Glossary of Mathematical Mistakes. By Paul Cox This is a list of mathematical mistakes made over and over by advertisers, the media, reporters, politicians, activists, and in general many non-math people. These come from many sources, which will appear in parenthesis. I will try to find an actual example of each for learning purposes. Note: In this document, I attack errors made by popular social organizations. I am not attacking their important causes, only their mathematical errors. I try to find errors from all political and social views. Back to mathmistakes.com home Aftermath Counting (A. "All Disasters Come in Threes" Conjecture - Also called the "All Celebrities Die in Threes" Conjecture. Astrology Amnesia - When your Astrological forecast comes true one day, you forget about the last three weeks when the forecast failed. Cancer Cluster Syndrome - Making a lot of fuss over an above average number of cancer cases in a confined region.
Circular Reasoning - see Recursive Arguments Odds vs. Boost Your Immune System? This post is a wee bit of a cheat in that it is a rewrite of a Quackcast, but I have three lectures and board certification in the near future, so sometimes you have to cook the wolf. What does that mean: boost the immune system? Most people apparently think that the immune system is like a muscle, and by working it, giving it supplements and vitamins, the immune system will become stronger. Bigger. More impressive, bulging like Mr. The other popular phrase is “support”. The immune system, if you are otherwise healthy, cannot be boosted, and doing those things you learned in Kindergarten health (reasonable diet, exercise and sleep), will provide the immune system all the boosting or support it needs. Someone is going to write in and say Americans have a lousy diet and don’t exercise and can benefit from better food and exercise.
What is the immune system? There are blood components: Polymorphonuclear leukocytes, also known as white cells. The answer, as we shall see, is usually nothing. Cigarettes may be useful for distance runners?!? (or, How to prove anything with a review article) Hello there! If you enjoy the content on Obesity Panacea, consider subscribing for future posts via email or RSS feed. Also, don't forget to like us on Facebook!
(Image source) Last winter the Canadian Medical Association Journal published a fascinating article by Ken Myers discussing the (as-yet unexamined) benefits of cigarette smoking on endurance running performance. Here are Ken’s arguments: Serum hemoglobin is related to endurance running performance. In the discussion, Ken goes on to point out that: Cigarette smoking has been shown to increase serum hemoglobin, increase total lung capacity and stimulate weight loss, factors that all contribute to enhanced performance in endurance sports. Now at this point I assume that people are wondering how something this insane came to be published in a respected medical journal (as of 2010, CMAJ was ranked 9th of out 40 medical journals, with an impact factor of 9).
Travis Myers, K. (2010). The Cigarettes may be useful for distance runners?!? Top 10 Myths About The Common Cold. Health Winter is on its way (to the Northern Hemisphere) and with it comes myths of the common cold. We all grow up with a variety of beliefs about the common cold that often differ from home to home, but the fact is, most of them are wrong. With this list we will help to educate everyone about the myths relating to the cold and flu and hopefully help us to be better prepared to cope with it in future.
We have all done it – or at least seen others do it: covering up with extra blankets, sticking your head over a bowl of hot water – all in the hopes that we will sweat the cold out. Unfortunately, this does not work – it is completely ineffective. This is a particularly odd myth – many people believe that you can catch a flu from the flu injection. A weakened immune system does not heighten the risks of catching a cold. It is a myth that loads of vitamin c and zinc help to stave off (or cure) a cold. Myth: most colds are caught in the Winter. Don’t Treat Cold Symptoms Jamie Frater. Special Features: Myths of the Common Cold. 1. Approximately 25% of people who get a cold virus infection do not develop symptoms and yet they get over the infection as well as people who do have symptoms (5, 72, also see How Virus Infection Occurs). 2.
The nose can only respond to irritative events such as a cold virus infection or dust or pollen entering the nose in a limited number of ways. Sneezing and nasal secretions are useful in removing dust and pollen from the nose but do not eliminate cold viruses since the virus is multiplying inside the nasal cells where it is safe. 3. Nose blowing propels nasal secretions into the sinus cavity. (41) Nasal secretions contain viruses, bacteria, and inflammatory mediators all of which are able to produce inflammation in the sinus cavity. 4. 5.
