Scientific Dictionary

You didn’t think Consultant dictionaries were the only ones available, did you (although some of these can definitely be applied in Consulting)? (hat tip to A. Phan)

From HealthCare Economist:

The following list of phrases and their definitions might help you understand the mysterious language of science and medicine. These special phrases are also applicable to anyone working on a Ph.D. dissertation or academic paper anywhere!

“It has long been known” = I didn’t look up the original reference.

“A definite trend is evident” = These data are practically meaningless.

“While it has not been possible to provide definite answers to the questions” = An unsuccessful experiment, but I still hope to get it published.

“Three of the samples were chosen for detailed study” = The other results didn’t make any sense.

“Typical results are shown” = This is the prettiest graph.

“These results will be in a subsequent report” = I might get around to this sometime, if pushed/funded.

“In my experience” = once.

“In case after case” = twice.

“In a series of cases” = thrice.

“Correct within an order of magnitude” = Wrong.

“According to statistical analysis” = Rumor has it.

“A statistically oriented projection of the significance of these findings” = A wild guess.

“A careful analysis of obtainable data” = Three pages of notes were obliterated when I knocked over a glass of pop.

“It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding of this phenomenon occurs”= I don’t understand it.

“After additional study by my colleagues”= They don’t understand it either.

“A highly significant area for exploratory study” = A totally useless topic selected by my committee.

“It is hoped that this study will stimulate further investigation in this field” = I quit.

Last Resort Recruiting Tactic

Screw up your case interview completely? Have a horrible resume? Unable to add/subtract “difficult” numbers like 1 and 5? Were sure you had qualifications but can’t remember them?

The ultimate, line-in-the-sand, go for all-or-nothing tactic: tell them the real reason to hire you (courtesy of Dilbert).

(Blogged from Japan, where I’m spending my first vacation as a salary man for… “the man”. Will blog more and post pictures upon my return!)

The Consultant’s Dictionary

Something a colleague from work forwarded to me, and a, sadly, VERY good description of the language that you’re apt to hear as a consultant… for better or for worse.

at the end of the day: a phrase used to attempt summarization, introduce an air of finality and perhaps close off certain avenues of discussion; since most consultants’ days do not end with the setting of the sun, at the end of the day most of them are still working

bandwidth: capacity, free time, ability to do (additional) work; generally used to indicate that speaker cannot or would not prefer to do additional work, as in: “I don’t think I’ll have any bandwidth this Friday”

boil the ocean: to embark on an apparently impossible, wasteful or fruitless task, usually preceded by an exhortation not to, as in: “Let’s not boil the ocean here, an 80/20 should be enough”; this term suggests that the amount of effort to be expended is not worth the potential payoff

buckets: categories; this is the extent of this word’s definition, so it remains a mystery why people choose to employ the former term; also used as a transitive verb to mean “categorize”

buttoned-up: to indicate that a particular piece of work or analysis is comprehensive, accurate and capable of withstanding close scrutiny; this is an example of opposite terms with identical meanings

buttoned-down: see buttoned-up

buy-in: agreement, support; it is unclear why “buy-in” has come to supplant these terms, as no actual purchasing occurs

circle back: to follow up with indicated individuals at a later point in time, usually to review progress on the current topic of discussion; this phrase is somewhat redundant, as it is impossible to trace a circle that does not connect back with itself

crisp: an adjective indicating that the referenced work or analysis is thorough and complete, perhaps by gastronomical allusion to food that is fully prepared; it is duly noted that crisp objects, while ostensibly finished, are also far more brittle and prone to shattering

development opportunity: a weakness, flaw or shortcoming that should be rectified, usually by the subsequent suggestion

directionally correct: essentially wrong

granular: a detailed level of abstraction; often used in the context of increasing the fineness of the analysis, as in: “We need to get more granular here”

hands: often prefaced with “client,” indicates the interpersonal skills of an individual in relation to a particular group of people, as in, “That manager sure has great client hands”

