I Read Some Great Books Over the Weekend

日期:2017/05/22

The Lost Art of Reading Nature Signs by Tristan Gooley.

Here's a great quote from Gooley talking about trees usual orientation towards the south: "If you are surprised by what you see in trees, there's an explanation. Randomness is not a great strategy in nature. So it's rare."

That quote to me is so profound. So often what seems absurd, ephemeral, has a much deeper explanation (that often already transpired). Gooley was talking about a tree that grew stronger and bigger on the north side. It turned out that the North was receiving reflections from a big glass building on that side.



I also read Henri Poincare: A Scientific Bio by Jeremy Gray, a fascinating genius who made major contributions to differential equations, number theory, probability, electricity, non-Euclidian geometry  effortlessly by applying models that could be transferred from one field to another. The biographer is a mathematician who does a great job in illumining the contributions in each field.

Also Economics for Independent Thinkers by Daniel Nevins. This book in press tells you 100 things that can lead to disaster, especially government debt. While many of the things he highlights are bad, and have historically been associated with disasters in the economies, there is no effort to tie these to markets. There is a good discussion of the effects of QE on lending and activity.