Blink

Master storyteller Malcolm Gladwell surveys research on the unconscious mind in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Adeptly weaving research findings with anecdotes, Gladwell engages the reader in a fascinating exploration of the power of the unconscious. If you’re interested in how people think, you’ll likely enjoy this book. Also check out Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious and Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less.

Who gets the credit?

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” —Harry Truman

Proust was a Neuroscientist

Proust was a Neuroscientist explores the sometimes curious relationship between art and science. In each chapter, author Jonah Lehrer reveals how a particular artist—Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Auguste Escoffier, Marcel Proust, Paul Cézanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf—anticipated later discoveries by neuroscientists. Simultaneously, Lehrer considers how the artists themselves were influenced by scientific thinking at the time. Even if science isn’t your cup of tea, Lehrer’s insights into the artists’ goals, thought processes, and influences should prove fascinating.

The definition of success

Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have. —Zig Ziglar

The Joy of Teaching

“Welcome to your first year of teaching.” So begins The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors by Peter Filene. Easy-to-read, concise, and not overly pedantic, The Joy of Teaching is a great introduction to college teaching for first-year teachers. Filene surveys the fundamentals—everything from constructing a syllabus to “teaching and not perishing”—without drowning the reader in details. He also explores topics that have only recently gained prominence in the educational literature, making the book a worthwhile read even for experienced teachers. Finally, endnotes and an annotated bibliography provide direction for additional reading and research.

Language as data compression

Language is one of the best data-compression mechanisms we have. The information contained in literature, or even e-mail, encodes our identity as human beings. … Twelve words from Voltaire can hold a lifetime of experience. —Martin Wattenberg

Source: Visualizing Big Data: Bar Charts for Words, Wired Magazine

Doctoral Consortium PowerPoint Slides

The PowerPoint slides from Consortium are now available for download! This is a virtual treasure trove of information for doctoral students in marketing, even those who did not attend Consortium this year. Note that each PDF file contains slides from multiple talks, so it may be helpful to review the program when going through the files.

Doctoral Consortium

The Robert J. Trulaske, Sr. College of Business hosted the 43rd American Marketing Association Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium at the University of Missouri earlier this month. “Consortium”, as it’s generally called, is a professional development and networking conference for Ph.D. students in marketing. Top marketing scholars from around the world attend the conference to offer advice to students in their third or fourth year of study. I was extremely fortunate to be invited to attend this year. I won’t attempt to describe the experience, but I can honestly say it qualifies as one of the highlights of my doctoral studies. If you’re interested in the topics covered at Consortium, you can view the program as a PDF. The conference organizers have also promised to post the PowerPoint slides from the presentations, which may be of interest even to students and faculty who did not attend this year.

The Power of Procrastination

Last night Jorge Cham, creator of the Piled Higher and Deeper comic strip, gave a talk at CIRTL Forum 2008 titled “The Power of Procrastination: Surviving Graduate School and Deciding What is Next”. Absolutely hilarious! If you’re a graduate student and you haven’t read his comics, you owe it to yourself to take a look. You can read them online, check out the Top 200, or buy one of his books:

• Piled Higher and Deeper: A Graduate Student Comic Strip Collection
• Life is Tough and Then You Graduate: The Second Piled Higher and Deeper Comic Strip Collection
• Scooped! The Third Piled Higher and Deeper Comic Strip Collection

Enjoy! :)

What They Didn’t Teach You in Graduate School

What They Didn’t Teach You in Graduate School is a practical guide to life as an academic. The authors, Professor Emeritus Paul Gray and Professor David Drew, enumerate the keys to success in a semi-categorized list of memorable (and often humorous) “hints”. Topics include the dissertation, getting hired, conducting research, publishing, and tenure, to name a few. Doctoral students would do well to read this book and refer to it often as they progress through their programs and enter the professoriate.