hard stop: used to indicate that after the time indicated, the listeners are on their own, because the person stating that they have a hard stop sure isn’t going to be around to help after then

hope you’re doing well: a generally well-intended but insincere interpolation used at the beginning of most voicemails to replace the standard pleasantries that would be present in verbal communications; use of this phrase does not indicate actual interest in the well-being of the recipient; also found with alarming frequency in electronic mail

key: critical, essential, required, important, central; the key analysis is generally the linchpin; often used as a noun, and with such frequency that its significance has been diluted, since everything is now “key”

let me play this back: said when the listener wants to refract and color the conversation through his or her own perspective, under the pretense of reviewing the transcript of what’s been said; in this manner the listener can pretend he or she is a tape recorder

low-hanging fruit: the initial opportunities, areas of exploration, etc. that are easiest to cover; intended to evoke visual imagery of fruit-laden trees, suggesting that much remains beyond the lowest boughs; syn. quick win

provide color: a directive that translates roughly to “This is perhaps the most boring thing I have ever read, with the possible exception of certain lengthier legal disclaimers, and even then it’s pretty close”; this bit of jargon is nevertheless somewhat of an advance, since, back in the early days of consulting, people were encouraged to provide black and white

push back (verb form) or pushback (noun): formerly the sole domain of airplanes leaving their gates, this term is now used to indicate resistance and/or disagreement, without actually using those terms; this phrase attempts to avoid any negative connotations of controversy

quick question: the answer will be anything but; bizarre since the adjective “quick” is intended, by implication, to be transferred to the answer to said question and does not necessarily have any bearing on the length of the question

rock star: an individual whose performance in a given area or success at specific endeavors is highly impressive, unique and/or admirable; this appellation is generally used sparingly; although the term is sometimes used frivolously to express purportedly extreme gratitude, as in: “Thanks for picking up my mail for me, you’re a rock star” 

sea change: in between lake change and ocean change

sniff test: as in evaluating food for rancidity, this term is used when gauging the viability or reasonableness of a particular analysis; var. smell test

space: a market, arena, field of endeavor, or general area, not to be confused with the area beyond Earth’s atmosphere; use of this term usually adds nothing in the way of descriptive value, as in “I don’t think there will be many opportunities in the technology space”

straw man: a humanoid comprised entirely of the dried above-ground stalks of any of a variety of grasses; also, a construct presented purely for the sake of argument, with the implication that it is not designed to withstand repeated attacks

take the lead on: a clever phrase often used by more experienced consultants when they wish to delegate a menial task, as in: “Why don’t you take the lead on putting together this document,” which may translate to, “I’m lazy and probably not smart or energetic enough to work on this, so go do it”; often appears in utterly irrelevant settings, as in, “Why don’t you take the lead on making dinner reservations for the team,” a manifestly silly request, since one is asked to “take the lead on” something which doesn’t require leadership of anyone and on which they will certainly be working solo

takeaway: in other settings a British term referring to carry-out food, here this word has been transmogrified to indicate the salient point that should be retained upon the conclusion of the discussion, often prefaced with key

to be transparent: in indication that what follows will be particularly revelatory, although it often is not especially so; the troubling implication of this usage is that the speaker has heretofore been opaque

value-add: quite simply, that value is added, mashed into a hyphenated noun form

view from 30,000 feet: a very high-level, preliminary or cursory look at a particular situation, often used to suggest that pertinent details are inappropriately glossed over; however, one never speaks of the view from, say five or six feet, which might be more appropriate given the average height of a human being

wordsmith: to make trivial or generally unnecessary edits to text that may only subtly change the meaning, if at all; incorrectly implies that one is a craftsman on the order of a blacksmith or goldsmith; sadly, wordsmithing rarely involves the deletion of jargon

Don’t Pick on Engineers and Scientists. . .

