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Joseph Keller used to jog
around the Stanford campus,

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and he was struck by all the women
jogging there as well.

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Why did their ponytails swing
from side to side like that?

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Being a mathematician,
he set out to understand why.

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(Laughter)

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Professor Keller was curious
about many things:

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why teapots dribble

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or how earthworms wriggle.

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Until a few months ago,
I hadn't heard of Joseph Keller.

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I read about him in the New York Times,

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in the obituaries.

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The Times had half a page
of editorial dedicated to him,

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which you can imagine is premium space
for a newspaper of their stature.

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I read the obituaries almost every day.

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My wife understandably thinks
I'm rather morbid

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to begin my day with scrambled eggs
and a "Let's see who died today."

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(Laughter)

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But if you think about it,

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the front page of the newspaper
is usually bad news,

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and cues man's failures.

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An instance where bad news
cues accomplishment

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is at the end of the paper,
in the obituaries.

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In my day job,

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I run a company that focuses
on future insights

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that marketers can derive
from past data --

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a kind of rearview-mirror analysis.

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And we began to think:

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What if we held a rearview mirror
to obituaries from the New York Times?

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Were there lessons on how you could get
your obituary featured --

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even if you aren't around to enjoy it?

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(Laughter)

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Would this go better with scrambled eggs?

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(Laughter)

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And so, we looked at the data.

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2,000 editorial, non-paid obituaries

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over a 20-month period
between 2015 and 2016.

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What did these 2,000 deaths --
rather, lives -- teach us?

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Well, first we looked at words.

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This here is an obituary headline.

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This one is of the amazing Lee Kuan Yew.

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If you remove the beginning and the end,

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you're left with a beautifully
worded descriptor

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that tries to, in just a few words,
capture an achievement or a lifetime.

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Just looking at these is fascinating.

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Here are a few famous ones,
people who died in the last two years.

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Try and guess who they are.

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[An Artist who Defied Genre]

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That's Prince.

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[Titan of Boxing and the 20th Century]

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Oh, yes.

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[Muhammad Ali]

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[Groundbreaking Architect]

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Zaha Hadid.

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So we took these descriptors

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and did what's called
natural language processing,

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where you feed these into a program,

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it throws out the superfluous words --

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"the," "and," -- the kind of words
you can mime easily in "Charades," --

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and leaves you with the most
significant words.

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And we did it not just for these four,

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but for all 2,000 descriptors.

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And this is what it looks like.

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Film, theatre, music, dance
and of course, art, are huge.

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Over 40 percent.

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You have to wonder
why in so many societies

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we insist that our kids pursue
engineering or medicine or business or law

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to be construed as successful.

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And while we're talking profession,

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let's look at age --

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the average age at which
they achieved things.

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That number is 37.

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What that means is,
you've got to wait 37 years ...

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before your first significant achievement
that you're remembered for --

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on average --

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44 years later, when you
die at the age of 81 --

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on average.

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(Laughter)

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Talk about having to be patient.

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(Laughter)

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Of course, it varies by profession.

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If you're a sports star,

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you'll probably hit
your stride in your 20s.

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And if you're in your 40s like me,

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you can join the fun world of politics.

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(Laughter)

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Politicians do their first and sometimes
only commendable act in their mid-40s.

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(Laughter)

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If you're wondering what "others" are,

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here are some examples.

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Isn't it fascinating, the things people do

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and the things they're remembered for?

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(Laughter)

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Our curiosity was in overdrive,

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and we desired to analyze
more than just a descriptor.

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So, we ingested the entire
first paragraph of all 2,000 obituaries,

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but we did this separately
for two groups of people:

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people that are famous
and people that are not famous.

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Famous people -- Prince,
Ali, Zaha Hadid --

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people who are not famous
are people like Jocelyn Cooper,

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Reverend Curry

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or Lorna Kelly.

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I'm willing to bet you haven't heard
of most of their names.

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Amazing people, fantastic achievements,
but they're not famous.

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So what if we analyze
these two groups separately --

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the famous and the non-famous?

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What might that tell us?

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Take a look.

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Two things leap out at me.

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First:

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"John."

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(Laughter)

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Anyone here named John
should thank your parents --

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(Laughter)

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and remind your kids to cut out
your obituary when you're gone.

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And second:

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"help."

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We uncovered, many lessons
from lives well-led,

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and what those people immortalized
in print could teach us.

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The exercise was a fascinating testament
to the kaleidoscope that is life,

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and even more fascinating

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was the fact that the overwhelming
majority of obituaries

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featured people famous and non-famous,

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who did seemingly extraordinary things.

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They made a positive dent
in the fabric of life.

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They helped.

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So ask yourselves as you go
back to your daily lives:

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How am I using my talents to help society?

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Because the most powerful lesson here is,

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if more people lived their lives
trying to be famous in death,

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the world would be a much better place.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)