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Image: If you want to convince the world that a fish can sense your emotions, only one statistical measure will suffice: the p -value. The p -value is an all-purpose measure that scientists often use to determine whether or not an experimental result is “statistically significant.” Unfortunately, sometimes the test does not work as advertised, and researchers imbue an observation with great significance when in fact it might be a worthless fluke. Say you’ve performed a scientific experiment testing a new heart attack drug against a placebo. At the end of the trial, you compare the two groups. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-mind-reading-salmon

The Mind-Reading Salmon: The True Meaning of Statistical Significance

Psychologist: Why we screw up when the heat is on - life - 11 July 2011

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128200.200-psychologist-why-we-screw-up-when-the-heat-is-on.html Read full article Continue reading page | 1 | 2 Psychologist Sian Beilock has investigated what happens in the brain when our performance crumbles under pressure. She talked to Tiffany O'Callaghan about what it takes to stay on form under stress, and why being smarter can be more hindrance than help
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/10/when-passwords-attack-the-problem-with-aggressive-password-policies.ars

When passwords attack: the problem with aggressive password policies

It may be Halloween, but for thousands of corporate IT users there’s another reason today inspires fear: it’s time once again for the mandatory end-of-month password change. Few common IT policies drive users to distraction as regularly and reliably as the aggressiveness of enterprise password policies. But with more potential threats to enterprise security coming from external sources that take advantage of the users’ accounts once they’re already logged in, do byzantine password policies really do anything to protect corporate data?