Fun and games
dmunger | June 27, 2007Here in Tuscany, the Munger family has rented a vacation house for a couple of weeks. Typically the day's biggest event is preparing dinner. Otherwise we generally just lounge around the house, admire the view, read, or converse over a glass of wine.
Today we thought we needed a project, so Nora and I decided to try and make our own Sudoku puzzle. It's actually more difficult than you might think. You can't just randomly fill in squares in a grid to make a Sudoku puzzle that works. Then it's another challenge to create a set of clues that will result in one unique solution.
After several…
dmunger | June 13, 2007We've been in Rome for a few days now, and we've seen several wonderful examples of how Renaissance and Baroque artists were beginning to re-learn the lessons of perspective, which, if 20-year-old memory of art history class serves me, had been discarded during the medieval period while artists focused on the social and religious dimensions of art.
Realistic perspective in paintings requires artists to understand a lot about the human vision system. If you can accurately portray perspective, you might just be able to build a jumbo-sized cathedral on a moderate-sized budget.
The most ambitious…
dmunger | June 2, 2007I'm reporting from sunny, temperate Paris. Gorgeous weather here, and we've already taken in a few sights.
However, the first psychology-related photo op actually occurred on the plane on the way over here. Why is Greta scowling in this picture?
She's holding a catalog page from the SkyMall catalog, where travelers can order useless gizmos from the discomfort of their airline seats. Here's a close-up of the offending catalog item.
There's a doozy of a psychological error in the claims made for this product. Can you spot it? Let us know in the comments.
dmunger | April 30, 2007I know, I know, I promised more analysis of the results from last Friday's curse word study, but I haven't gotten to it yet. Busy, busy, busy. In the meantime, you can head over to Word Munger and read about my hike in Mount Rogers Wilderness last week (click on the photo!):
I should have a post up that offers additional analysis of the Casual Friday results -- and responds to some of your objections -- later today.
dmunger | April 17, 2007Tired of depressing news? Take a break and look at some optical illusions!
For more, visit SandLot Science.
Haven't seen enough illusions? There are more below!
Q: How many spirals are in this picture?
A: None
For more, visit Michael Bach's illusion page.
Akiyoshi's got a new one:
For more, visit Akiyoshi's illusion pages.
Do you have a favorite illusion? Share a link in the comments section!
dmunger | April 12, 2007Yesterday, we conducted a poll asking how often our readers would give money to truly talented street performers. The poll was in response to a Washington Post experiment where world-famous violinist Joshua Bell performed in a subway station for 45 minutes and only earned $32, an amount that would pay for less than a third of a seat at one of his concerts.
One objection to the Post experiment is that Bell wasn't in a very good location: he was at the entrance to the station, during morning rush hour, when people have the least time to stop and listen. Our poll tried to determine what might…
dmunger | April 11, 2007This story in the Washington Post has been getting a lot of attention. The reporter convinced world-famous violin virtuoso Joshua Bell to play for 45 minutes in a busy Washington subway station, as an experiment to see if passersby would recognize his amazing talents and reward him appropriately. His take was a lowly $32, not counting $20 from a disgusted fan who recognized Bell and couldn't believe others weren't being more generous.
But there are questions as to whether the experiment was a good one. Why play in a subway entrance, where people are rushing to catch trains or off to their…
dmunger | February 19, 2007Last week, we asked readers if they could tell which of these two photos, offering only 12 × 14 pixels of information apiece, represented a face:
Nearly three-quarters of respondents accurately identified the photo on the right as a face. But what face? It only took 6 guesses for readers to guess that it's a picture of Greta. No one successfully identified the subject of the photo on the left, though.
One thing a couple readers noticed as they participated is that blurring their vision or stepping back from their monitors helped them select the right picture. When I was creating the…
dmunger | February 5, 2007On Saturday, I posted a poll asking readers to simply pick a number between 1 and 20. I promised I'd explain what this is all about, so here goes.
The poll was inspired by this post on Pharyngula, which in turn was inspired by this article on Cosmic Variance. The idea is that 17 will always be the most common answer when people are asked to choose a number between 1 and 20. But neither Cosmic Variance nor Pharyngula offered a reasonable means of testing this proposition. That's where our poll came in. This morning, I took a look at our data, and with 347 responses, I can confirm that 17 is…
dmunger | February 3, 2007There's a meme going around lately, suggesting some pattern to how we guess random numbers. A few bloggers are trying to "test" it by asking their readers to email them lists of random numbers, or conducting a "study" in their comments. Why not use a poll?
IMPORTANT: Don't use the graphic as an aid. First, think of a random number between 1 and 20. Then record your response.
I'll explain what this is all about next week.
dmunger | January 9, 2007Eric Schwitzgebel has just completed an exhaustive study of the behavior of ethicists. He had noticed that a large number of ethics books seemed to be missing from research libraries across the nation. Rather than leave that observation in anecdotal form, he began a systematic analysis of the data. His initial analysis showed that 1.25 ethics books were missing for every 1 book in non-ethics fields of philosophy. But that still didn't satisfy him. Perhaps ethics books are simply more popular, or perhaps the sample is biased because of the relative age of the ethics versus non-ethics books. So…
dmunger | October 6, 2006So psychologists got shut out of the Nobels this year ... so what! This year the peace prize at the Ig-Nobels went to a discovery of a psychological phenomenon: how to get rid of teenagers. That's right, the "teen repellent" is this year's winner of the Ig-Nobels' biggest prize.
As we have reported on CogDaily, already this useful technology has proven to have other important applications, such as alerting teens to important IMs without getting caught by geriatric teachers.
Seriously, though -- the last psychological Nobel was split among three researchers in 2000: Arvid Carlsson, for work on…
dmunger | August 21, 2006Why does Greta look so happy in this photo?
Perhaps it's because she's wearing her new neurotransmitter earrings, chosen by CogDaily readers (for the results of our poll, see this post).
Seratonin and dopamine were in a dead heat, so she got one of each. A close-up of the earrings is below the fold.
dmunger | August 9, 2006
Greta really wants some of these neurotransmitter earrings. But which ones should she get? Let's make this one a poll -- that way you can help her decide! When she gets the earrings, we'll post a picture of her wearing them.
dmunger | June 22, 2006P. Diddy probably doesn't have to worry about this group horning in on his territory, but I bet the U of Oregon grad students had a lot of fun making this video: