Dave Munger
dmunger
Posts by this author
November 18, 2006
Larry Moran thinks I have the wrong idea about teaching evaluations and "thin slicing":
Unfortunately, Dave Munger seems to draw the wrong conclusions from this study as he explains in an earlier posting [The six-second teacher evaluation]. In that article from last May he says ...
So we do appear…
November 17, 2006
There's been an abundance of PowerPoint advice in the science blogosphere lately. Based on my personal experience, I'd say Chad and Amy give some good advice -- and it's advice that probably serves them well in their own presentations.
But I was curious about something different. There are plenty…
November 17, 2006
In 1981, the economist Lester C. Thurow wrote an article for the New York Times entitled "Why women are paid less than men." If you have a subscription, you can still read it on the Times web site. My copy comes from an anthology I edited in 1992. Thurow's conclusion:
The decade between 25 and 35…
November 16, 2006
The APA has an important rule that all authors of APA-sponsored journal articles must agree to before publication:
After research results are published, psychologists do not withhold the data on which
their conclusions are based from other competent professionals who seek to verify the
substantive…
November 15, 2006
There was some doubt as to whether the "tone-deafness" test I linked to Monday really tests for amusia. The defining trait of amusia is the inability to discern the difference between different musical pitches. So here's a test that might generate a more clear-cut result. The following track plays…
November 15, 2006
I'm actually doing better than usual: I'm just a day behind on the latest entertainment news. Last night, CBS premiered a TV show called 3 Lbs., which focuses on the tensions in a world-class neurosurgery unit of a major hospital. Most promising aspect of the show: it stars Stanley Tucci. If you…
November 14, 2006
If a Brahman child from Nepal is asked what she would do if another child spilled a drink on her homework, her response is different from that of a Tamang child from the same country. The Brahman would become angry, but, unlike a child from the U.S., would not tell her friend that she was angry.…
November 14, 2006
Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink -- and the real research it was based on -- made quite a splash when it was unveiled: the idea that a teacher evaluation made in just 30 seconds could actually reliably predict teacher performance over an entire semester was certainly surprising.
The Charlotte Observer…
November 13, 2006
There's an interesting site up which claims to be able to test whether or not you are tone deaf (the technical term for this condition is amusia). Though I'm not a music expert, I took the test, and in my opinion it really was testing my ability to determine the difference between similar musical…
November 10, 2006
Given all the interest in PowerPoint lately, we thought it might be a good time to devote a Casual Friday to PowerPoint. Specifically, can we learn more from much-maligned PowerPoint, or is good ol' text better?
We've designed a study that will present some information in PowerPoint form and some…
November 10, 2006
Quick question for those more computer-savvy than I am. Can you help me divide readers into five roughly equal groups (it's for this week's Casual Friday). In the past, I've relied on the "what month is your birthday in" question, but it won't work when I need five groups.
Surely there's a simple…
November 10, 2006
If you're like me, sometimes you feel as if you couldn't get anything done at all if it weren't for coffee. I'm sipping from a cup right now as I write this (a double Americano, in case you're curious). Caffeine seems to perk me up just enough to organize my thoughts into a coherent whole.
But…
November 9, 2006
Babel's Dawn is providing coverage of the Cradle of Language conference in South Africa. Several presenters at the conference are challenging the idea that language arose from a single genetic mutation. Given the complexity of human language, such a finding would certainly be a surprise to me.
It's…
November 8, 2006
Barry Schwartz has an interesting op-ed in yesterday's New York Times, where he claims that basic psychology leads us to choose bland representatives in government instead of fiery leaders.
