As many of my blog readers know, I’m working on a book project that has taken a lot of my time away from chess this year. That’s why I haven’t played in a chess tournament since February. It’s been hard to pass up on so many tournaments, because I usually like to play in at least five or six tournaments a year. It’s also been harder for me to keep the blog fresh with interesting material, because tournaments are usually my best topics.
Well, now it’s really coming down to crunch time for the book. My deadline is less than three months away, and I have to give all my attention to finishing it. I can’t really do a quality job on the book and also spend the amount of time it takes to write a quality chess blog. So with a little bit of sorrow, I’m going to take a break from the chess blog for the rest of the year.
I hate it when blogs take a hiatus or a vacation or whatever you might call it, because too often they never come back. But this is just for three months! It is definitely my intention to come back, and I mean both writing the blog and playing in tournament chess. I appreciate all of you who have read my blog regularly over the years, and I hope you will come back in January, when I expect to start posting again. Meanwhile, good luck and good skill to all of you who are still participating in the chess arena. I’ll join you soon!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Before you go, please tell us what the book is about…
Hi Paul, Thanks for asking! I’m writing a book about causation, or as I call it, the biggest taboo in statistics.
How can we tell whether smoking causes cancer? Did global warming cause this heat wave or that hurricane? Will daily exercise make us live longer? Do tourniquets prevent deaths or cause amputations?
These are all questions of cause and effect — a type of question that scientists have been notoriously reluctant to answer or even to address. My co-author, Judea Pearl, has over the last 25 years developed a powerful methodology for reasoning about causes and effects and answering questions like these. Judea’s simple, common-sense approach, based on directed acyclic graphs or “causal diagrams,” as I call them, will enable scientists to stop ducking the issues that matter the most to society.
The working title is “The Book of Why,” and the tentative publication date is spring 2018. But only if I finish writing the darn thing!
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
“post hoc ergo propter hoc”
just wanted to say that
good luck finishing the book on time! Make sure you are done by February 2017, for sure, just in case the Stean Punks reassemble!
Good luck Dana!
I do dare you not to blog about the world championship. In case you do succeed, I hope to see you back around the start of Wijk aan Zee. Go break a pen!