Because they’re more likely to be terrorists (hat tip: Marginal Revolutions):

We find that graduates from subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the Muslim world, though not among the extremist Islamic groups which have emerged in Western countries more recently. We also find that engineers alone are strongly over-represented among graduates in violent groups in both realms.

While it’s been well-established that the highly educated middle class tend to be over-represented amongst terrorist groups, this report’s findings are very interesting as they highlight the specific social and economic factors which the United States will need to deal with to “win” the War on Terror. While a lot of attention was given to the finding that the terrorists involved in an attempted British airport bomb attack were doctors, this study finds that while highly educated people are over-represented in extremist groups, this over-representation is particularly strong for engineers and even stronger when one considers perpetrators of violence (of violent extremists, engineers are over-represented by a factor of more than double compared to other highly educated individuals and by a factor of nine when compared to the general population)!

The reasons they give seem to be little more than conjecture, but there’s little you can do with such a small sample size with such a large room for bias and with a subject that is difficult to study precisely. Essentially, the researchers attribute the over-representation of engineers amongst violent Islamic extremists (and less so among other extremist groups) to a combination of a lack of economic prospects for engineers in countries where Islamic fundamentalism is firmly rooted, a sense of cultural shame/emasculation stemming from the lack of progress that Islam has made in the modern world particularly with regards to engineering and science, and the tendency for engineers to hold fairly conservative views.

I don’t know what policy prescriptions one can deduce from this, but I’d like to see a politician construct a sensible policy from this — perhaps developing a strong student exchange program with foreign students, doctors, scientists, and engineers to reduce animosity amongst the key problem area?

Buck-passing

President Harry S. Truman popularized the phrase “the buck stops here.” It’s a very simplistic notion that at the end of the day the responsibility for problems and failures lies on that someone’s shoulders. In my mind, it’s the bare essence of what being a leader is — taking responsibility for screwups and failures.

The world, however, doesn’t seem to see things that way. Politicians, instead of stepping up to bat on issues ranging from policy failure to corruption, are much more likely to “pass the buck” to the media, to “the vast [right/left]-wing conspiracy”, to members of the other party. Rarely, do they admit wrong-doing and then immediately outline steps to remedy any problems that they might have caused. Many corporate executives when accused of incompetence or when tried in court for perjury and fraud fail to own up to their mistakes and play ignorant, and yet are perfectly willing to take the credit when broad market forces outside of their control are responsible for their “good leadership.” Even doctors, although for understandable reasons given the hostile legal environment, rarely own up to mistakes and issue apologies and a basic outline of steps towards remediation.

That’s why it’s somewhat refreshing to see that when rumors of sexual abuse at her school arose, Oprah quickly made it an issue of her being responsible. This occurred, despite the fact that the mere existence of the school is a testament to her generosity (and arguably, her ego), despite that Oprah probably had very little to do with the hiring, screening, and the actual wrong-doing involved — she took the extra step to quickly place the administration on leave, issue an official apology, and even going so far as to hire her own investigative team on top of whatever local official investigation was being conducted and to — and this is rare coming from a celebrity — giving the students access to her personal phone number and email address.

I don’t know Oprah personally, so I can’t say whether or not these are all sincere gestures, but the key is that she did them. That, when faced with bad news on her watch, despite the fact that no one could reasonably blame her for what happened, and despite that these were allegations which may not even hold up in court, she (a) quickly apologized, (b) promised immediate action, (c) took an extra step to perform an extra investigation into the matter, and (d) went out of the way to be accessible to the victims.

Tell me one good reason why the recently chastised CEOs of Citibank, Merill Lynch, and the numerous fund managers who have been beaten up by the subprime crisis shouldn’t act in exactly the same way?

Presentation Training

For the past few months, my firm has sponsored a series of workshops with a presentation consultant, a woman who helps with presentation style and skills. Not wanting to pass up free training and wanting to see how years without debating competitively had treated my speaking skills, I signed up.

