Overconfidence and Dunning-Kruger effect

People are typically overconfident. They tend to overestimate their abilities in all kinds of areas, ranging from sense of humor, grammar, reasoning skills, to driving skills. Interestingly, this effect is most pronounced among people who have the least skill. Those with a test score in the 12th percentile would on average estimate themselves to be in the 62nd percentile. The Optimism Bias by Tali Sharot gives a lot of examples and corresponding explanation for this prevalent phenomenon of overconfidence, claiming that our brains are irrationally optimistic.

One of my favorite academic papers is The Trouble with Overconfidence by Don Moore and Paul Healy, published in Psychological Review in 2008. They use Bayesian updating to show that even under the assumption of rationality, this phenomenon of overconfidence can appear.

"After experiencing a task, people often have imperfect information about their own performances but even worse information about the performances of others. As a result, people’s post-task estimates of themselves are regressive, and their estimates of others are even more regressive."

Rephrase their conclusion in plain English: when a task is easy, people underestimate their performance but underestimate the performance of others even more, so they think they perform better than others do. When trying to finish a difficult task, however, people overestimate how well they perform but overestimate even more how others perform, so they think others perform better than they do.

Social Influence and Social Value

Human beings are social animals, and it is important to us how others perceive us. The clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the houses we live, all potentially influences how other people see us. So aside from their physical and practical values, clothes, cars, and houses all have social values, which make us willing to buy something at a price much greater than its utilitarian value. Even what we talk about, aside from the value of communicating information, has social value that influences how others perceive us. So we talk about cool things, we tell jokes, we gossip, not so much for communication as to appear interesting, smart, and knowledgeable, showing our good qualities as potential friends, mates or business partner.. Things that have social values provide visible symbols of social status.

It is interesting to think that while most people choose to talk cool stuff, which bring social value to the "talkers," what most people talk about determines what kind of products or what type of consumption have high social values. When most people talk about a certain product, owning that product bring the owner the attention and social status. Information spread under the disguise a random chat.

The consumption of all social products exhibits positional externality. Well, that is a confusing economic phrase, but to put it a simple way, it means that your consumption of some social product incurs social cost to other people. Here I emphasize the term "social" because the practical value is unaffected. Consider the example of houses. When you have a reasonable-size house while all your neighbors have tiny houses, then you feel good about yourself, which comes from the value of your social standing. You feel good maybe you your neighbors talk a lot about you, like how rich you are, how high your salary must be, how comfortable your life must be in such a "big" house compared to their little tiny ones. Now put your house into a neighborhood where all your neighbors have spacious houses. You feel sad, upset and to some extent depressed. You are out of the focal point of attention now. Your neighbors stop talking about you, or worse, they talk about bad things, like how bad your financial condition must be, how terrible for you to live in such a "small" house, etc. Your physical living condition is the same, but your social standing makes you feel drastically different in these two situations. That explains why we may want to be a big frog in a small pond rather than a small frog in a big pond (c.f. Choosing the Right Pond by Robert Frank).

Notice that the consumption of social value is a zero-sum game. When everyone increases the size of their houses, the social values of the houses don't change that much, though the practical values increase. This will give rise to welfare loss as we over-allocate our resources to consumption that brings social value, while the social value remains unchanged, the marginal practical value keeps decreasing, even to a level we cannot feel the increase of the practical value. Now you should understand why after we have a dramatic increase in our living condition compared to our past, we don't feel any happier. You should also understand why the GDP difference is not a good predictor of happiness: while the United States has a much higher GDP per capita than the Philippines, the Americans are not much happier than the Filipinos (indeed, the Americans are much less happy than the Filipinos according to many happiness indices).

So the lesson? Paying too much attention to the consumption of social goods is a recipe for sadness. But when you compare yourself with others, don't blame anyone. It is our nature as social animals. Evolution has made us that way, and it was advantageous in the hunter-gather society when social connection and cooperation is important and even a matter of life and death. We are hence wired to care about what others think about us, and a consequence of this is our preferences for social standing. It is not a bad thing, but if you want to be happier, you probably need to care less about others' opinions. What should we do then? Maybe first be aware of this, and realize that missing a train in painful only if you run after it (a quote from the book The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb), and failing to achieve the success that others expect is painful if you chase after it.

The bottom line: Be yourself. Know who you are and what you want, not who others want you to be or what most people want.

Why the gene for suicide?

It is a puzzle why evolution doesn't eliminate the gene that gives people propensity to commit suicide, because if someone has this "suicide" gene and does commit suicide, this gene would not pass on. Natural selection should have selected against that gene, but as we can see, natural selection is not that successful in doing this. We can see some suicidal or nearly suicidal behaviors among animals, which can be explained by kin selection: when your suicidal behavior benefit your close relatives, then it may be helpful to pass on the copy of genes on your relatives, which are the same as yours. The suicidal behavior of human, however, seldom benefit their kin, and hence cannot be explained by kin selection.

