Martin W Smith

After nearly two weeks, I’ve finally done it. I finished the book I’ve been reading, Statistics without Tears by Derek Rowntree. It’s a relatively short book at only 193 pages, but despite how long it’s taken me to read it was actually really interesting. I don’t remember doing much on statistics at school so it’s been a good primer for me and will come in useful as I progress through the Datacamp Data Science courses. Statistics is a big part of Data Science which is why I wanted to read the book.

I think one of the reasons it takes me so long to read a book is that I only read a few pages at a time when I have a spare few minutes. I read before bed for a bit longer, but I usually read fiction on my Kindle (currently reading Unseen by Karin Slaughter). When I’m sleepy I can’t take in anything too cerebral. I’m also quite a slow reader anyway, my wife can zip through a couple of books a week, while I can take months to read a 400 page book. I think it’s because Hailey skim reads while I tend to read every word, especially with non-fiction as I want to retain the information as best I can.

The next book I’m going to read is a complete change of pace, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. It’s only 180 pages and with no maths involved, hopefully it won’t take me too long to get through.

It’s my day off from jogging today so I did skipping and pushups. Today I did 80 pushups in sets of 16, 20, 13, 13, 18. That final 18 was really tough, I had to pause a couple of times in order to get through it. My chest and shoulders were really sore after that.

Other than that things were business as usual. Tomorrow is weigh in day, so I’ll be back with the results.