Schwartz argues that how we choose leaders depends on the framing of the question. If we focus on the…
November 7, 2006
Take a look at this video of a professional drummer playing the conga:
It's easy to see that the sound coming from the drum is perfectly synchronized with the motion of the drummer's hands. Or is it? When a sound enters your ear, it takes less than 1 millisecond for the signal to be transported…
November 6, 2006
If I get a phone call from a solicitor asking me to support my local fire department or the search for the cure for cancer, I refuse to give. If a live person shows up at my door asking me to donate to a worthy cause, I nearly always give something. Am I behaving irrationally? Surely seeking…
November 3, 2006
Just about two weeks ago, I posted this visual illusion (if you haven't seen it yet, make sure to watch it with the sound turned ON):
How many flashes do you see?
In fact the dot only flashes once, but according to the study I report on in the post, the two beeps are supposed to throw you off. If…
November 3, 2006
Although alcohol consumption plays a role in about 31 percent of homicides, only 1.4 percent of TV news reports on murders mention alcohol. Only 12.8 percent of TV news stories on traffic accidents mention alcohol, while 34 percent of accidents involve drunk drivers. I've often wondered why people…
November 2, 2006
Conventional wisdom has it that giving young children chocolate will cause them to become fidgety. This belief is so pervasive that many parents won't give their kids candy within several hours of bedtime, convinced their children won't be able to sleep. After Halloween, many parents ration their…
November 2, 2006
When you're out of work, or you're so poor that you don't have enough money for basic necessities of life, one of the most devastating effects isn't so much physical discomfort, it's mental anguish. If you're not getting enough to eat, or don't have a place to sleep, you can still survive for weeks…
November 1, 2006
As I was scanning the internet this morning for news articles and blog posts to comment on, I came up with four good candidates. I spent the next 30 minutes trying to decide whether to write a post discussing a single article (like this), or just write a sentence or two about each post, with links…
October 31, 2006
Any grown-up would be surprised to see SpongeBob Squarepants show up in a Batman movie. Clearly, these characters inhabit two different fantasy worlds: one lives in a fabulous mansion near bustling Gotham City, while the other inhabits an underwater pineapple. Grown-ups divide fantasy worlds…
October 30, 2006
Face recognition is a task which humans do with little effort, even though in fact it's a tremendously difficult problem. To recognize a face, we need to be able to ignore traits that change over time, while focusing in on details that remain constant. A simple computer program, for example, would…
October 30, 2006
Yesterday I spent a delightful several hours having lunch with Chris Mooney (of Seed, Scienceblogs, and war on science fame) and attending his talk in Durham, NC. I also got to meet fellow ScienceBloggers Abel Pharmboy and Coturnix.
At lunch, the conversation centered on a favorite topic here at…
October 27, 2006
On Monday, I posted a recently-discovered visual illusion with a quick poll to see how many of our readers could spot the illusion. As it turned out, not very many of them did. This was surprising to me, because the team that discovered the illusion, led by Ladan Shams, found that the illusion was…
October 26, 2006
The New York Times has an article on the most recent stereotype threat research: Women perform worse on math tests when they are first told that men are better at math. When they are told that men and women are equal, they perform equally. Unfortunately, the report in Science on which the article…
October 25, 2006
Everyone knows the saying "a picture is worth a thousand words." Bound by that axiom, magazines, newspapers, and most of all, TV, bombard us with pictures every day. The latest hot internet properties aren't text-based sites like Google but picture-based sites like Flickr and YouTube. Psychological…
October 25, 2006
The Social Science Statistics blog (new to me, but it's been around for a while) has a good writeup of a 2002 study by Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch which systematically examines the effectiveness of deadlines in preventing procrastination:
They randomized participants into three categories:…
October 24, 2006
This week's "Ask a ScienceBlogger" question is easy: The best science TV show is Mythbusters.
Let's face it: most TV science programming is downright awful. It dumbs down the content, and tends not to explain the really interesting part of the question at hand. As I wrote recently over on Word…
October 24, 2006
There was plenty of interest in yesterday's audio-visual illusion. In case you missed it, I'll post it again here:
Play the movie with the sound turned up. If the illusion works, then you'll see a dot flash twice, accompanied by two beeps. But actually the dot only flashes once. Unfortunately, we'…