To solve this puzzle, it is helpful to realize that not every characteristic of human being is selected directly by natural selection. Sometimes they are just by-products of other characteristics. I would argue that suicidal behavior and its major cause depression are by-products of the human desire to be significant and to have a purpose. This desire to be significant is a major driving force for human, which can bring them more resources and more mating opportunities. When we fail to achieve what we planned, we feel sad. This bad feeling motivates us to try harder. This close to perfect design in the hunter-gatherer society, however, is flawed in modern society. We now live in a time where there are tons of situations that can put us into stress, tons of reasons for us to get disappointed and the fast paced living keeps us from recovering from the stress and disappointment, hence depression develops. As suicides are almost unheard of in primitive societies, we can say that human suicidal behavior is a product of the mal-adaptation of our genes to modern environment.

Evolution and the Prefrontal Cortex

More than 2000 years ago, Confucius said "the desire for food and sex is human nature." From an evolutionary point of view, food and sex are not just human nature, but the nature of every animals. In a general sense, survival and reproduction are the driving force of all living organisms.

What, then, distinguish human from other animals and living organisms? In a word, prefrontal cortex (PFC). PFC is the anterior part of frontal lobe, and it is responsible for planning, decision making, and moderating social behavior. The prefrontal cortex makes up far larger percentage of the brain compared to other animals.

Having a prefrontal cortex is a blessing and a curse. This reminds me of these words from Spider Man: with great power, comes great responsibility. It is a blessing because it enables human to think, to plan, to reason, to imagine, to visualize, to discover and resolve conflicts. With this ability, human start to have dominion over the earth. The prefrontal cortex, however, is also a curse because concomitant with the ability to think and plan is the potential to worry and be anxious about the future. Of course, without the motivating feeling of being worried about the future, the prefrontal cortex would be of no use because people may simply not to use it. But the feeling of worry and anxiety, however, at the same time put stress on human mind and body, and when the feeling is too strong and last too long, it does harm to human both mentally and physically. So the prefrontal cortex develops this ability of self-deception to reduce cognitive dissonance and make human feel better, preventing the harm done by anxiety. It reminds me the tragic ending in Shutter Island where Teddy has to be lobotomized to get rid of his self-deception and illusive imagination.

Interestingly, when people are nervous and anxious, they activate the alarm system built in their brain, which prompted a complex change in brain chemicals that inhibit the functioning of the prefrontal cortex. They temporarily shut down their prefrontal cortex, which is like they have a temporary lobotomy! Believe it or not, this is an advantage in a life-or-death situation. The shutting down of people's profrontal cortex rid off their ability of thinking, and they instead depend more on their instinct, getting ready in an impulsive fight-or-flight state. Consider back in the Pleistocene, you are hunting your dinner somewhere in the savanna and suddenly you spot a tiger eyeing you. What do you do? I don't know what you think, but your brain think it's better to make sure you act quickly with every ounce of energy you have. Your brain think it's better not to let you think. This fight-or-flight response wants is an energy-management instinct, direct you to spend your limited physical and mental energy in an efficient way.

The problem is this once advantageous design back in the hunter-gatherer society is not adaptable to modern society, as there are few life-and-death situations. When we under pressure, we feel nervous, and our instinct mistakenly takes current situations like taking an exam or giving a public speech as life threatening, shuts down our thinking and reasoning ability, and get us ready to engage in a fight or a flight. There are also physiological changes corresponding to this feeling of stress, which consume much more energy much more quickly than common situations. Constant stress, as we can easily see here, gives you a feeling of burning down. It is actually true, because your body burns a lot of energy. This condition if lasting long will be detrimental to your health.

59 seconds by Richard Wiseman

Effective change does not have to be time-consuming. It can take less than a minute and is often simply a question of knowing exactly where to tap.

1. Happiness
Keep the perfect diary.
Buy experiences, not goods.
Sit up.

2. Persuasion
The Franklin Effect: People like you more when they do a (SMALL) favor for you.
The Pratfall effect: The occasional slipup can enhance your likeability when you are in danger of being seen as too perfect.
Gossip: Whatever traits you assign to others are likely to come home to roost, being viewed as part of your own personality.

If  you want to up the chances of a lost wallet being returned, truck in a photograph of the cutest, happiest baby you can find and make sure that it is prominently displayed.

3. Motivation
Lien Pham and Shelley Taylor: The daydreaming exercise had significant impact on the students' behavior, causing them to study less and make lower grades on the exam.
Gabriel Oettingen and Thomas Wadden:  those with more positive fantasies had lost on average twenty-six ponds less than those with negative fantasies.

You need to take actions! Fantasizing about your perfect world may make you feel better, but it is unlikely to help you transform your dreams into reality. It is important to visualize, but it is no less important to take actions!

Hence, visualize yourself doing, not achieving. Visualize yourself taking the practical steps needed to achieve your goals.Also, visualize yourself as others see you.

Tennis players and golfers benefit far more from imagining themselves training than winning.

Lisa Libby: they type of "behavioral commitments" involved in such visualization exercises can be made even more effective by seeing yourself as others see you.

Permanent and positive changes are all about having the perfect plan, knowing how to beat procrastination, and employing a rather strange form of doublethink (fantasy-reality thinking).

1. Make a step-by-step plan
Successful people break their overall goal into a series of sub-goals and thereby created a step-by-step process that helped remove the fear and hesitation often associated with trying to achieve a major life change. These plans were especially powerful when the sub-goals were concrete, measurable, and time-based
SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-based.
2. Think about the good things that will happen if I achieve my goal
remind yourself frequently of the benefits accosicated with achieving the goals. Have an objectice checklist of how life would be better once the goals are achieved.
3. Reward for making progress toward the goal
Some small reward attached to the sub-goals.
4. Record my progress (in a journal or on a chart)
Make the plans, progress, benefits, and rewards as concrete as possible by expressing them in writing. The act of writing, typing, or drawing significantly boost the chances of success.