Spiked-health | Column | Myths of immunity. 10 myths about vaccination. {*style:<b> </b>*}While better hygiene, hand washing and clean water can protect people against diseases such as influenza and cholera, most viruses spread regardless of how clean we are. If people are not vaccinated, so-called old diseases will quickly reappear, such as measles. Owing to the complexity of the human immune system, no vaccine provides 100% protection, but this persistent myth also draws on the fact that true immunization status is not always recorded correctly and that numbers can be manipulated. Over 90% of the people with measles cases reported in 2009 had received less than the recommended two doses of measles vaccine. All medical treatments, including vaccination, can have side-effects.
These vaccines are administered at a time when babies can suffer sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), but there is no documented correlation. {*style:<b> Diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella are called childhood illnesses because they usually affect children. An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All | Magazine. Photo: Andrew Zuckerman To hear his enemies talk, you might think Paul Offit is the most hated man in America. A pediatrician in Philadelphia, he is the coinventor of a rotavirus vaccine that could save tens of thousands of lives every year. Yet environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slams Offit as a “biostitute” who whores for the pharmaceutical industry. Actor Jim Carrey calls him a profiteer and distills the doctor’s attitude toward childhood vaccination down to this chilling mantra: “Grab ‘em and stab ‘em.”
Recently, Carrey and his girlfriend, Jenny McCarthy, went on CNN’s Larry King Live and singled out Offit’s vaccine, RotaTeq, as one of many unnecessary vaccines, all administered, they said, for just one reason: “Greed.” Thousands of people revile Offit publicly at rallies, on Web sites, and in books. Then there are the threats. An Epidemic of Fear “I don’t think he wanted to hurt me,” Offit recalls. Pages: 1 234567View All. The Museum of Hoaxes. Squashed, Why People are Sheep. Why You're Probably Less Popular Than Your Friends. Are your friends more popular than you are? There doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason to suppose this is true, but it probably is. We are all more likely to become friends with someone who has a lot of friends than we are to befriend someone with few friends.
It’s not that we avoid those with few friends; rather it’s more probable that we will be among a popular person’s friends simply because he or she has a larger number of them. This simple realization is relevant not only to real-life friends but also to social media. In Twitter, for example, it gives rise to what might be called the follower paradox: most people have fewer followers than their followers do. The number of friends we have is typical of many situations in which the average deviates from individuals’ experience.
But once again, let’s adopt the perspective of the average person and reexamine these numbers. Of course, the argument applies to many situations. The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why? by Marcia Angell. The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch Basic Books, 226 pp., $15.99 (paper) Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker Crown, 404 pp., $26.00 Unhinged: The Trouble With Psychiatry—A Doctor’s Revelations About a Profession in Crisis by Daniel Carlat Free Press, 256 pp., $25.00 It seems that Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, at least as judged by the increase in the numbers treated for it. A large survey of randomly selected adults, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and conducted between 2001 and 2003, found that an astonishing 46 percent met criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for having had at least one mental illness within four broad categories at some time in their lives.
What is going on here? The authors emphasize different aspects of the epidemic of mental illness. Quackwatch. Snake Oil? The scientific evidence for health supplements. See the data: bit.ly/snakeoilsupps. See the static versionSee the old flash version Check the evidence for so-called Superfoods visualized. Note: You might see multiple bubbles for certain supplements. These is because some supps affect a range of conditions, but the evidence quality varies from condition to condition. For example, there’s strong evidence that garlic can lower blood pressure. This visualisation generates itself from this Google Doc. As ever, we welcome your thoughts, crits, comments, corrections, compliments, tweaks, new evidence, missing supps, and general feedback. » Purchase: Amazon US or Barnes & Noble | UK or Waterstones » Download: Apple iBook | Kindle (UK & US) » See inside For more graphics, visualisations and data-journalism:
Digests: Myths and Misconceptions about Second Language Learning. Resources Online Resources: Digests December 1992 Myths and Misconceptions about Second Language Learning National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning This Digest is based on a report published by the National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning, University of California, Santa Cruz: "Myths and Misconceptions About Second Language Learning: What Every Teacher Needs to Unlearn," by Barry McLaughlin.
