Bill Gates Handwriting Analyzed 609
Kaal Alexander Rosser writes "The BBC is reporting that a doodle left behind at a Davos press conference given by Tony Blair, Bill Gates and Bono shows the writer to be: "an unstable man" amongst other things. The Gates Foundation has confirmed the doodle was left there by Bill Gates."
WHERE'S THE BEEF? (Score:1, Interesting)
where's a scan of these notes and doodles?
Him2? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:1, Interesting)
Anyway, I wonder what they can make out from my preference for the Lucida font family.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
handwriting analysis? (Score:3, Interesting)
I dunno - I don't consider myself all that anal, but my notes are generally a lot less flamboyant than that - a little more organized, legible, useful, etc.
Re:handwriting analysis? (Score:2, Interesting)
After that I decieded that hey, there may be a relation between personality and style. And that while it is true you might adopt a different style, who is to tell you that doing that won't affect your personality?
Now.. thinking about the post above.. I may even point out that scribbing things in a hurry might also be relevant, if you think about it...
Actually... it can be accurate. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, he'll be the first to tell you that it's not a perfect science -- but if you see five different indicators that suggest the person is dishonest, there's a better chance that there's a correlation.
Here are a few points that I remember from reading the manual that he had written --
- Pressure of the writing is an indicator of the person's stress level. [how hard are they pushing the writing implement into the paper?].
- A person who tends to come back and write back over the top of their words (not to make a correction -- writing over it twice or more) is a sign of dishonesty.
- Your normal handwriting tells your personality; Your signature tells how you want people to think you are. (so a person whose signature is like their handwriting is more likely to be comfortable with themselves)
- A person whose lines slope downwards as they write tend to be pessimists (if upward, optimists)
There are things that can be infered from the angle the writing, the general shape of letters, how the person dots their i's, the width of the margins, how they place the addresses on the letters.I would relate handwriting analysis to be more like reading someone's mannerisms and how they dress -- it can be a good indicator, but isn't a perfect correlation. Whereas, astrology and the like are basically just cold reading (normally, based on the person's reactions, mannerisms, and how they dress), and not really on the stars.
Now, that's not to say that someone can read something wrong -- I'm sure it happens all the time -- my grandfather has one indicator (the size of decenders) that he attributes to 'passion' -- someone may attribute it to sexuality, sports, or even as agression and a tendancy towards violance. You have to read it in combination with other indicators.
Re:That is an outstanding link (Score:1, Interesting)
The indentations on the sample paper were measured under a microscope to be from 35 to 50 thousands of an inch when measured at 25 different points on the document. That means the writer was applying from 8 to 18 pounds of force on the pen, which is higher than the typical 4 to 10 pound range. Bailey's [1] work on the matter shows that subjects with a mean pressure measurement higher than 12 pounds are 38% more likely to have abnormally agressive thoughts (when measured using the MMPI standardized personality test) than subjects whose pen pressure fell in the normal range.
That would be scientific.
Re:Speaking as a geek... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Have you ever met Bill? I have. He most certainly has the geek nature. He most certainly does have a deep understanding of the "how" of technology and asks very penetrating questions if you're demonstrating something to him. He's a good business man too, but don't let that lead you into underestimating his technical abilities.
Paul
Already enough evidence... (Score:2, Interesting)
There is already enough evidence that Bill Gates doesn't have the qualities of a leader, and that he has few social abilities.
For example, look at Microsoft's keynote at CES [microsoft.com]. (Click on 100K or 300K to watch the video.)
There is no need for more evidence than watching any of Gates's public appearances to understand what kind of person he is.
I don't see what we could learn more from a handwriting analysis. There already is enough information available that is more relevant than what is mentioned in the article.
This reminds me of something I saw on art critics (Score:3, Interesting)
They showed art critics discussing the art they were looking at and describing, in detail, the emotions and message that the artist was trying to convey.