Using the Zeigarnik effect to solve the problem of procrastination.
"Just a few minutes" rule is a highly effective way of beating procratination and could help people finish the most arduous of tasks.



Consider your legacy and write your own eulogy. This helps to identify long-term goals and assess the degree to which you are progressing toward making those goals a reality.


Liars tend to lack detail, use more "ums" and "ahs" and avoid self-references ("me,""mine,""I"), use uncontracted form (do not instead of don't).
People are about 20 percent less likely to lie in an email than in a telephone call.

10 Myths About Creativity

Insights are actually the culminating result of prior hard work on a problem.

There is no such thing as a creative breed. People who have confidence in themselves and work the hardest on a problem are the ones most likely to come up with a creative solution.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229600#ixzz2j0z6DpTZ

Latex-suite and reference autocomplete

latex-suite requires grep to be installed on your system.  Once grep has been installed, you have to make it reachable via the windows environment variable PATH. 

You have to use Python 2.7.* 32-bit version in order for gvim to use Python to complete the function

[Repost] A Primer on Heart Rate Variability

It is well known that longer, more intense training sessions increase the risk of overtraining when not followed by an adequate recovery period. The main problem for athletes is measurement — it is difficult to assess the effect of training on the body with a high degree of accuracy. However, heart rate variability (HRV) can provide athletes with this information, which can be used for such purposes as to determine how well the body is adapting to training, if more rest is necessary, and if the athlete is receiving the right training effect.*

Traditionally, training zones have been considered the best measure of training intensity. These can be established through heart rate, maximum oxygen uptake (VO2 max), lactate threshold, or a combination of several of the above. However, these training zones do not take into consideration the cumulative effect of exercise over a number of workouts. This means that finding the balance between training intensity/duration and rest/recovery in order to achieve optimal fitness can be difficult.

How it Works

Heart rate is regulated by the autonomic nervous system, which is made up of sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves. The sympathetic nerves excite the heart, causing heart rate to increase, while the parasympathetic nerves cause the heart rate to decrease. Variation in heart beats was discovered in 1966, reports Biocom Technologies, when it was shown that disparities of a few milliseconds between heart beats was normal. The variation in heart rate is due to the attenuation of the parasympathetic activity when a person inhales, meaning heart rate tends to speed up during inhalation and slow down during exhalation.

HRV can help signal whether you are overtraining, and as such hindering any efforts to achieve optimal performance. During exercise, heart rate speeds up and heart rate variability becomes less pronounced, explains Peak Performance. In contrast to this, your heart rate variability is increased when you are more physiologically relaxed and unstressed. Therefore, a reduced HRV after an exercise session suggests an incomplete recovery, reduced hydration, or other external stressors. Your heart rate variability can also be affected by age, gender, genetic makeup, type of exercise and environmental factors, says Peak Performance.

As useful as heart rate variability can be, questions remain regarding its reliability as a metric; lack of measurement standardization and accuracy are the most widely cited concerns. For many, though, these issues are offset by HRV’s accessibility and ease of use.

In the broadest sense, heart rate variability helps reduce the guesswork involved when trying to assess your body’s physiological state of recovery from training. This information can be quite useful in determining when your body is ready for additional effort.

*At rest, the body system is in balance. A workout disturbs this balance by putting the body under adaptative stress. Together the stress and reaction is known as the training effect.

http://my.moxymonitor.com/blog/bid/271109/A-Primer-on-Heart-Rate-Variability

Multirow and multicolumn spanning with latex tables by Dr. Andrew J. Page

http://www.andrewjpage.com/?archives/43-Multirow-and-multicolumn-spanning-with-latex-tables.html

The easiest way to do multirow and multicolumn spanning in latex is to use the package multirow. Just put
\usepackage{multirow} at the top of your latex file.

Above is a simple example of this in action.
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|} \hline
\multicolumn{3}{|c|}{Schedulers} \\ \hline
\multirow{3}{*}{Immediate} & RR & Round Robin \\
& EF & Earliest First \\
& LL & Lightest Loaded \\ \hline
\multirow{4}{*}{Batch} & MM & Min-Min \\
& MX & Max-Min \\
& DL & Dynamic Level \\
& RC & Relative Cost \\ \hline
\multirow{4}{*}{Evolutionary} & PN & This paper \\
& ZO & Genetic Algorithm\\
& TA & Tabu search~\cite{GLOV1986j}\\
& SA & Simlulated Annealing \\ \hline
\end{tabular}


The main things to note are, to span multiple columns in a latex table you just use \multicolumn followed by the number of columns to span and how you want it positioned, e.g. l for left, r for right, c for centered. Spanning multiple rows in a latex table is the same, except using \multirow followed by the number of rows to span, and how you would like it positioned. * basically means best fit. Remember that the first element of each row needs to be empty, since you have some piece of information spanning multiple rows.