The training was very interesting. It’s one thing to have someone tell you their impression of how you speak. It’s another to have a professional presentation consultant videotape your presentation and then play it back to you while explaining specifically why she said what she did about your speaking style.

The verdict? I speak clearly. I vary my intonations and speed and word choice to fit the story that I’m telling. My gestures aren’t distracting. I convey passion about what I’m speaking about. These are all good things, she said, which many people fail to do.

But, my main problem is that I present too much like a debater. I am too adversarial. My speech tells a logical story, but the story is presented from the perspective of someone trying to convince a skeptic, something which was ingrained in me as a science student but not a tactic which lends itself towards building consensus or compelling action. Instead of establishing a personal connection, on a logical and on a emotional level, I focused on content and delivery.

This she pointed out very well on camera, as even I was shocked at the difference between “debate mode” me and “normal” me — my posture, speaking tone, facial expressions were all suddenly different.

After pointing this out to me, she helped me come up with ways to present the same material but in a more emotionally and logically compelling way, and I was able to practice this a few times before the one hour session was up.

In all honesty, I was very skeptical of what a presentation coach could do, but I am very satisfied by this particular experience, and would recommend this type of coaching to anyone who wants to improve their public speaking.

Re-staffed

For the past couple of months, I’ve been “learning the ropes,” so to speak, on an internal project for my firm. When I was first staffed, I remember being disappointed that I wasn’t on some “sexy” client case — like the ones they promise during recruiting, full of high-level executive contact and making exciting decisions all day and everyday!

Of course, no entry-level consultant has a job like that — the most they can reasonably expect is some discussions with the senior management at a client, and one or two interesting decisions here and there. And, if anything, “sexy” clients usually are extraordinarily demanding and enter each conversation with a sense of entitlement and an insatiable desire to be impressed. But, regardless of the the truth, I was sure that being staffed on an internal project was a surefire way to miss out on the “sexy” client work.

One would imagine, then, that after almost four months of working on internal work that I would be delighted to receive a call from my staffing manager about finally being put on a “real case”.

But I wasn’t. I was not eager to let go of the great relationship I had built with my team-mates. I had grown fond of the smaller team size, the greater ability to take on roles beyond what a typical entry-level consultant does, and the interesting, more “theoretical” nature of the work. And, I was certainly not eager to give up the great work-life balance which comes with not having to deal with demanding clients.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. I have actually been staffed on a very “sexy” case, doing very interesting strategy work to determine new growth strategies and to think about competitive responses to those actions. Yes, I’m now busier (which explains the decreased blogging), but only time can tell how I take to this new team and this new case.

Porn Beats Computer

A lot of computer systems, to block automated spam systems, use something called a CAPTCHA, those slanted and distorted letters which a lot of systems require you to do to authenticate that you’re a human being (e.g. when you try to comment on my Blog). These systems work, because computers find it difficult to deal with things which are not rigidly defined, while humans can see some types of patterns even when a computer can’t. In essence, they rely on the fact that humans, at least in some ways, are still smarter than computers.

This fact has been exploited by a projected call reCAPTCHA which combines CAPTCHA based authentication systems and efforts to digitize books. Too often, computers are unable to understand scanned pages from damaged or old or oddly formatted books, so the reCAPTCHA project enlists human aid in helping computers understand scanned pages and hence preserve literary knowledge in digital form — thus taking human intelligence and applying it for a noble effort.

On the other hand, less scrupulous individuals have found themselves dealing with the issue of how to get around CAPTCHA’s to deliver spam and scams. How do you trick “intelligent” humans into helping you outsmart something a computer can’t crack?

Answer: sex. Duh. (hat tip to A. Phan)

Scams use striptease to break Web traps

By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer Wed Oct 31, 4:17 PM ET

In a new online striptease, the buxom, beautiful blonde who promises to remove her slinky scraps of lingerie doesn’t want your money. She’s interested in your brain. Really.

The creation of online scammers, she’s trying to trick unsuspecting Internet users into helping the scammers break the online barriers that banks and e-mail services set up to thwart crooks.

