'm sure it's no coincidence it's going on sale this time of year) and it will certainly be one I'll be giving to a few people.

I feel I ought to say something negative about any book I review - all I can really find to say here is that I hate the cover. Please don't judge the book by it.

You can find out more or buy it at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Proving the irrational

When writing about science we often have to fight against irrational ideas that seem to grow on people's minds like fungi. Yet early mathematicians had the opposite problem of requiring the irrational. This was the irrational in the literal sense - a number that is not made up of a ratio. According to myth, when one of Pythagoras' merry band discovered that the length of a diagonal of a square with sides of length one (the square root of 2) was not a rational number (a fraction that's the ratio of two whole numbers), he was drowned for spreading such a malicious concept.

What's interesting, as I describe in my book A Brief History of Infinity , is that there is a remarkably simple proof that √2 is irrational. It requires little more than an understanding of odd and even and goes something like this:

Let's assume √2 can be represented by a rational fraction - we'll call it top/bottom.

To keep things simple, we are assuming that top/bottom provides the simplest fraction you can get - there's nothing to cancel out, so it's like 1/2 rather than 2/4. So:

top/bottom =√2

Square roots are a bit fiddly, so let's multiply each side of the equals sign by itself. This gives us

top2/bottom2 = 2

In traditional mathematical fashion, we can get rid of the division by multiplying both sides of the equation by bottom2, giving us:

top2 = 2 x bottom2

Next, the Greeks relied on their knowledge of odd and even numbers. They knew three things about odd and even numbers.
A number that can be divided by 2 is even.If you multiply an odd number by an odd number, you get another odd number.If you multiply any number (odd or even) by an even number, you get an even number.As the right-hand side of the equals sign is 2 x bottom2, it must be even - it's the outcome of multiplying by an even number, 2. So top2 also must be even. And that means top has to be even (because were it odd we would be multiplying two odd numbers together and would get an odd result).
Now here comes the twist. If top is even, then it can be divided by 2. So top2 can be divided by 4. And we know that top2 is the same as 2 x bottom2. If 2 x bottom2 can be divided by 4, then bottom2 can be divided by 2. So bottom2 (and hence bottom) is even. (Read that again if necessary - it makes sense.)

So both top and bottom are even. But if both are even, then top/bottom isn't the simplest fraction we could have, since we can divide both top and bottom by 2. Yet we started by saying that top/bottom was the simplest fraction we could have. We've reached an impossible contradictory situation - which means our original assumption that it was possible to represent √2 by a ratio was false.

Added: Thanks to Thony Christie for pointing out that it's thought the Pythagoreans first discovered that √5 was irrational - but because √2 is based on the diagonal of a unit square, I think it makes the simplest example.

The joy of being tech support

For a while when I worked at British Airways I was in charge of the department that did all the support for PC users - and I was also one of BA's first PC programmers - so I think it's fair to say that I know more about computers than most people of my generation. This can be handy. But the downside is that the family regard me as official PC support guy.

This came home with a bang when one of my daughters reported one of the weirdest errors I've come across. Every time she tried to save something in Word the above error box came up. She couldn't save a single file. Even with the default Document1 filename. Yet other programs - Powerpoint for instance - were fine. Word is something she uses heavily on her course, so it needed sorting, but what could possibly be happening?

At the time the laptop was at university and I was at home, so several local attempts were made to sort it out without success. This weekend I finally got my hands on it and spent a couple of hours tidying up various bits and pieces, plus fully de-installing and reinstalling Office. End result? No change.

I was under a bit of pressure, as I had a train to catch. But three minutes before I was due to leave I had a really silly idea. And 2 minutes and 50 seconds before I was due to leave, I had fixed the problem. What it comes down to is a subtle divergence between Word, with its Windows background, and the Mac's OS X operating system, which is basically a tarted up version of Unix. Windows comes from a DOS heritage where filenames were very limited. Who remembers names that had to be no more than 8 characters in length? And there were lots of forbidden characters in filenames. Windows has loosen up since then, but there are still a number of limitations on what can appear, and this proved to be the secret to fixing the problem.

It might seem this doesn't make any sense - after all I was trying out totally legitimate filenames. But the whole path that specifies where the file is located also had to meet with Word's approval. And at some point, the hard disc of the computer had been accidentally renamed ]q - which the Mac had no problems with. But this meant that file's path, which includes the name of the hard disc, had a ']' in it, which Word didn't think was possible.

So there are three problems here the developers should have spotted and prevented. First, by default the Mac puts an icon for the hard disc on the desktop, which makes it far too easy to accidentally rename it. (Easily removed, but it's probably a mistake to have it there in the first place.) Secondly Word, like Powerpoint, should have coped with all possible Mac file naming possibilities. And thirdly the Word error message should have been a lot more explicit, rather than leaving you guessing just what it was complaining about.

Sigh. Computers, eh?