craschworks » science

Double-Blind Violin Test: Can You Pick The Strad?

crasch — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 01:30:30 +0000

When Fritz asked the players which violins they’d like to take home, almost two-thirds chose a violin that turned out to be new. She’s found the same in tests with other musical instruments. “I haven’t found any consistency whatsoever,” she says. “Never. People don’t agree. They just like different things.”

In fact, the only statistically obvious trend in the choices was that one of the Stradivarius violins was the least favorite, and one of the modern instruments was slightly favored.

via npr.org

Demonstrates the importance and power of double-blind testing to get at the truth, which in this case, is that Stradivarius violins do not have an appreciably better sound than modern violins.

Why Business Needs More Random Experiments

crasch — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 01:59:59 +0000

The “hard problems” are advertising, pricing, and less defined processes such as new product introductions, he said. “These are activities that usually go on in a firm without any real, accurate quantitative ways of measuring whether or not what you’re doing is working,” Levitt said.

“Pricing may be the best example of all,” he said. “Firms don’t set prices in the way economists think they should, with simple formulas about marginal costs and markups. In the real world, representatives of finance, marketing, and human resources sit around the room and debate what the price will be. Typically, there is not very much experimentation.”

Businesses need to perform more randomized experiments in natural settings, Levitt said. Companies such as Subway, Starbucks, and Capital One pick random markets to experiment with prices, products, and even the presentation of their products, he said. “Then they see whether or not good things happen in those markets, relative to other markets,” Levitt said.

via chicagobooth.edu

Both business and government could use more experimentation. Vast amounts of money are sometimes wasted pursuing futile strategies.

Mad Science

crasch — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:19:25 +0000

via abstrusegoose.com

That Mitchell and Webb Look : Proof of no God

crasch — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 19:27:03 +0000

via youtube.com

Dana Carvey is…Darwin

crasch — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:52:02 +0000

via examiner.com

Posted via email from crasch’s posterous

Mad Scientists

crasch — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:18:18 +0000

via cowbirdsinlove.com

Via flutterby

Posted via web from crasch’s posterous

EroticMadScience.com » A Thaumatophile Manifesto

crasch — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:19:53 +0000

via eroticmadscience.com

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind…
–George Gordon, Lord Byron, “Prometheus“ (1816)

Posted via web from crasch’s posterous

Scientists levitate stoned mouse

crasch — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:00:38 +0000

Mice Levitated in Lab

The researchers first levitated a young mouse, just three-week-old and weighing 10 grams. It appeared agitated and disoriented, seemingly trying to hold on to something.

“It actually kicked around and started to spin, and without friction, it could spin faster and faster, and we think that made it even more disoriented,” said researcher Yuanming Liu, a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. They decided to mildly sedate the next mouse they levitated, which seemed content with floating.

This is the Question

crasch — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:42:52 +0000

The Science of When to Get Married

When Charles Darwin wrote “This is the Question,” a set of notes he drafted between 1837 and 1838, he was not pondering finches. “This is the Question” represented the evolutionary theorist’s attempt to logically evaluate whether he should marry his girlfriend, Emma Wedgwood.

Transplanted cornea in use for record 123 years

crasch — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 05:54:42 +0000

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081023/lf_nm_life/us_norway_eye

Transplanted cornea in use for record 123 years

OSLO (Reuters Life!) – Bernt Aune’s transplanted cornea has been in use for a record 123 years — since before the Eiffel Tower was built.

“This is the oldest eye in Norway — I don’t know if it’s the oldest in the world,” Aune, an 80-year-old Norwegian and former ambulance driver, told Reuters by telephone on Thursday. “But my vision’s not great any longer.”

He had a cornea transplanted into his right eye in 1958 from the body of an elderly man who was born in June 1885. The operation was carried out at Namsos Hospital, mid-Norway.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the oldest living organ in the world,” eye doctor Hasan Hasanain at Namsos hospital told the Norwegian daily Verdens Gang.

In the 1950s, doctors expected it to work for just five years, Hasanain said. Such cornea operations date back to the early 20th century and were among the first successful transplants.

“It wasn’t unusual to use corneas from elderly people who had died,” Aune said.

The oldest person who had documents to prove it was France’s Jeanne Calment, who was 122 old when she died in 1997, according to the Guinness Book of Records.

The Eiffel Tower was built from 1887 to 1889. U.S. inventor Thomas Edison patented a film camera for motion pictures in 1888.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)