The Mind-Reading Salmon: The True Meaning of Statistical Significance. 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. Well, maybe not. The p-value puts a number on the effects of randomness. Many scientific papers make 20 or 40 or even hundreds of comparisons. The same applies to a well-publicized study that a team of neuroscientists once conducted on a salmon. Why we screw up when the heat is on - life - 11 July 2011. 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 What made you want to research what you've called "the science of why people screw up"? Everyone asks me if I'm doing "me-search" instead of research, trying to figure out how I perform. This phenomenon is known as "choking": what does this mean exactly? What is going on when we are under pressure? You say people with more cognitive horsepower may be more likely to fail. We had people do mathematics problems that could be solved by working through a complicated algorithm, or by using a shortcut. Those with more cognitive horsepower are also folks who tend to over-think and analyse. How can you avoid worry?
A mathematical problem presented horizontally - "32 - 17 = ?? " More From New Scientist. 660165. 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? In some cases, the password policy may create a bigger security threat than the risk of a password being guessed.
The password problem Passwords are still important, but the value of aggressive password policies as security against unauthorized access is questionable, said Andrew Marshall, CIO of Philadelphia-based Campus Apartments in an interview with Ars Technica. Even strong passwords don’t prevent breaches. A better policy. Go the Fuck to the Library.