The striptease is the latest attempt to defeat so-called CAPTCHA systems, which is short for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Those safeguards require users to prove they are human by reading wavy, oddly shaped jumbles of letters and numbers that appear in an image and typing them out.

In the new scam, an icon of an alluring woman suddenly appears on a Windows computer infected by a virus. After clicking on the icon, the user sees a photo of an attractive woman who vows to take off an article of clothing each time the jumble of figures next to her is entered.

But the woman never fully undresses, and after several passwords are entered the program restarts, possibly enticing unsuspecting users into trying again.

Trend Micro researchers say the scam appears to be isolated for now to spammers trying to register bogus e-mail addresses and flood chat rooms with unwanted pitches. But they worry schemes to infiltrate financial institutions could soon appear.

Paul Ferguson, network architect at Trend Micro, speculated that spammers might be using the results to write a program to automatically bypass CAPTCHA systems.

“I have to hand it to them,” Ferguson said, laughing. “The social engineering aspect here is pretty clever.”

Empty promise of porn trumps human intelligence trumps CAPTCHAs trumps computers. Ergo, by the transitive property of “trumping”, empty promise of porn trumps computers. Go us.

A Potential Solution for Healthcare?

With the election coming, a great deal of talk on both sides of the aisle revolves around healthcare. Various competing and not-so-competing plans have been thrown around, but they all fall into the politician’s practice of promising everything while not properly accounting for the tradeoffs and costs.

While I don’t profess to have all the answers, as this is really a product of several commutes worth of thinking about how a business-person would approach the problem of healthcare policy, I feel that the most logical place to start in devising a solution is to start with the complaints that we hear so often about healthcare:

1. It’s too expensive. This is pretty clearly true, but is in and of itself not a problem. Why? First, it assumes that the quality of healthcare does not increase. If healthcare gets twice as good but the price only increases by 50%, then this would not be such a big deal. Secondly, it assumes that incomes do not rise as fast as healthcare costs do. If incomes tripled while healthcare costs doubled, then there would be no problem. However, while the quality of healthcare has improved due to improvements in medical science and American medical schools churning out batches of highly trained MDs, incomes have not increased as quickly as healthcare costs have making this a problem not so much of expense, but a problem of access. This access/expense problem is exacerbated by the fact that greater costs have made insurance companies and employers unwilling to bear the costs of paying for the care of individuals who suffer from terminal or difficult-to-treat conditions. 
2. Doctor-patient relationship has deteriorated. This is a vastly more subjective and complex issue than the one of expense. But, in a nutshell, this is a problem that is perpetuated on two levels: the first is at the level of managed care. It’s difficult to maintain a strong doctor-patient relationship when the actual “customer” in the transaction is an insurance company seeking to minimize cost rather than the patient him/herself. The second is at the level of medical malpractice. That medical malpractice premiums are shooting up is not a product of corporate greed on the part of the malpractice insurance companies, but that the number of lawsuits and the magnitude of damages claimed has increased.

This is, of course, a simplistic overview of the problems involved, but it outlines the key issues that a healthcare policy needs to start with. The era of managed care was a response to the problem of expense and access, but not only has it failed to completely control the problem of costs, it created and exacerbated the problem of the doctor-patient relationship.

A lot of people see the solution in a single payer system — a system whereby the government (presumably) would step in and regulate costs and quality in such a way as to arbitrate a balance between expense and damage to the doctor-patient relationship. Unfortunately, this sort of monopsony (a single buyer, rather than a single seller which is a monopoly), especially one run by a government, is rarely desirable for a number of reasons. Allowing politicians to either decide which care to withhold rarely takes into consideration the needs and interests of the people involved and may be worse than managed care in terms of damaging the doctor-patient relationship given the single payer’s supreme market power. The flip side, where the political process allows almost all medical procedures, suffers from the exact opposite problem whereby there will be no incentive for doctor or patient to control costs, leading to escalating costs which will be reflected in either a massive government deficit or a massive tax hike.