Some Thoughts on Dissertation Proposal Writing by Chris M. Golde

http://chris.golde.org/filecabinet/disspropose.html

Writing a dissertation proposal is, in my opinion, the hardest part of the dissertation process. In Education, where few students are working closely with an established research project led by a faculty member, the student is developing a project on their own. In creating a proposal you are crafting something out of nothing. Developing an understanding of an issue, identifying, reading and summarizing the relevant literature, and developing your own take on the problem are time consuming and often frustrating processes. In many ways the methodology is the easiest part to develop. Once you have a clear idea of the first pieces, the methods should follow easily.

Sometimes the more you know the less things hang together. This is normal. Writing a proposal is an iterative process. You cycle through the various pieces over and over. In the end, you are trying to create a linear argument which takes the reader from knowing little to a point where the reader wants you to do this project more than anything in the world. However, the construction of the proposal is not linear. It is common to work on a proposal for several months, and to write 15-20 drafts.

In general I think that proposals should be in the 20 page range. I think that a proposal should have the following parts:

1. Introduction

   	Summary of the larger puzzles and issues
   	Locating your work in a larger issue
   	Main research question

2. Problem Statement

   	What is the issue?
   	What are the specific questions?
   	What is the context and background?
   	Why does this matter?

3. Conceptual Framework

   	How do you look at this puzzle?
   	What is the theoretical framework (what is this a case of?)?
   	What are the key constructs?
   	What are specific terms you are using and how do you define them?
   	Model of what you think is going on

4. Methods

   	What do you plan to do and why
   	How do these link to the questions and the CF?

5. Bibliography
6. Appendices

   	Survey drafts
   	Pilot data
   	Timeline

In general I do not like a separate section labeled "Literature Review" although I know that people have different opinions about that. In addition, some projects may be more appropriately organized that way. Instead, I think that you should interweave the literature into the PS and the CF. This informs the reader of what we do know and what we need to know. This serves to bolster the argument which you are crafting. Rather than summarizing the various pieces of literature in detail (by reviewing the methods and the dependent variable and the findings) you should be explaining what matters about that study. This can be as brief as (these examples are from my own proposal):

The decisions of students are a complex interaction of internal, external and institutional factors (Cabrera, Castaneda, Nora, & Hengstler, 1992).

Or take a paragraph to summarize several studies:

While this macro-level description of women in doctoral education turns attention to systemic problems, problems are also located at the individual level. The sexist micro-inequities which many women endure have been dubbed the academic "chilly climate," which impacts female graduate students as well as undergraduates (Berg & Ferber, 1983; Female Graduate Students at MIT, 1983; Hall & Sandler, 1982; Sandler & Hall, 1986). For example, women may be rendered invisible, and rarely asked for their advice or expertise, or may be interrupted. Lott has analyzed the ways in which competent women are evaluated less favorably than comparable men (1985), a bind women are unable to escape. Women doctoral students may be the victims of sexual harassment, and may be particularly reluctant to speak out, given their reliance on faculty support for their chosen careers (Dziech & Weiner, 1984; Schneider, 1987). Women students may be less likely to find mentors, as faculty are more likely to mentor same-sex students (Berg & Ferber, 1983).

Only when there is direct bearing on the study you are doing, might you want to describe a study in depth. (I don't have a very good example of this, because I don't do this much.)

Bowen and Rudenstine (1992) computed doctoral student attrition rates for a 10 university sample, of which Stanford was one participant. They found a 52% attrition rate for the entering cohorts of 1972-76 (p. 108). They also computed rates for two groups of departments (English-History-Political Science and Math-Physics) in a sub-set of 4 universities (including Stanford), and found a 40% attrition rate for the EHP departments and a 24.7% rate for the MP group. Like many studies, these data are quite old. More recent data from the Stanford Provost's Committee on the Recruitment, Retention and Graduation of Minority Graduate Students (Stanford University, 1994) suggest an attrition rate near 20%.

Regardless of what organizational strategy you use to present the literature, keep in mind to do ANALYSIS of the literature. What are the conceptual and methodological strengths and weaknesses? What are the things we can say with confidence, and what is speculative and tentative? What is clearly established and what is missing? By identifying the gaps, you can locate your own work. In the CF you want to convince the reader of your way of looking at things. Here you take the literature and summarize and reorganize it in order to bolster the points you are trying to make. Rather than marching through a number of studies (A said this, B said that, C and D are contradictory) I used this strategy, as an example.

As described in detail in the section which follows, the research literature has identified four primary forces which shape the departmental context of the doctoral student experience. Figure 3 identifies these four forces, two of which are external influences from the larger communities in which the department is located, the campus community and the disciplinary area. The other two forces are internal, they categorize the way in which organizational members and organizational rules, policies and practices create the departmental organization.

I also believe strongly in drawing diagrams and models of what you think is going on and how you see the world. Others might disagree, but I think this can be done for exploratory and qualitative work. Even if you are not hypothesis testing, you have an idea of what components are salient. And if you revise your view in the light of the data, so much the better.

By the end of the CF you want the reader convinced both of the importance of this problem and of your way of looking at it. The Methods then flow from the questions and your way of looking at them. While you may be doing exploratory work, you still need to explain how the things you are looking at or asking about relate to the way you understand and conceptualize the problem. (Let me also say that I STRONGLY disagree with those who suggest for exploratory research you should read the literature after you collect the data. This is utter nonsense and could only lead to haphazard and ill-informed data collection. Exploratory, theory-building research must still proceed in light of previous knowledge. How else would you know that it was treading new ground?)

