“When you are learning a new subject, I think the single most useful thing is a good mind map that lays out all the subject areas so you know where the information you are learning fits in. I can remember so many times, sitting in a lecture, having no idea what the prof was talking about and how it related to other subjects.

I think this is often the case when I’m explaining physics to other people. I know physics really well (one would hope so after doing it for such a long time), so I thought I would make a map of all of physics as it is now. This is all the stuff we know about physics - and a few things we know we don’t know.”--Teodora Zareva

Almost no one who takes an intro to economics course becomes an economist. One reason might be that within a few days of starting the class, it becomes abstract, formula-based and dull.--Seth Godin

I think the problem might be that we no longer remember how to be curious. If you are a writer or do anything where your stories matter, this is a muscle you need to keep flexing. I read, listen to podcasts, travel, and follow the threads on anything that interests me. ​During a hike up in the mountains I saw the most amazing tree. ​I immediately texted my childhood best friend to ask her if she too notices trees that would have been perfect hosts for our childhood selves to explore. I was happy to receive an enthusiastic yes within minutes if not seconds.

Because a testing regime is in place, particularly now when so many other tropes in the education-industrial complex are disrupted, the textbook authors and administrators work together to skip the ‘fluff’ and go straight to the stuff that’s easy to test.--Seth Godin

​The Last Days of the Art World … and Perhaps the First Days of a New One   Life after the coronavirus will be very different.

This optimism has all always made me sure that the art world could, and would, survive anything. But last week, that optimism started to die. Even an art-lover lifer like me has to admit much of the art world infrastructure feels like it’s already in the balance. Some of it may be gone even now. In three months, or six months, or — God forbid — 12 or 18 (there has never been a vaccine for a coronavirus)? There will be galleries on the other side of this chasm, and museums, and artists making work, of course. But I worry that such a sundering will only exacerbate the inequalities that more and more dominate this universe, with megagalleries and art stars surviving and the gap between them and everyone else only widening, rendering the scrappier artists and galleries something close to invisible.--Jerry Saltz

Over the last decade or so, the art world in peril has seemed to lose the ability to adapt. Or, rather, it now seems able to adapt only in one way, no matter the circumstances: by growing larger and busier. Expansion and more were the answers to everything.
​
I don’t think that response would be healthy in this climate. And so, in that spirit, I want to speak loudly for what art has always been — something done against the rules of advanced capitalism. Art isn’t about professionalism, efficiency, insurance, and safety; it’s about eccentricity, risk, resistance, and adaptation.--Jerry Saltz

The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back. Ram Dass

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Are You Asking Too Much of Your Chief Data Officer?

The sheer volume and abundant distortion of claims made in the absence of unbiased and careful review mislead and confuse many healthcare professionals attempting to decide which treatment is best for which patients. I think we all need a tabula rasa or clean slate. Let's start with what we do know and work from there. Think, "less Eureka" and more "what is that?" I am often reminded of continuing medical education where writers are encouraged to step in line to join the lucrative field of writing need assessments for educational funding. A pharmaceutical company will pay a premium for educational interventions that pave the way for their class of drugs or often more boldly--their specific drug. There are not many eureka moments left in healthcare. We need to question the questions and challenge status quo answers. ​Join me, won't you?

Metaphors of a Magnifico by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,
Into twenty villages...

The article in the New York Times doesn't seem to like the wallpaper and can't see beyond the hype to actually look at the merits or opportunities to query the data in a way that might be meaningful. I am not blaming the brilliant author because let's face it--he didn't create the headline. But I am blaming the metric--avoiding repeat hospitalization or hospital readmission rates. Maybe we should look earnestly into better measures for this highly edited study population.

Inclusion criteria: 
at least one hospital admission at any of four Camden-area hospital systems in the 6 months before the index admission,
at least two chronic conditions;
and at least two of the following traits or conditions:
use of at least five active outpatient medications,
difficulty accessing services,
lack of social support,
coexisting mental health condition
active drug habit, and homelessness.

Exclusion criteria:
uninsured
cognitive impairment
oncologic care or had been admitted for a surgical procedure for an acute health problem, for mental health care (with no coexisting physical health conditions), or for complications of a progressive chronic disease for which limited treatments were available. 

 Future data workshop "buckets" to highlight Envision2030

The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into new land--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now, it’s interesting how subtle and yet how formal our identities are, and how much we’re attached to them, because of how much we are used to our cards of identity.

My name, social security number, my zip code, my address, my occupation—a whole set of labels that define who we think we are. When you and I are born, very shortly after we’re born, we go into ‘somebody-training.’ We start to be trained to become somebody.

And we’re trained by other people who know who they are, and they’re going to teach us who we are—very well-meaning, I mean—so that we can function in the world by being somebody.-- Ram Dass 1976

The newspaper does everything for us. It runs the police force and the banks, commands the militia, controls the legislature, baptizes the young, marries the foolish, comforts the afflicted, afflicts the comfortable, buries the dead and roasts them afterward.

Today has been a particularly good day. One of the days where I had a bit of freedom--meaning I didn't have a face-to-face meeting scheduled either in person or remotely. I like keeping my camera closed all day. There are books to be read and more than a few presentations to finalize. Just like makeup over 50--less is more. I prefer to seed the ideas and then switch over to conversations. ​I feel the same way about exploring categorical variables in spaces where we reflexively rely on numerics. What can they tell us about a population, community, or individual?

data & donuts

"As digital technologies have enabled a broadening of economic and social incorporation, the possibilities for classifying, sorting, slotting and scaling people have also grown and diversified. New ways of measuring and demonstrating merit have sprung up, some better accepted than others. Institutions, both market and state, find themselves compelled to build up and exploit this efficient, proliferating, fine-grained knowledge in order to manage individual claims on resources and opportunities.

This process, she argues, creates new social demands for self-care and individual fitness that possibly erode the universal and solidaristic basis upon which the expansion of citizenship historically thrived."Professor Marion Fourcade--London School of Economics (LSE) Public Lectures & Events.

Big Data on a Less Big Budget