[Datacaster] The greatest duo you've never heard of
Published 9 months ago • 2 min read
Issue #9
Datacaster
There were many famous duos throughout the twentieth century who had a positive impact on the world.
Lennon and McCartney brought joy through song. Crick and Watson cracked the genetic code. Jobs and Wozniak invented modern computing.
But there was another duo who arguably had as much impact on the world as any of the names I’ve listed above. There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of them.
That duo was Deming and Shewhart.
In my latest post, I'll introduce you to them and explain why they matter now more than ever.
Things have been changing a fair amount at my place of work recently, and I'm undergoing a change myself as I start my new role as a Product Owner. That makes this book a timely read for me. Then again, change is constant.
I agree with Chip and Dan Heath when they argue that most people don't fear change - they fear loss. As you'd expect, this is a book immersed in human psychology (though it's always worth remaining sceptical about the studies they cite), and as an analogy for understanding that psychology they borrow a concept put forward by Jonathan Haidt: the elephant and the rider.
Here's how the Heaths put it:
Perched atop the Elephant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader. But the Rider’s control is precarious because the Rider is so small relative to the Elephant. Anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose. He’s completely overmatched.
To bring about effective change, they argue, you need to direct the rider ("provide crystal-clear direction"), motivate the elephant ("engage people’s emotional side"), and shape the path ("What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem").
Sounds easy, right? But that's the thing with change: it's not complicated, but it is hard.
It's hard to deny that the image above looks... well, delicious.
RJ Andrews and Wendy Shiji recently collaborated on a project that resulted in what you see. Here's how they described it:
In May 2023, this newsletter highlighted a rendered hike around Mt. Blanc, beautifully visualized by Shanghai designer Wendy Shijia. Within a few weeks, I was lucky to be chatting with her about a vision:
What if each U.S. National Park had a cookie-cutter section removed and placed on a giant chessboard for easy comparison?
[...]
Wendy and I soon began modeling parks, discussing our sections as if they were fine pieces of chocolate, arranged and annotated deliciously for the eyes to feast.
Today, after a year of collaboration, we are thrilled to announce that our project was accepted to the Atlas of Design, a biennial volume from NACIS “dedicated to showing off some of the world’s most beautiful and intriguing cartographic design.” With this prestigious commendation, it is time to reveal our progress.
Check out the link above to see examples in more detail and read all about the process.
Oh, and the best thing? They're also planning to sculpt 3-D models of these!
According to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris
Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it.
Impatience: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to.
Hubris: The quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about.
And with that, have a great week and see you next time!