Your understanding and conceptualization may, of course, change as you collect the data. The proposal is not cast in cement. Instead, it is a blueprint. It is a map which guides you on your data collection and analysis journey. The more thoroughly you have thought about the issues in advance, the more likely you are to be on sure ground later.

Finally, I strongly believe in the importance of sharing your work with others. One key person is your dissertation chair. You want to make sure that you clear major changes in direction with her/him, so that you do not regard one another with horror further down the road. You may want to identify other committee members towards the beginning of the process and chat with them about suggestions and directions. Exactly what their role is, and whether they read drafts of the proposal, is a highly varying process and needs to be negotiated with each person and your chair.

I also believe (and virtually require for students whose dissertations I chair) that you should find a group of other students and form a writing group. (See Tips for Writing Groups). This is a place to share your writing as it evolves, and a group to provide feedback on the concept, the implementation and the larger process. If you find a group you trust and can work with, you will create much stronger work, and use your advisor's time more effectively. In addition, you will learn to write better, and learn how to ask for and give feedback.

Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story

Storytelling is joke telling. It's knowing your punchline, your ending, knowing that everything you're saying, from the first sentence to the last, is leading to a singular goal, and ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings. We all love stories. We're born for them. Stories affirm who we are. We all want affirmations that our lives have meaning. And nothing does a greater affirmation than when we connect through stories. It can cross the barriers of time, past, present and future, and allow us to experience the similarities between ourselves and through others, real and imagined.

The children's television host Mr. Rogers always carried in his wallet a quote from a social worker that said, "Frankly, there isn't anyone you couldn't learn to love once you've heard their story." And the way I like to interpret that is probably the greatest story commandment, which is "Make me care" -- please, emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically, just make me care. We all know what it's like to not care. You've gone through hundreds of TV channels, just switching channel after channel, and then suddenly you actually stop on one. It's already halfway over, but something's caught you and you're drawn in and you care. That's not by chance, that's by design.

So it got me thinking, what if I told you my history was story, how I was born for it, how I learned along the way this subject matter? And to make it more interesting, we'll start from the ending and we'll go to the beginning. And so if I were going to give you the ending of this story, it would go something like this: And that's what ultimately led me to speaking to you here at TED about story.

And the most current story lesson that I've had was completing the film I've just done this year in 2012. The film is "John Carter." It's based on a book called "The Princess of Mars," which was written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. And Edgar Rice Burroughs actually put himself as a character inside this movie, and as the narrator. And he's summoned by his rich uncle, John Carter, to his mansion with a telegram saying, "See me at once." But once he gets there, he's found out that his uncle has mysteriously passed away and been entombed in a mausoleum on the property.

(Video) Butler: You won't find a keyhole. Thing only opens from the inside. He insisted, no embalming, no open coffin, no funeral. You don't acquire the kind of wealth your uncle commanded by being like the rest of us, huh? Come, let's go inside.

AS: What this scene is doing, and it did in the book, is it's fundamentally making a promise. It's making a promise to you that this story will lead somewhere that's worth your time. And that's what all good stories should do at the beginning, is they should give you a promise. You could do it an infinite amount of ways. Sometimes it's as simple as "Once upon a time ... " These Carter books always had Edgar Rice Burroughs as a narrator in it. And I always thought it was such a fantastic device. It's like a guy inviting you around the campfire, or somebody in a bar saying, "Here, let me tell you a story. It didn't happen to me, it happened to somebody else, but it's going to be worth your time." A well told promise is like a pebble being pulled back in a slingshot and propels you forward through the story to the end.

In 2008, I pushed all the theories that I had on story at the time to the limits of my understanding on this project.

(Video) (Mechanical Sounds) ♫ And that is all ♫ ♫ that love's about ♫ ♫ And we'll recall ♫ ♫ when time runs out ♫ ♫ That it only ♫ (Laughter)

AS: Storytelling without dialogue. It's the purest form of cinematic storytelling. It's the most inclusive approach you can take. It confirmed something I really had a hunch on, is that the audience actually wants to work for their meal. They just don't want to know that they're doing that. That's your job as a storyteller, is to hide the fact that you're making them work for their meal. We're born problem solvers. We're compelled to deduce and to deduct, because that's what we do in real life. It's this well-organized absence of information that draws us in. There's a reason that we're all attracted to an infant or a puppy. It's not just that they're damn cute; it's because they can't completely express what they're thinking and what their intentions are. And it's like a magnet. We can't stop ourselves from wanting to complete the sentence and fill it in.

I first started really understanding this storytelling device when I was writing with Bob Peterson on "Finding Nemo." And we would call this the unifying theory of two plus two. Make the audience put things together. Don't give them four, give them two plus two. The elements you provide and the order you place them in is crucial to whether you succeed or fail at engaging the audience. Editors and screenwriters have known this all along. It's the invisible application that holds our attention to story. I don't mean to make it sound like this is an actual exact science, it's not. That's what's so special about stories, they're not a widget, they aren't exact. Stories are inevitable, if they're good, but they're not predictable.

