page-2007.html

Page, S. E. (2007). The Difference: How the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

pg xx - "Progress depends as much on our collective differences as it does on our individual IQ scores.

relates to two other books - Rheingold, Smart Mobs and Surowiecki Wisdom of Crowds

pg xxi - "homogeneous hierarchy has given way to the diverse team

pg 7 - unpacking diversity

"diverse perspectives: ways of representing situations and problems

diverse interpretations: ways of categorizing of partitioning perspectives

diverse heuristics: ways of generating solutions to problems

diverse predictive models: ways of inferring cause and effect

pg 11 - along with diverse perspectives (that provide benefits) you need to deal with the conflicts that come from diverse values and preferences

pg 76 - "interpretations can be thought of as structured categorizations

pg 105 - "The superadditivity of tools means that we also need to know all the combinations of tools that a person might apply.

pg 109 - different types of intelligence

analytic - translates as IQ

creative - ability to combine tools

practical - ability to apply scholarly knowledge in real-world situations

The ability of a group to combine a wide range of tools is key.

pg 132 - "We restrict attention to difficult problems. We don't need diverse perspectives and heuristics to help us with easy ones.

"But many people believe that the dimensionality of current problems and the linkages between them result in greater problem difficulty than existed in the past.

<!-- link to "ingenuity gap", that we are not as smart as the problems that we create ->

pg 133 - "Diversty Trumps Ability Theorem"

pg 134 - it is important to explore when copying works and when exploration or searching for a new answer is better

examples of different ways to sort cars relative to mpg

some people get stuck on local optima solution

good problem solving groups have fewer local optima, fewer places to get trapped

pg 240 - "People who have different fundamental preferences might be said to have different values. People who have different instumental preferences but the same fundamental preferences have the same values but different beliefs about how the world works. In either case, people disagree over what policy or action to choose, but only in the first case does diversity create a problem. In the latter case, it can prove useful.

pg 241 - "we try to infer something about that person's preferences by his choices.

pg 254 - connection between "preferences and cognitive tools"

"The tools that people choose to acquire are those that help them achieve their preferences.

"widespread influence cast by preferences on perspectives, interpretations, and tools suggest the centrality of preferences in any discussion of diversity and influences.

pg 255- "preference diversity, though it has negative direct effects, has positive indirect effects.

pg 284 - "Fundamental preference diversity, which created nothing but problems in chapter 10, may be a driver of perspective, toolbox, and predictive model diversity, and therfore improve problem solving and prediction.

pg 287 - "we choose the tasks to which we devote our lives through some combination of opportunity, culture, and preferences, then we cannot separate preference diversity from toolbox diversity.

pg 305 - "much of our creative thinking relies on analogies. This implies a central role for experiential divesity in creating cognitive diversity.

link to Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild

link to Atran and Medin - "predictive models influence how they manage resources

pg 310 - "A person's ability to contribute improves if she can see a problem in multiple ways and if she can apply diverse heuristics.

pg 314 - "The group has to be involved in a task, such as problem solving or prediction, for which diversity is beneficial.

"diversity should produce benefits, it will do so only if managed well

pg 315 - parable of the bicycle test

split up a group of youngsters - how far can they go in 30 seconds running or biking

the group that runs will, on average, outdistance the biking group (because some kids don't know how to ride)

but as soon as the kids learn how to ride, then they outdistance the runners easily

340 - beyond the portfolio analogy to the "superadditivity of diverse tools"