As the school-aged population changes, teachers all over the country are challenged with instructing more children with limited English skills. As any adult who has tried to learn another language can verify, second language learning can be a frustrating experience. Myth 1: Children learn second languages quickly and easily Typically, people who assert the superiority of child learners claim that children's brains are more flexible (e.g., Lenneberg, 1967). Myth 2: The younger the child, the more skilled in acquiring an L2. Myth #6: "If you didn't learn a foreign language as a child, you will never be fully proficient in its grammar" | Antimoon.com. © Tomasz P. Szynalski, Antimoon.com This is a more general version of the “foreign accent” myth described in the previous article in the series.
It has its roots in the Critical Period Hypothesis proposed by Eric Lenneberg in 1967. Lenneberg suggested that one’s first language must be acquired before puberty (about 12 years of age). After puberty, he claimed, neurological changes in the brain make it impossible to fully learn a language. To support his hypothesis, Lenneberg pointed to examples of children who were kept in isolation from others and had no contact with their first language until after puberty.
The Critical Period Hypothesis has been generalized to refer to second/foreign language acquisition, leading to statements such as: “If you don’t acquire a second/foreign language before puberty, you will always have problems with some parts of grammar” This causes language learners to interpret their flaws as a neurological necessity and discourages them from trying to improve. Ideographic Myth. The concept of ideographic writing is a most seductive notion. There is great appeal in the concept of written symbols conveying their message directly to our minds, thus bypassing the restrictive intermediary of speech. And it seems so plausible. Surely ideas immediately pop into our minds when we see a road sign, a death's head label on a bottle of medicine, a number on a clock. Aren't Chinese characters a sophisticated system of symbols that similarly convey meaning without regard to sound?
The answer to these questions is no. Origin of the Myth The concept of Chinese writings as a means of conveying ideas without regard to speech took hold as part of the chinoiserie fad among Western intellectuals that was stimulated by the generally highly laudatory writings of Catholic missionaries from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. A more authoritative description of Chinese writing was advanced by the renowned Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610). The Essence of Writing. Checker shadow illusion. The checker shadow illusion is an optical illusion published by Edward H. Adelson, Professor of Vision Science at MIT in 1995.[1] The image depicts a checkerboard with light and dark squares. The optical illusion is that the area of the image labeled A appears to be a darker color than the area of the image labeled B. However, they are actually exactly the same color. This can be proven using the following methods:[2] Opening the illusion in an image editing program and using the eyedropper tool to verify that the colors are the sameIsolating the squares.
Without the surrounding context, the effect of the illusion is dispelled. See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit] The Conspiratainment Complex. Posted Nov 19, 2010 17 comments Conspiracy Theory lacks credibility because it has no history. Original research doesn't get cited so much as looted, refitted as filler content to feed new revelations to a hungry audience. They know what they like because they like what they know. It is a product that gets updated for new audiences through a self-selected succession of upstart entrepreneurs. Mae Brussel becomes Lyndon LaRouche becomes Alex Jones. As a published field, though, Conspiracy Theory has a surprisingly strong foundation. Consider Carroll Quigley's "The Anglo-American Establishment," a masterpiece that completely unravels a powerful, and very real, conspiracy. The signal always gets distorted, degraded...and more popular every time. Consider the rise of Evangelical Christianity as a political force, from the fringes to the frontline.
What, are you too good to learn from Ted Haggard? Real power moves through crooked lines like these. In 2010, The Watchmen is a superhero movie. Leo Taxil’s confession. Potemkin village. Batesian mimicry. Shepard Tone Incredible Audio Illusion Jean-Claude Risset - "Mutations" as clean as fire Fibonacci Flim-Flam.