I took a seminar in this year with an acting teacher named Judith Weston. And I learned a key insight to character. She believed that all well-drawn characters have a spine. And the idea is that the character has an inner motor, a dominant, unconscious goal that they're striving for, an itch that they can't scratch. She gave a wonderful example of Michael Corleone, Al Pacino's character in "The Godfather," and that probably his spine was to please his father. And it's something that always drove all his choices. Even after his father died, he was still trying to scratch that itch. I took to this like a duck to water. Wall-E's was to find the beauty. Marlin's, the father in "Finding Nemo," was to prevent harm. And Woody's was to do what was best for his child. And these spines don't always drive you to make the best choices. Sometimes you can make some horrible choices with them.

I'm really blessed to be a parent, and watching my children grow, I really firmly believe that you're born with a temperament and you're wired a certain way, and you don't have any say about it, and there's no changing it. All you can do is learn to recognize it and own it. And some of us are born with temperaments that are positive, some are negative. But a major threshold is passed when you mature enough to acknowledge what drives you and to take the wheel and steer it. As parents, you're always learning who your children are. They're learning who they are. And you're still learning who you are. So we're all learning all the time. And that's why change is fundamental in story. If things go static, stories die, because life is never static.

In 1998, I had finished writing "Toy Story" and "A Bug's Life" and I was completely hooked on screenwriting. So I wanted to become much better at it and learn anything I could. So I researched everything I possibly could. And I finally came across this fantastic quote by a British playwright, William Archer: "Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty." It's an incredibly insightful definition.

When you're telling a story, have you constructed anticipation? In the short-term, have you made me want to know what will happen next? But more importantly, have you made me want to know how it will all conclude in the long-term? Have you constructed honest conflicts with truth that creates doubt in what the outcome might be? An example would be in "Finding Nemo," in the short tension, you were always worried, would Dory's short-term memory make her forget whatever she was being told by Marlin. But under that was this global tension of will we ever find Nemo in this huge, vast ocean?

In our earliest days at Pixar, before we truly understood the invisible workings of story, we were simply a group of guys just going on our gut, going on our instincts. And it's interesting to see how that led us places that were actually pretty good. You've got to remember that in this time of year, 1993, what was considered a successful animated picture was "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin," "Lion King." So when we pitched "Toy Story" to Tom Hanks for the first time, he walked in and he said, "You don't want me to sing, do you?" And I thought that epitomized perfectly what everybody thought animation had to be at the time. But we really wanted to prove that you could tell stories completely different in animation.

We didn't have any influence then, so we had a little secret list of rules that we kept to ourselves. And they were: No songs, no "I want" moment, no happy village, no love story. And the irony is that, in the first year, our story was not working at all and Disney was panicking. So they privately got advice from a famous lyricist, who I won't name, and he faxed them some suggestions. And we got a hold of that fax. And the fax said, there should be songs, there should be an "I want" song, there should be a happy village song, there should be a love story and there should be a villain. And thank goodness we were just too young, rebellious and contrarian at the time. That just gave us more determination to prove that you could build a better story. And a year after that, we did conquer it. And it just went to prove that storytelling has guidelines, not hard, fast rules.

Another fundamental thing we learned was about liking your main character. And we had naively thought, well Woody in "Toy Story" has to become selfless at the end, so you've got to start from someplace. So let's make him selfish. And this is what you get.

(Voice Over) Woody: What do you think you're doing? Off the bed. Hey, off the bed! Mr. Potato Head: You going to make us, Woody? Woody: No, he is. Slinky? Slink ... Slinky! Get up here and do your job. Are you deaf? I said, take care of them. Slinky: I'm sorry, Woody, but I have to agree with them. I don't think what you did was right. Woody: What? Am I hearing correctly? You don't think I was right? Who said your job was to think, Spring Wiener?

AS: So how do you make a selfish character likable? We realized, you can make him kind, generous, funny, considerate, as long as one condition is met for him, is that he stays the top toy. And that's what it really is, is that we all live life conditionally. We're all willing to play by the rules and follow things along, as long as certain conditions are met. After that, all bets are off. And before I'd even decided to make storytelling my career, I can now see key things that happened in my youth that really sort of opened my eyes to certain things about story.

In 1986, I truly understood the notion of story having a theme. And that was the year that they restored and re-released "Lawrence of Arabia." And I saw that thing seven times in one month. I couldn't get enough of it. I could just tell there was a grand design under it -- in every shot, every scene, every line. Yet, on the surface it just seemed to be depicting his historical lineage of what went on. Yet, there was something more being said. What exactly was it? And it wasn't until, on one of my later viewings, that the veil was lifted and it was in a scene where he's walked across the Sinai Desert and he's reached the Suez Canal, and I suddenly got it.

(Video) Boy: Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Cyclist: Who are you? Who are you?

AS: That was the theme: Who are you? Here were all these seemingly disparate events and dialogues that just were chronologically telling the history of him, but underneath it was a constant, a guideline, a road map. Everything Lawrence did in that movie was an attempt for him to figure out where his place was in the world. A strong theme is always running through a well-told story.

When I was five, I was introduced to possibly the most major ingredient that I feel a story should have, but is rarely invoked. And this is what my mother took me to when I was five.

(Video) Thumper: Come on. It's all right. Look. The water's stiff. Bambi: Yippee! Thumper: Some fun, huh, Bambi? Come on. Get up. Like this. Ha ha. No, no, no.

