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  05/28/10 PHD comic: 'A story in file names'

  Shared by tylermac
  Must be windows, the files are sorted by date, but the UI says it is sorted by filename...

  Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham

  www.phdcomics.com

  

  title: "A story in file names" - originally published 5/28/2010

  For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!

  3 months on
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  Infrastructures

  3 months on
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  Dodge Viper

  Shared by tylermac
  DO WANT!

  

  <<

  

  4 months on
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  i wrote this comic shortly before hopping on my bike and riding off into the sunset, i mean, into work archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about– ← previousMarch 9th, 2010next

  March 9th, 2010: Brad took the Qwantz Corpus I linked to the other day to help the efforts to solve my yet-unsolved anagram, threw in some Markov chains, and used it to write a program that generates new Dinosaur Comics automatically! He's posted some results and they're pretty awesome. Enjoy!

  – Ryan

  6 months on
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  How to Teach Yourself Programming

  

  Seriously, why is everyone in such a rush?

  
  

  6 months on
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  Photo
  
  

  6 months on
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  01/20/10 PHD comic: '63% of internet readers will like this comic' Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham

  www.phdcomics.com

  

  title: "63% of internet readers will like this comic" - originally published 1/20/2010

  For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!

  7 months on
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  ATTENTION ALL CIVILIZATIONS ACROSS THE UNIVERSE: HAVE A SIMULATED GOOD TIME

  Shared by tylermac
  I've thought this very thing many times.

  archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about– ← previousDecember 24th, 2009next

  December 24th, 2009: It's true, Dinosaur Comics got personified last night and wished everyone an awesome new year. I do too!

  This is where I take my MINI CHRISTMAS VACATION: there'll be no new comic Christmas Day, and I'll be running Klassik Komicks until January 1st, 2010 (next Friday!) So it's really just four Klasik Komix. I keep spelling "Klassick Kowmics" differently each time because they're that classic!

  Have fun, everyone, and thank you for making 2009 one of my best years ever. It's still amazing that I get to do this comic instead of having a real job, and it's all thanks to you guys.

  – Ryan

  8 months on
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  Saying "NO".

  I saw this cartoon in a tweet today. It’s the story of how a boss corrupts the work of a professional. It’s a funny cartoon, and a sad story that happens all too often in our profession. But who, exactly, was at fault?...

  The difference between a laborer and a professional is that a laborer takes orders from his boss, and a professional provides input to his superiors. Laborers are hired to take direction. Professionals are hired to ensure that the direction chosen makes sense.

  Imagine this conversation between a patient and a doctor:

  Patient: “My arm hurts.” Doctor: “What would you like me to do about it?” Patient: “Make my arm stop hurting.” Doctor: “Do you want me to cut it off?, I can do that.” Patient: “No, I just want it to stop hurting.” Doctor: “I could cut all the nerves to your arm. That’ll stop it.” Patient: “Isn’t there something less drastic you could do?” Doctor: “Ooops, sorry, time for my break.”

  Clearly we don’t expect doctors to behave this way. Even though the patient is the boss, the patient expects the doctor to have the answers and help set the direction.

  Here’s another version of the conversation:

  Patient: “I want you to cut my arm off.” Doctor: “What’s wrong with your arm?” Patient: “It hurts. I’m tired of it. Just cut it off.” Doctor: “Let me see your arm. Hmmm. Looks like you’ve got a sprain or perhaps a hairline fracture. We should take some X-Rays.” Patient: “No, just cut it off.” Doctor: “Sir, I do not cut off healthy arms.” Patient: “But I’m paying you. You have to do what I say!” Doctor: “No, sir, I don’t. Cutting off your arm would violate my oath.”

  Which of these two doctors would you rather be? Now project these two doctors into your own profession, and which would you rather be?

  Programmers are professionals. They know more about designing and implementing software systems than their bosses do. Indeed, they are hired for this knowledge and expertise. And they have a solemn duty to prevent their managers from doing things that would be harmful.

  All this boils down to one simple thing. Professionals are willing to say “No”. When their managers come to them with direction that makes no sense, a professional programmer will refuse the direction.

  Is this risky? Sure. But part of being a professional is the willingness to stand on principle. There are lines that a professional will not cross.

  Of course saying “No.” is only one side of the coin. Professionals are also expected to explain their positions, and come up with viable alternatives. Professionals negotiate with their superiors until both parties are satisfied with the chosen direction.

  The poor web-designer schmuck in that cartoon was not behaving as a professional. He was behaving as a laborer. The fiasco at the end was his fault. He should have said “No.” and started a negotiation with his customer instead of just doing everything the customer said.

  The cartoonist painted the web-designer as a wise but impotent victim, and the boss as the overbearing dufus. The reality is that the web-designer took the role of the victim voluntarily and shirked his responsibility to refuse direction that he considered harmful.

