December 2014 American technology companies want the government to make immigrationeasier because they say they can't find enough programmers in theUS. Anti-immigration people say that instead of letting foreignerstake these jobs, we should train more Americans to be programmers.Who's right? The…

December 2014 If the world were static, we could have monotonically increasingconfidence in our beliefs. The more (and more varied) experiencea belief survived, the less likely it would be false. Most peopleimplicitly believe something like this about their opinions. Andthey're justified in doing so…

When I graduated University with a business degree last May, I received two incredible full-time job offers, both of which I declined because I had a plan. For exactly one year, from May 1, 2013, through May 1, 2014, I would devour everything I could get my hands on about productivity, and write…

"I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've being doing it that way..." - Bob Dylan, on Jimi Hendrix's cover of All Along the Watchtower Most people are very lazy. They don't want to take the time to think through new ideas or look at them in a new light. Once they've made up…

With well over 50 billion dollars to his name, Warren Buffett is consistently ranked among the wealthiest people in the world. Out of all the investors in the 20th century, Buffett was the most successful. Given his success, it stands to reason that Buffett has an excellent understanding of how to…

This past summer, on the last day of my clerkship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she rose from her cavernous desk and, following a hearty goodbye hug, asked me what was next. I told her that the next morning marked the start of my new job as a stay-at-home dad. She smiled warmly and wished me…

Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator . October 2014 (This essay is derived from a guest lecture in Sam Altman's startup class atStanford. It's intended for college students, but much of it isapplicable to potential founders at other ages.) One of the advantages of having kids is that…

HOW TO DRINK FROM A FIRE-HOSE WITHOUT DROWNING – Successful study strategies in medical school courses April Apperson, UCSD SOM Why should I change my study strategies? If you're not happy with your performance, the most likely culprit is your study strategies. The material presented in medical…

By DAVID L. WHEELER ATLANTA Daniel L. Barrow sits on a chair that is wrapped in blue, sterilized plastic and rests his elbows on the armrests to steady his hands. He stares straight ahead into the eyepiece of a microscope, watching his surgical instruments move in a valley of brain tissue below the…

Yesterday I gave a presentation on designing clinical trials using adaptive randomization software developed at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The heart of the presentation is summarized in the following diagram. (A slightly larger and clearer version if the diagram is available here .) Traditional…

Asking people to monitor their own health and change behaviors according to their own data — self-tracking — is the premise behind a deluge of mobile apps, new wearable devices, and patient services. The practice offers lots of hope for a world where so many ills and diseases are the result of human…