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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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[Muhammed 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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The 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)
Retired user
2:05 that tries to, in just a few words, capture an achievement or a lifetime.
It seems to me, the speaker says "capture an achievement over a lifetime", or "of a lifetime", could you please double check?
Thank you.