Some Fun Diversions

Until I get back with more caching adventures:

  1. Warning, Math Inside!
    Four Dollars, Almost Five takes on The Monty Hall problem.  I love this problem and I admit freely that I did not fully appreciate the correct solution until just now (it’s one thing to know the right answer; quite another to viscerally “get it”.  He does a masterful job of explaining this counter intuitive probability challenge.  I’m stealing that graphic for one of my caches.  Come for the probability lecture, stay for the Casey Luskin debate.
  2. Warning, Science Inside! Ben Goldacre takes on some of the best hucksters in the business in his book Bad Science.  Try the lost chapter “The Doctor Will Sue You Now” on for size.
  3. Oh, Wait, ALL OF THESE ARE SCIENCY! If you were thinking this would be a super time to withhold vaccinations from your children because “too many too soon” or “gee, even Jim Carrey thinks we should hold off” or simply because your tinfoil hat of government conspiracy protection just wore off…please read the following:
    Bad Astronomy
    Orac
    Steve Novella
    Yes, all of these folks can be followed on Twitter.
  4. This One’s Got Science AND Mockery! I remember when The Quackometer went down for a long time.  Now that she’s back up, enjoy.

Converse amongst yourselves now.  And don’t forget to give Pharyngula a spin.


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7 Responses to Some Fun Diversions

  1. Buzz says:

    monty hall problem: I found that in a poker book and I could not get it until I wrote down each case and then seeing them on paper it was obvious that switching is 50:50.

    bad science / astronomy and anti-vaxxers – yaar to that

    you need to expand your blog range

  2. Buzz says:

    what didn’t I just comment?

  3. Buzz says:

    OK try two:

    Monty Hall Problem: I found this in a poker book* and could not get it after reading and re-reading. Finally I wrote out each scenario, then seeing them plainly on the paper it was then obvious that switching doors made it 50:50.

    bad science–I should check more of that stuff out.

  4. Buzz says:

    Is there a limit on comment length?

  5. Leonhard Paul Euler says:

    Thanks for the link to the Quackometer site. I can use that one.

    Here in the first decade of the 21st century, the population generally looks back at the 80’s as the dark ages. The days before the internet.

    We are so enlightened now that we have the internet. In the 80’s we had encyclopedias and I used to spend hours in the library. But for the most part, that content was factual (provided you avoided the autobiography and political commentary sections).

    Where did we get our misinformation in the 80’s? Where did we get our volumes of garbage, packaged as authoritative, that had to be sifted through to get one nugget of useful truth? I just don’t know how we lived back then.

    • kinzuakid says:

      I really am thinking about expanding my blog to the other hobby I have: critical thinking. That would give me some column inches around some of the absurdity in pseudoscience just smothering the populace right now.

  6. kinzuakid says:

    No limit on comment length, they are just all held for moderation

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