Author: Giuseppe Iannaccone

Don’t know much about algebra (and language)

Data from the OECD skill survey of adults. Considering adults in the age range: 16-65. We are not talking of PISA tests. These are not just pupils.

  • Numeracy Proficiency: Italy is second last (Spain is Last, Japan is First)
  • Literacy Proficiency: Italy is last (Japan is first again)

Basically, too many people cannot understand written instructions and cannot perform a simple calculation (for example, the interest on their mortgage or their savings account).

Anyway, even adjusting for the level of education, people in the age 16-24 perform better at tests than those in the age 55-64.

Things are slowly improving … (but I already knew it (link in italian) )

The complete OECD Adult Skills Outlook is here

literacy_proficiency

numerical_proficiency

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Grafene ed elettronica ultra sottile – 9 minuti di video

Il 20 settembre ho partecipato a una giornata di presentazione delle attività nel campo della Knowledge Acceleration & ICT presso la nostra Università.

Ho parlato per nove minuti nove delle nostre attività sull’elettronica in grafene, calibrando il discorso per un pubblico non necessariamente esperto dell’argomento.
Ne è uscita una presentazione veloce, semplice e in italiano, su uno dei temi che ci ha tenuto più impegnati, negli ultimi sei anni. E su cui stiamo lavorando molto.

Il video è qua sotto (Bella tendenza i video online di ogni evento, e bella idea quella di seguire la tendenza bene e presto).

Mi è tanto comodo questo video, per dare il puntatore a chi spesso chiede: ma che è sto grafene? che ci fate?

Cliccando sulla playlist si vedono anche le altre presentazioni della giornata.

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On the useless business plan for startups

On Amazon and Bezos, two myths of this generation (and of mine). Please consider that Amazon started shipping books in 1995. From Brad Stone’s new book on Bezos and Amazon:

  • Amazon's Business plan sent in 1995 to outside investors:
    Year 2000: Sales 74M$, Profits 0 (breakeven).

  • Real World
    Year 2000: Sales 1.6B$, Loss 1.4B$.

Useful ah?

And it was before dot.com boom.

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The power of a good presentation

It is always hard to let people understand distributions in a quantitative way. Often also science-trained people are not good at grasping the nuances of distributions.

This video does the perfect job. It guides you through data and distributions, and calmly prepares you for a shock. Numbers can be used to tell a story.

What also I like a lot is that they provide the data sources, for anybody to check, and that they use a very quiet tone.

No matter whether you agree or not with the underlying thesis, you should appreciate the power of this presentation.

p.s. The only thing that seems a bit sloppy to me is when at some point they swiftly switch subject by talking first of wealth distribution and then of income distribution. The two things are of course really different but this often can induce confusion in viewers (newspapers are also terrible about this).

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Malala al Daily Show

Lancio mondiale del suo libro “I am Malala”. Evidentemente tutta l’operazione è costruita per trarre il maggior vantaggio possibile dalla candidatura al Nobel per la Pace (era tra i favoriti). Però, se guardate, qui l’intervista al Daily Show, ci sono una passione, una presenza e una proprietà di linguaggio eccezionali. E ha 16 anni. La battuta più bella è quella del lancio della scarpa, al minuto 5. Bella anche quella di Jon Stewart, “il tuo amore per l’educazione mi ricorda quello dei miei figli”. Sentite almeno i primi 6 minuti. Perché valgono.

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1984 + 29

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to.”

George Orwell in “1984”

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Talk on Graphene transistors and two dimensional electronics

Last week in Berlin for INC9 I gave a talk on “Graphene transistors and two dimensional electronics”, sharing our views on the future of graphene electronics. The presentation is below.

[slideshare id=21459933&doc=iannacconeinc9polished-130519124601-phpapp01]

Most of the activity has been funded from the European Commission in a series of projects. We still have many ideas and many possibilities for student work, graduate and postgraduate work on the topic.

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You want to have the right heroes

Nice Warren Buffett interview. The best quotes:

  • “If you tell me who your heroes are, I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out.” 
  • “You’re going to [bet on] the person that has the right habits“
  • “You want to hang around with people that are better than you are”
  • Look at the persons you admire the most. Write down their qualities. Try to cultivate them yourself
  • “Try to do the job you would do if you were independently rich. It cannot get any better than that”
  • “It’s useful to take a job as a salesperson, just to learn to interact with people”
  • “If you just do something extra every day, I will be perceived as exceptional”
  • “You cannot let other people set your agenda in file. Learn to say no”
  • “You need to get on the right train. Some businesses are inherently more difficult than others”

Watch live streaming video from levoleague at livestream.com
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Four things for the weekend

A short list of things that stroke me this weekend

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