AS: I walked out of there wide-eyed with wonder. And that's what I think the magic ingredient is, the secret sauce, is can you invoke wonder. Wonder is honest, it's completely innocent. It can't be artificially evoked. For me, there's no greater ability than the gift of another human being giving you that feeling -- to hold them still just for a brief moment in their day and have them surrender to wonder. When it's tapped, the affirmation of being alive, it reaches you almost to a cellular level. And when an artist does that to another artist, it's like you're compelled to pass it on. It's like a dormant command that suddenly is activated in you, like a call to Devil's Tower. Do unto others what's been done to you. The best stories infuse wonder.

When I was four years old, I have a vivid memory of finding two pinpoint scars on my ankle and asking my dad what they were. And he said I had a matching pair like that on my head, but I couldn't see them because of my hair. And he explained that when I was born, I was born premature, that I came out much too early, and I wasn't fully baked; I was very, very sick. And when the doctor took a look at this yellow kid with black teeth, he looked straight at my mom and said, "He's not going to live." And I was in the hospital for months. And many blood transfusions later, I lived, and that made me special.

I don't know if I really believe that. I don't know if my parents really believe that, but I didn't want to prove them wrong. Whatever I ended up being good at, I would strive to be worthy of the second chance I was given.

(Video) (Crying) Marlin: There, there, there. It's okay, daddy's here. Daddy's got you. I promise, I will never let anything happen to you, Nemo.

AS: And that's the first story lesson I ever learned. Use what you know. Draw from it. It doesn't always mean plot or fact. It means capturing a truth from your experiencing it, expressing values you personally feel deep down in your core. And that's what ultimately led me to speaking to you here at TEDTalk today.

Shekhar Kapur: We are the stories we tell ourselves

So when I look at a film, here's what we look for: We look for a story on the plot level, then we look for a story on the psychological level, then we look for a story on the political level,then we look at a story on a mythological level. And I look for stories on each level. Now, it is not necessary that these stories agree with each other. What is wonderful is, at many times, the stories will contradict with each other.
......

But ultimately, what is a story? It's a contradiction. Everything's a contradiction. The universe is a contradiction. And all of us are constantly looking for harmony. When you get up, the night and day is a contradiction. But you get up at 4 a.m.That first blush of blue is where the night and day are trying to find harmony with each other.Harmony is the notes that Mozart didn't give you, but somehow the contradiction of his notes suggest that. All contradictions of his notes suggest the harmony. It's the effect of looking for harmony in the contradiction that exists in a poet's mind, a contradiction that exists in a storyteller's mind. In a storyteller's mind, it's a contradiction of moralities. In a poet's mind, it's a conflict of words, in the universe's mind, between day and night. In the mind of a man and a woman, we're looking constantly at the contradiction between male and female, we're looking for harmony within each other.

The whole idea of contradiction, but the acceptance of contradiction is the telling of a story, not the resolution. The problem with a lot of the storytelling in Hollywood and many films, and as [unclear] was saying in his, that we try to resolve the contradiction. Harmony is not resolution. Harmony is the suggestion of a thing that is much larger than resolution.Harmony is the suggestion of something that is embracing and universal and of eternity and of the moment. Resolution is something that is far more limited. It is finite; harmony is infinite. So that storytelling, like all other contradictions in the universe, is looking for harmony and infinity in moral resolutions, resolving one, but letting another go, letting another go and creating a question that is really important.

Tips for travelling

Many of us change money at airports because we need to have local currency in cash when we land in a foreign country. But don’t change ALL your money at the airport because you will get a terrible rate!  The rate offered at the airport was 14% worse than the inter-bank rate in my example above. Use credit card or debit card instead.

When using cards, always choose to view your purchases outside the US in the local currency when paying with a credit or debit card because you’ll pay 3% or higher for the convenience of viewing your bill in your home currency.

23 Secrets To Booking Cheap Flights

Jill Krasny | Jul. 24, 2012, 12:09 PM 

http://www.businessinsider.com/23-secrets-to-booking-cheap-flights-2012-7?op=1

Flickr / Kossy@FINEDAYS

Booking travel is so easy to do, yet all too often we wind up spending more than we wanted. 

Thank fee-happy airlines for that— there's no limit to what they'll charge for, from meals to checked bags and flimsy pillows. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, airlines made $3.3 billion in baggage fees alone in 2011.  

With summer travel season in full swing, we've rounded up the best money-saving tips out there.

Test the 24-hour rule

Flickr / h080

After you book, check the next morning to see if the price of your airfare fell. 

If it did, give the airline a call to cancel your flight and often you can rebook without penalty. 

Take last-minute trips

Flickr / bingham_becky

Airlines are known to cut prices when they can't fill planes for an upcoming weekend trip.

On Tuesday, they'll email offers for the coming weekend or following one to fliers who signed up for alerts. Travelers can leave Friday night or anytime Saturday, then return on Monday or Tuesday. 

Chase the fare, not the destination

Steve Kovach, Business Insider

Kayak's explore tool (kayak.com/explore) is useful for searching multiple airline fares at a time. 

You'll instantly see a map with all the destinations listed under a set budget. 

Leave on a Wednesday

Flickr / Kristymp

It's the cheapest day to do it, says FareCompare.com, especially for domestic travel. 

