In our increasingly data-driven world, it is more important than ever to have easily accessible ways to view and understand data. As “Big Data” grows bigger, explanatory visualizations are increasingly necessary to make sense of the trillions of rows of data generated every day. Combining data with great storytelling using pictorial symbols create a visual form that is universally accessible regardless of literacy or culture. Such transformation of complex information into self-explanatory visuals has been achieved through the use of a different type of art: Isotypic art.  Through the us ..read more

The Japanese Fairy Tales Series was published by Hasegawa Takejiro between 1885 and 1922. Hasegawa combined the talents of well-known traditional Japanese woodblock printers like Kobyashi Eitaku, Suzuki Kason, and Chikanobu, with celebrated foreign translators, creating an enduring international success. Most of Hasegawa’s books were produced in limited amounts, generally four to five hundred at a run, and now have become quite scarce in Japan and internationally. As with most collectible rare books, the earlier editions are the most valuable. Identifying a true first issue of this serie ..read more

The rare book trade finished another year of sales and according to the Rare Book Hub, sales of the highest priced items did worst in 2023 than in 2022. Rare Book Hub compares auction sales from most auction houses and it includes items such as trading cards, in addition to books and ephemera. According to the website post, the trend is a continuation from 2022, when book and paper auction sales totaled $1.06 billion, which was down approximately $100 million from 2021, when a few high-priced items skewed figures upward, but up sharply from sales of $725 million in 2020.  Two important s ..read more

Kenneth Gloss, the owner of Brattle Book Shop in Boston, whose bookstore sells general used books and rare books, reported to Bloomberg in 2020 that rare books and manuscripts have proven to be the bright spot in the industry. The consensus among dealers of rare books is that overall the market has sustained itself, even though the rest of retail has been thrown into turmoil. In fact, the hotspots in this market have soared past many experts’ expectations driven primarily by high demand for first editions and the more desirable signed copies. Individual titles are being affected by factors s ..read more

Financial analysts have been aware for quite a long time that excess market volatility is a phenomenon which cannot be rationalized by the principles of fundamental analysis and statistical technical analysis alone. The task to identify what drives stock prices and what drives investors’ decision making is incomplete without the addition of the emerging field of behavioral finance. Behavioral finance is stuck with identifying the forces of market psychology and its effects on the overall sentiment steering market trends and pricing. It deals with psychological factors which influence the natu ..read more

Advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is progressing with unexpected speed, spreading across nearly every industry and discipline. The stakes in the race for generative AI are rising and technology companies are spending big. With the proliferation of big data and large-scale data lakes, we have now entered the world of large language models of chatbots such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Bard. Early imaginings of AI by fiction writers conceived versions of intelligent machines taking over the world. And now the old debate of whether a machine can be built with an adequate model of the human ..read more

  In one study, scientists at McGill University in Canada used eye-tracking technology to study which news articles volunteers paid most attention to. They found that people often chose stories about negative criticism in preference to positive or neutral stories. They concluded that people in general are more interested in inappropriate, offensive, or controversial news, and yet when asked, they would say they preferred the pleasant news. Negativity and controversy have fueled the demand of three periodical publications in which Nikola Tesla expressed his ideas. Tesla became well known ..read more

In June 1920, a few minutes after a dispute at a Dartmouth College dorm room, Bob Meads, a sophomore, who sold bootlegged whiskey he sourced from Canada, fatally shot senior, Hank Maroney of the Theta Delta Fraternity. Another Dartmouth College sophomore at the time, Clifford “Kip” Orr, deeply affected by the murder of his classmate, captured the atmosphere of the stunned college campus in a fictional mystery novel, titled The Dartmouth Murders, which was published in 1929. Unlike the true crime event, Orr’s story had imaginary characters and described 3 murders at three different Dartmouth c ..read more

We have entered the cyberpunk age. Many of the things that were predicted in cyberpunk literature are here now. The global cyber threat continues to evolve at a rapid pace, with a rising number of data breaches each year. Viruses, trojans, spyware, ransomware, adware, botnets, SQL injections, phishing cyberattacks developed by malicious programmers, threaten individuals, organizations and governments across the globe. Security programs continue to evolve as new defenses against new risks are being developed. The term cyberpunk first appeared as the title of a short story written by Bruce Beth ..read more

Helen Frankenthaler, a dominant figure in the abstract art world watered my plants when I went away for the weekend.  She lived diagonally across the street from me on a point of land surrounded on three sides by Long Island Sound.  We were neighbors sharing the same street address.  I don’t remember how we started to walk together, but somehow when she was in residence, we galloped (Helen set a brisk pace) across Shippan Point.  Our conversation included the mundane events of everyday life.  Maintenance was a favorite topic of Helen’s for she was frugal, and the cos ..read more