Visualizing World Birth and Death Rates Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science - David H. Freedman In 2001, rumors were circulating in Greek hospitals that surgery residents, eager to rack up scalpel time, were falsely diagnosing hapless Albanian immigrants with appendicitis. At the University of Ioannina medical school’s teaching hospital, a newly minted doctor named Athina Tatsioni was discussing the rumors with colleagues when a professor who had overheard asked her if she’d like to try to prove whether they were true—he seemed to be almost daring her. She accepted the challenge and, with the professor’s and other colleagues’ help, eventually produced a formal study showing that, for whatever reason, the appendices removed from patients with Albanian names in six Greek hospitals were more than three times as likely to be perfectly healthy as those removed from patients with Greek names. Last spring, I sat in on one of the team’s weekly meetings on the medical school’s campus, which is plunked crazily across a series of sharp hills. It didn’t turn out that way.
Gravitációs hullám It’s time for science to abandon the term ‘statistically significant’ | Aeon Essays The aim of science is to establish facts, as accurately as possible. It is therefore crucially important to determine whether an observed phenomenon is real, or whether it’s the result of pure chance. If you declare that you’ve discovered something when in fact it’s just random, that’s called a false discovery or a false positive. And false positives are alarmingly common in some areas of medical science. In 2005, the epidemiologist John Ioannidis at Stanford caused a storm when he wrote the paper ‘Why Most Published Research Findings Are False’, focusing on results in certain areas of biomedicine. He’s been vindicated by subsequent investigations. The problem of how to distinguish a genuine observation from random chance is a very old one. What matters to a scientific observer is how often you’ll be wrong if you claim that an effect is real, rather than being merely random. The problem is that the p-value gives the right answer to the wrong question. Get Aeon straight to your inbox
11 Elképesztő matek trükk, amit nem tanítanak az iskolában! A matematika nem tartozik a legkönnyebb tantárgyak közé, ráadásul a matektanárok is minden más tantárgynál jobban szeretik túlbonyolítani még az egészen egyszerű alapokat is, így nem csoda, ha a gyerekek már egészen fiatal korukban megutálnak mindent ami a számokkal kapcsolatos. Pedig nem feltétlenül kellene, mert még ha sablon szövegnek is tűnik, a matematikának bizony megvan a maga szépsége, és még az egyébként nehezebb törteket is képesek lehetünk pofonegyszerű módszerekkel, fejben kiszámolni. Ehhez persze ismerni kell magukat a módszereket, amiket sajnos sokszor nem, vagy nem kellően tanítanak meg a diákoknak. Most 11 fantasztikus matek trükköt szedtünk össze nektek az internetről, melyek ha nem is megszerettetik majd mindenkivel a matekot, de garantáltan egy kis érdeklődést keltenek majd mindenkiben akik nem kattintottak el rögtön a ,,matek” szó hallatán! Hogyan váltsunk át Celsius fokról Fahrenheit-re és vissza Hogyan szorozzunk nagy számokat, gyorsan, fejben
About that Heliocentric thing… This is waaaaay too cool not to share about your planet’s yellow Sun. And then there is this. A good thought project for Lent. As you watch the animation, as you watch the little dot planets whirl about the Sun, and the Sun on the galactic plane go zooming along in its own snaky path, consider how many times you see the planets circle the Sun and then consider the span of your life… … after which you are going before the Judge, through whom all things came into being. Fr. Budapest, Hungary | Sighting Opportunity | Spot The Station | NASA How do I Spot The Station? What does all this sighting information mean? Time is when the sighting opportunity will begin in your local time zone. All sightings will occur within a few hours before or after sunrise or sunset. This is the optimum viewing period as the sun reflects off the space station and contrasts against the darker sky. Visible is the maximum time period the space station is visible before crossing back below the horizon. Max Height is measured in degrees (also known as elevation). Appears is the location in the sky where the station will be visible first. Disappears represents where in the night sky the International Space Station will leave your field of view.
The 10 Memory Tricks Backed By Science Boosts in all types of memory come from these simple activities. 1. Draw it Drawing pictures of words helps build stronger and more reliable memories, new research finds. The quality of the drawings themselves does not matter, the study also found. This suggests everyone can benefit from the technique, whatever their artistic talent. 2. Closing your eyes really can help jog the memory, a new study finds. Eyewitness to a crime remembered twice as many details using this technique. The results should be useful for helping eyewitnesses to crimes remember more details when questioned by police. 3. Imagining how things relate to yourself helps to boost recall, psychological research finds. The study tested people with and without memory problems and found it could help both. The results showed that whether people had memory problems or not, self-imagining was the most effective strategy. Compared with the baseline condition, the self-imagining strategy almost tripled what people could remember. 5. 6.
Corkboard Connections: Hands-on Water Cycle Fun! Now that I'm retired, I often miss working with children; children are my inspiration and the classroom is my laboratory! Recently I accepted a position at a local school to work with kids during their year round intersession program, and I had the pleasure of teaching science to 5th graders for 3 days. I had a wonderful time teaching them about the water cycle and weather, especially since I was able to incorporate a hands-on activity and an exciting demonstration into our lessons. One activity was adapted from a terrific idea shared with me by Pat Calfee, a former elementary teacher who is now an educational consultant. When Pat was teaching 2nd grade, she used plastic rotisserie chicken containers to have her students create mini water cycles. Because 5th graders need to know the full water cycle including transpiration and run-off, we modified our mini water cycles slightly. Those containers were a super way to give students hands-on experience creating a water cycle.
Understanding Genius: Helix Center roundtable video You can watch the 2+ hour video of the roundtable on YouTube. I enjoyed the discussion but I don't like watching or listening to recordings of myself, so you'll have to tell me what you think of it ... I was very flattered that several readers of the blog showed up for the event. I'll be part of this roundtable discussion Saturday, Oct 3 in NYC.