The private sector, while certainly with its share of flaws particularly with regards to access, however does a great job of increasing quality of care. Furthermore, it provides a wide range of flexibility in offerings which a single payer system run by the government does not. I don’t believe that most American doctors would wish to give up their private-sector salaries and autonomy to become government employees with regulated salaries and restricted freedom.

So, taking these into consideration, I’ve come up with four basic healthcare objectives that a healthcare policy ought to fulfill:

1. All children should have healthcare. I don’t even see what moral argument one could have for depriving children, especially poor children, from having healthcare. They have absolutely no say in their economic situation. And, taking care of children today means reduced medical expenditures and increased quality of life in the future. There is thus a moral imperative and a preventive imperative in this principle.
2. Doctors should be able to freely advise their patients on the best course of action, and patients should be able to take that advice. The great failure of managed care is its sacrifice of this basic principle. Doctors are medical experts. Medical decisions should be made by them, not by a government, by insurance companies, or faith healers. By doctors.
3. Individuals should take responsibility for at least some of their medical expenses. The tragedy of commons says that when people don’t bear the cost of their bad actions, those bad actions proliferate. If individuals do not pay for healthcare to some degree, there will be no reason to control costs. The alternative is for an HMO or the government to step in, but this is not only undesirable for the reasons mentioned earlier but because it overrides principle #2 that doctors and patients should feel like they can trust each other and act on that trust.
4. Individuals should not have to pay more than 1/3 of their income in healthcare costs. At the same time that we consider #3, we also have to consider that healthcare is a necessity, not a nice-to-have. Given the choice between death and poverty, most people choose poverty, but that they have to make that choice at all is a problem. The 1/3 number I give above is of course an arbitrary number which can be debated, but it strikes me that a fraction is ideal here, as the critical issue is not expense, but access.

Taking these four principles together, the healthcare policy I’d love to see is:

• The government assumes all healthcare costs for all children and students. This will be expensive, but given the moral and practical arguments involved, I feel this is wise. The government can mitigate the problems of monopsony by purchasing this care from private providers in bulk by means of auction and by giving parents the option to opt out and purchase comparable coverage elsewhere. This has the side benefit of being able to implement preventive measures in children, including vaccination (in loco parentis if necessary given the absolute catastrophe that the Thimerosal scare has been producing in uninformed parents) and better monitoring and treating of childhood obesity, eating disorders, and other public health concerns.
• Every individual is required to purchase catastrophic insurance which kicks in when healthcare expenditures exceed 1/3 of after-tax income for life-threatening conditions. This is to prevent the free-rider problem where the care of individuals without insurance are subsidized by the insurance of others. This insurance should be need-blind, in the sense that the providers should be legally bound to cover all patients regardless of the patient’s need. This is the central piece of my healthcare policy which targets the “access” problem.
• Institute a health savings account-like system which allows individuals to contribute pre-tax money, say up to 10% of their income every year, to a tax-free savings account which they can withdraw from to pay medical expenses. This sum can accrue over time. This restores choice to an individual on what doctor to see, what treatments to take, etc. and puts the responsibility of getting and paying for care on the individual up until some point. The 10% number is of course arbitrary (and can be flexible depending on if the individual has dependents) and there is of course the issue that an individual will save only up to 33% of their income, but this is a good start in restoring the patient-focus in the doctor-patient relationship by removing the potential for a third party to withhold or allow care for purely financial reasons and in combating the tragedy of commons which currently occurs because patients rarely face the full cost of their care expenses.

I’m not sure if this system is politically feasible, and it certainly has kinks to work out (i.e. how to transition to such a system, what the exact percentages should be, how do we deal with dependents/spouses, how do we deal with college students, what counts as “life-threatening”), but I believe I’ve created a system which does actually address the problems of access and worsened doctor-patient relationships while adhering to a clear set of objectives.