  If you are a professional, you never allow yourself to be put in the role of the victim.

  9 months on
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  The Quiet One

  
  link for this comic
  
  

  9 months on
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  How Rewards Can Backfire and Reduce Motivation

  

  Surely one of the best ways to generate motivation in ourselves and others is by dangling rewards?

  Yet psychologists have long known that rewards are overrated. The carrot, of carrot-and-stick fame, is not as effective as we've been led to believe. Rewards work under some circumstances but sometimes they backfire. Spectacularly.

  Here is a story about preschool children with much to teach all ages about the strange effects that rewards have on our motivation.

  It's child's play

  Psychologists Mark R. Lepper and David Greene from Stanford and the University of Michigan were interested in testing what is known as the 'overjustification' hypothesis—about which, more later (Lepper et al., 1973).

  Since parents so often use rewards as motivators for children they recruited fifty-one preschoolers aged between 3 and 4. All the children selected for the study were interested in drawing. It was crucial that they already liked drawing because Lepper and Greene wanted to see what effect rewards would have when children were already fond of the activity.

  

  The children were then randomly assigned to one of the following conditions:

  1. Expected reward. In this condition children were told they would get a certificate with a gold seal and ribbon if they took part.
  2. Surprise reward. In this condition children would receive the same reward as above but, crucially, weren't told about it until after the drawing activity was finished.
  3. No reward. Children in this condition expected no reward, and didn't receive one.

  Each child was invited into a separate room to draw for 6 minutes then afterwards either given their reward or not depending on the condition. Then, over the next few days, the children were watched through one-way mirrors to see how much they would continue drawing of their own accord. The graph below shows the percentage of time they spent drawing by experimental condition:

  

  As you can see the expected reward had decreased the amount of spontaneous interest the children took in drawing (and there was no statistically significant difference between the no reward and surprise reward group). So, those who had previously liked drawing were less motivated once they expected to be rewarded for the activity. In fact the expected reward reduced the amount of spontaneous drawing the children did by half. Not only this, but judges rated the pictures drawn by the children expecting a reward as less aesthetically pleasing.

  Rewards reduce intrinsic motivation

  It's not only children who display this kind of reaction to rewards, though, subsequent studies have shown a similar effect in all sorts of different populations, many of them grown-ups. In one study smokers who were rewarded for their efforts to quit did better at first but after three months fared worse than those given no rewards and no feedback (Curry et al., 1990). Indeed those given rewards even lied more about the amount they were smoking.

  Reviewing 128 studies on the effects of rewards Deci et al. (1999, p. 658) concluded that:

  "tangible rewards tend to have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation (...) Even when tangible rewards are offered as indicators of good performance, they typically decrease intrinsic motivation for interesting activities."

  Rewards have even been found to make people less creative and worse at problem-solving.

  Overjustification

  So, what's going on? The key to understanding these behaviours lies in the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. When we do something for its own sake, because we enjoy it or because it fills some deep-seated desire, we are intrinsically motivated. On the other hand when we do something because we receive some reward, like a certificate or money, this is extrinsic motivation.

  

  The children were chosen in the first instance because they already liked drawing and they were already intrinsically motivated to draw. It was pleasurable, they were good at it and they got something out of it that fed their souls. Then some of them got a reward for drawing and their motivation changed.

  Before they had been drawing because they enjoyed it, but now it seemed as though they were drawing for the reward. What they had been motivated to do intrinsically, they were now being given an external, extrinsic motivation for. This provided too much justification for what they were doing and so, paradoxically, afterwards they drew less.

  This is the overjustification hypothesis for which Lepper and Greene were searching and although it seems like backwards thinking, it's typical of the way the mind sometimes works. We don't just work 'forwards' from our attitudes and preferences to our actions, we also work 'backwards', working out what our attitudes and preferences must be based on our current situation, feelings or actions (see also: cognitive dissonance).

  When money makes play into work

  Not only this but rewards are dangerous for another reason: because they remind us of obligations, of being made to do things we don't want to do. Children are given rewards for eating all their food, doing their homework or tidying their bedrooms. So rewards become associated with painful activities that we don't want to do. The same goes for grown-ups: money becomes associated with work and work can be dull, tedious and painful. So when we get paid for something we automatically assume that the task is dull, tedious and painful—even when it isn't.

  This is why play can become work when we get paid. The person who previously enjoyed painting pictures, weaving baskets, playing the cello or even writing blog posts, suddenly finds the task tedious once money has become involved.

  Yes, sometimes rewards do work, especially if people really don't want to do something. But when tasks are inherently interesting to us rewards can damage our motivation by undermining our natural talent for self-regulation.

  ---

  » Try the latest happiness-boosting positive psychology iPhone app - LiveHappy!

  

  10 months on
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