Per the website: "The day with the most seats is likely to have better supply, and thus ... more empty seats that require discounting to fill the plane—meaning they'll have to release more seats at their cheapest price point." 

Book on Tuesday at 3 p.m. Eastern Time

Flickr / danielmoyle

A study by Farecompare.com found this was the best time to buy airline tickets and shop for domestic travel. 

Check Twitter and Facebook

Flickr

Airlines have been experimenting with blasting fares via social media, especially Jet Blue, reports the AP. But you have to be fast: Some deals can be gone within hours. 

"If you find something, jump on it," says John DiScala, who travels frequently and writes baout it at JohnnyJet.com. 

Some airlines announce special sales to Facebook fans as well. 

Fly two different airlines

Flickr / j3net

Sometimes it's worth it to mix and match. Most airlines now sell one-way flights at reasonable prices, meaning one might be cheaper for the outbound flight while the other works better for the return. 

You could even fly to one airport and depart from another.

Become a frequent flier

Flickr / kalleboo

It pays to cozy up to your airline of choice. 

Become an elite member of the airline's frequent-flier program or use a credit card that's tied to the airline to get a leg up on other travelers, says U.S. News' Daniel Bortz. 

Likewise, if you're using a credit card that offers rewards, check to see if those rewards can be redeemed for miles or travel gift cards, suggests Ask Mr. Credit Card. 

Fly out early

Flickr / Mike Pedroncelli

The first flight of the morning is usually the cheapest, says Bortz. 

The next-cheapest flight times are during or after lunch or around dinner time. 

Sign up for free alerts from AirfareWatchdog.com

Flickr / Ed Yourdon

With this site, you'll get pinged when prices fall and receive some excellent deals. The site uses real people to vet the deals rather than computers, so you're bound to turn up some offerings you wouldn't have found otherwise. 

Says founder George Hobia: "We only send updates when we think we've found a good deal, whereas other sites might update you when a flight drops $2." 

Use FlightFox to search for special fares

Flightfox

Much in the way AirfareWatchdog relies on a travel agent to sniff out the best deals, FlightFox uses multiple experts (called "flight hackers") to do the hard work for you. 

It only costs $29 and the fee is fully refundable, according to the site's front page. 

You can even rattle off a list of specific demands that a computer can't check, or travel novices wouldn't include to refine your search, says Money Talks News' Brandon Ballenger. 

Search for deals in the morning

Flickr / xJason.Rogersx

Early morning is the time you'll see the most deals, says Bortz, although some airlines release discounted tickets throughout the day.  

Take a red-eye

Flickr / || UggBoy♥UggGirl || PHOTO || WORLD || TRAVEL ||

These are the absolute cheapest times to fly as they're on limited routes, says Bortz. 

Rack up free airline miles on rewards sites

Flickr/Per Ola Wiberg ~ Powi

e-Rewards gives players tickets they can cash in for miles, while other sites like e-Miles let people cash in free miles for airfare, hotel perks and Amazon.com gift cards, says BI reporter Mandi Woodruff. 

Search multiple sites

Flickr/auntie

Relying on only one site to give you the low-down for low-cost airfare is silly. 

Check the biggest online ticket-sellers—Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz—and don't forget to search the little guys like Kayak, AirfareWatchdog, Yapta and Hipmunk for deals too. 

Book six weeks in advance

Flickr / gagagah

A revealing study from Airlines Reporting Corporation found that the best time to purchase your airfare is about six weeks prior to travel.

The reason: Around this time, prices drop below the average fare.

Know your airport hubs

Flickr / Nicola since 1972

Every airline has some kind of a deal going for certain cities, says Ask Mr. Credit Card.

"These specials might not always be for the city you are flying to, but you might be able to get a partial discount if you take a layover in that city as part of your round trip." 

Be flexible

Flickr / Tom Mooring

Try adding a couple days to your trip before or after peak travel days to lower the fare, suggests the AP. 

Don't overlook small carriers

Flickr / JoePhilipson

Travel search engines push smaller carriers to the bottom, but you'd be foolish to overlook them. 

"Discounters don't have to be your first stop, but they should be an option," says Ask Mr. Credit Card. 

Park and fly

Flickr / prayitno

Some airlines have a monopoly on airports, allowing them to charge more, says the AP. 

To counter this, check fares at airports 50, 75 or 100 miles from your destination. The car rental and extra travel time may be worth it. 

Book connecting flights

Flickr / _rockinfree

Booking connecting flights could save you as much as $100 round-trip, according to the AP. 

Just make sure you leave enough time to make your connecting flight in case the first flight arrives late. 

Search the actual airline's site

Southwest Airlines

This is an oft-overlooked tip, but one well worth repeating. 

Airlines can host private sales, reserving the cream of the crop for their very own websites, says Bortz. 

Even without discounts, these fares can be bargain bin-low. 

Switch up your connections

Connecting through a city that just happens to have fares on sale can also save cash. 

AirfareWatchdog's "fares to a city search" (airfarewatchdog.com/cheap-flights/to-a-city) can show cheaper indirect routes to your destination. Rather than fly from New York directly to Maui, you can fly from New York to Los Angeles, then go from there to Hawaii. 

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/23-secrets-to-booking-cheap-flights-2012-7?op=1#ixzz2TBMuDbsK