#222) Is New Cal Tech President Ray Jayawardhana a “Good Communicator”? Yes, here’s QUANTITATIVE PROOF

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Rule #1 of powerful communication is “Don’t TELL me, SHOW me.” The NY Times TOLD us yesterday Dr. Jayawardhana is a good communicator, here are the data that SHOW it.

Jayawardhana (based on his 3 major books) is right there with Crichton (versus your typical poorly communicating scientist who is around the snooze emoji).

 

VOICES HAVE A DISTINCT “NARRATIVE FINGERPRINT”

I’ve spent the past decade researching and establishing the two basic narrative metrics — the AF (AND Frequency) and the NI (Narrative Index). A decade ago, I tried to warn of the communications strength of Donald Trump (nobody listened, fortunately he never amounted to much). Last year I put them to use in detail in Lincoln But Trump.

In the fall our NMS (Narrative Metrics Specialist) Liz Strauss teamed up with our ABT buddy Erik Stengler at SUNY Oneonta to do a study using the two metrics to compare the novels of Douglas Faulkner versus Michael Crichton. We discussed it in our Wednesday ABT Discussion Group. You can see the results in the graph above.

FAULKNER WAS COMPLEX, CRICHTON WAS “HIGHLY ACCESSIBLE”

Asking ChatGPT to describe novelist William Faulkner’s writing style it said, “Faulkner’s style prioritizes emotional truth over narrative clarity.” This is conveyed by his AF scores, which are high.

The average AF score for well edited material is 2.5%. Faulkner’s novels average well over 3.5% reflecting the lack of “narrative clarity” achieved for artistic purposes (not from ineptitude).

A score below 2.5% could be described as exceptional narrative clarity.

This is what characterized Michael Crichton’s writing. He wasn’t trying to create characters with “intense inner conflict, moral ambiguity, and emotional complexity” as Faulkner was. As ChatGPT says, Crichton’s work was designed to, “educate, entertain, and warn simultaneously.”

DR. JAYAWARDHANA COMMUNICATES WITH “NARRATIVE CLARITY”

Yesterday, the New York Times announced astrophysicist Ray Jayawardhana as the new president of Caltech. Using our super-simple ABT-ometer, we calculated the two narrative metrics for three of his most significant books.

So look at Jayawardhana’s metrics in the graph above. Bingo. Right there with Crichton.

And if you’re wondering how good that is, we can assure you that the vast majority of scientists, almost all of whom lack “narrative intuition,” end up in the lower right corner of that graph (sorry, it’s what the data show us, over and over again).