The show's host didn't believe any of that so he showed some "respected" art critics a piece of art, which looked like scribble to me- it was just random strokes of the brush in different colors. The critics all agreed with each other and explained what exactly the artist was thinking, and the raw emotion that went into the painting.
Very impressive, I thought- and maybe I would have believed them had the artist not been AN ELEPHANT.
Yes, an elephant painted the picture with its trunk. The "respected" art critics were really just good at winning popularity contests- in reality they had no clue what they were talking about. It's the same thing between a "good" phychic and a "bad" psychic- neither one knows what they're talking about, but one just seems "more believable" than the other.
Re:The real scoop (Score:4, Interesting)
The human race would be so funny if they weren't so dangerous.
What a non story (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The real scoop (Score:5, Interesting)
analyzing bil's handwriting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The real scoop (Score:5, Interesting)
Always agree to take it. They will want you to sign a release form (they have no liability, blah, blah). Refuse to sign the release form. They will decide not to administer the polygraph test. Remind them that you are agreeing to take the polygraph test and it is they that are choosing not to administer it.
I did this with an employer many years ago. It was very funny.
re: Back that up (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Speaking as a geek... (Score:1, Interesting)
Bill's geekness is simply marketing, so well done that I'm quite sure even he believes he is one.
I'm also sure he thinks he's a good guy.
Re:Speaking as a geek... (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting that you mention this. When I was in college one of my computer science profs told us that in the early days of the computing industry (1940s and 50s) there were no comp sci majors at schools.
So when companies like IBM, DEC and Sperry wanted to hire new college grads they had to find them in other, more traditional departments. Of course they hit the math and science majors, but surprisingly a lot of early programmers came from music departments.
The reason was that they had years of experience working with a symbolic language (sheet music), had to follow sequences, loops, timing, etc and also were used to thinking about the complex interactions among multiple instruments and multiple pieces of music.
Re:Speaking as a geek... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: Back that up (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Speaking as a geek... (Score:5, Interesting)
After a couple minutes, they got into the technical part and after Bill had spent two or three minutes looking over stack trace information he abruptly starts screaming at the team about how the memory footprint was too large, and then stopped, thought a minute, and accounting for a dependant project off the top of his head, spit out what he thought was the appropriate memory size for the stack. Everyone in the room stared at him slack-jawed - he quoted a number that was too small by half. No one outside the marketing department would make up a number like that.
But they had an explicit order from BillG to rewrite the stack to that size, so they went back to the drawing board and, after bringing in some more BSD hackers, realized that not only was his number achieveable, but he'd hit the number they could theoretically reach given the dependencies with other portions of the system right on the head. Although that section of NT has been revisitted in every version since NT4.0, no one has been able to improve on the memory footprint of that section of the kernel.
That's not neccesarily the sign of a genius - I know people who can look at a database and give the same sort of summary judgements. But when a man can make realizations like that within 10 minutes of having learned about a technology, at a bare minimum you have to give him credit for being a geek.
I probably should have mentioned -- (Score:3, Interesting)
He started studying human behavior, and from that, thinking in general, and now spends his time trying to further research into cognative neuropsychology [drexel.edu].
He's not some Miss Clio wanna-be trying to hawk his wares. I don't even know if he's done much with his handwriting analysis work in years, if not decades.
From the times that I've tried analysing other people's (and my own) handwriting, it seems to compare well with what I knew of the people, but I haven't tried doing double blind studies or anything else that would provide statistical proof as to the accuracy of the studies.
Re:The real scoop (Score:1, Interesting)
However, polygraphers admit that some people can lie convincingly on polygraphs, while others (especially those who get nervous) can't give reliable results on even truthful statements. At best, a polygraph examination is one of many possible indicators, and should never be relied on in isolation.
For example, if classified material disappeared from my office just before I deposited a million dollars in my bank account, I would be a suspect, even if I passed my polygraph. Likewise, failing a polygraph would not land me in prison. Unfortunately, too many people place absolute faith in polygraphs, so my clearance would probably not be renewed if I failed the exam.
Re:Speaking as a geek... (Score:2, Interesting)