My mind, it is blown
Mar. 19th, 2010 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficWhile doing repetitive tasks at work today, I was listening to WNYC's Radiolab. Things what I learned today:
- Babies have an innate grasp of numbers--but they think of numbers logarithmically. To a toddler, the halfway point between 1 and 10 is 3--1 is a third of 3 and 10 is a little over 3 times 3. Studies have actually shown this. In fact, that's the natural way people think of numbers. We have to be taught to think of them as integers.
- In many (but not all) lists of numbers from real-life sources, the first digit is 1 almost a third of the time. It's called Benford's Law. It's actually used in court in fraud cases--you can tell someone has made up numbers, because made up numbers violate Benford's Law. Now, could someone please explain to me how this could possibly work, since it seems like it would have to be an artifact of counting in a base-10 system?
- In a forty year long experiment on domesticating foxes, a Russian breeder chose to breed the animals with the least aggression and fear. That means he chose those with the most underdeveloped adrenal glands. Turns out there are a lot of other things that develop at the same time--including straight ears, straight tails, and thicker bones. The result? Domesticated foxes have floppy ears and curly tails...and look pretty much like puppies. Even crazier, some of these same traits can be found in humans (thinner bones, smaller teeth), meaning we domesticated ourselves.
- In a study where scientists monitored when people blinked while watching a movie, they found that on repeat viewings, each person tended to blink in the exact same places. In fact, different people blinked at the exact same time almost a third of the time! That means in a theater of 180 people, 60 people are blinking at the same moment as you! And these blinks correlate to pauses in the story on the screen--static or unimportant shots. Which means that our brains are very very good at picking moments when we are least likely to miss something to blink. Crazy!
- Babies have an innate grasp of numbers--but they think of numbers logarithmically. To a toddler, the halfway point between 1 and 10 is 3--1 is a third of 3 and 10 is a little over 3 times 3. Studies have actually shown this. In fact, that's the natural way people think of numbers. We have to be taught to think of them as integers.
- In many (but not all) lists of numbers from real-life sources, the first digit is 1 almost a third of the time. It's called Benford's Law. It's actually used in court in fraud cases--you can tell someone has made up numbers, because made up numbers violate Benford's Law. Now, could someone please explain to me how this could possibly work, since it seems like it would have to be an artifact of counting in a base-10 system?
- In a forty year long experiment on domesticating foxes, a Russian breeder chose to breed the animals with the least aggression and fear. That means he chose those with the most underdeveloped adrenal glands. Turns out there are a lot of other things that develop at the same time--including straight ears, straight tails, and thicker bones. The result? Domesticated foxes have floppy ears and curly tails...and look pretty much like puppies. Even crazier, some of these same traits can be found in humans (thinner bones, smaller teeth), meaning we domesticated ourselves.
- In a study where scientists monitored when people blinked while watching a movie, they found that on repeat viewings, each person tended to blink in the exact same places. In fact, different people blinked at the exact same time almost a third of the time! That means in a theater of 180 people, 60 people are blinking at the same moment as you! And these blinks correlate to pauses in the story on the screen--static or unimportant shots. Which means that our brains are very very good at picking moments when we are least likely to miss something to blink. Crazy!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-03-20 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-20 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-20 10:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-20 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-20 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-20 01:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-20 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 11:14 pm (UTC)