A trans­mis­si­ble ques­tion­naire, in four ques­tions:

Nota bene: You who are read­ing this may also par­tic­i­pate, of course. In fact, please do.

Q: Go to Google Book Search. Look your­self up, by name. How many real hits are there? [You need not dis­close which]
A: For me, the answer is five of the books returned by this search (as of this writ­ing), but I also know of a cou­ple of books that appar­ently aren’t yet indexed by Google.

Q: How many books are you actu­ally men­tioned in, not count­ing acknowl­edg­ments or bib­li­o­graphic ref­er­ences? Count a book even if your name’s dropped in pass­ing.
A: All of the books that come up today, in which my name appears and the per­son means me, are just ref­er­ences and acknowl­edg­ments. So the answer for me is none. I do not really “appear” in any of the books on the list. We’ll have to rem­edy that.

Q: How many of the books listed by Google were you already aware of before doing the search?
A: 60%.

Q: Sug­gest five other peo­ple who should also look them­selves up and report the results. If they’re pseu­do­ny­mous blog­gers, they need not dis­close their True Identities—just their numbers.

1. Miriam Burstein
2. Either or both of the Nielsen Hay­dens
3. Siva Vaid­hyanathan
4. Cosma Shal­izi
5. The whole slew of Bayesians

In com­puter sci­ence and biol­ogy and much of physics, research pub­li­ca­tions are writ­ten as if they were ephemeral, part of a con­ver­sa­tion, steps made towards some mov­ing goal. Con­fer­ence pro­ceed­ings are peer reviewed, and most inter­est­ing con­fer­ences get thou­sands of sub­mis­sions. Sure there are the Big Impor­tant Papers, but who has time or incli­na­tion to write one?

Papers in this group are per­ceived as being brief and tele­graphic, and one has a sense that every­thing said has been read some­where else before, though maybe in a slightly dif­fer­ent con­text. As a result, they are dilute, like potato chips. Can’t write just one.

In oper­a­tions research and oper­a­tions man­age­ment, research pub­li­ca­tions are writ­ten for the ages, each one ground­break­ing and mono­graphic, placed with care and thought and a sense of great accom­plish­ment like blocks in a great pyra­mid. Con­fer­ence pro­ceed­ings are not peer reviewed (I am told), and receive scant sub­mis­sions. Sure, there are the lit­tle teeny brief com­mu­ni­ca­tions, but they’re just excuses to go on jun­kets, aren’t they?

Papers in this group are per­ceived as being long-​​lived and impor­tant, fraught with cant and proof, but never diluted with exam­ple. As a result, they are impen­e­tra­ble and cloy­ing efforts to read. Each one a meal in itself; a man can live for weeks on just one loaf.