Comments for 360

Comment on Carnival of Mathematics #34 by Carnival of Mathematics « Carnival of Mathematics

Carnival of Mathematics « Carnival of Mathematics — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 05:46:54 +0000

[...] 2008/5/30: 360 (posted!) [...]

Comment on Sierpinski Cookies by Michael H. GorillazMiko

Michael H. GorillazMiko — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 05:08:17 +0000

IT’S RAW!!!

I’VE HAD ENOUGH

GET OUT!!!

Comment on How big is an Acre? How much is inside other stuff? by Ξ

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:57:33 +0000

One of the best pieces of advice I read (from the I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken, which is a great read as well as containing some fine recipes) is that each person should find something they know well that is about 1 unit of [whatever]. For example, a paper clip is about 1 gram, a cheerio is just a little bigger than 1 cm, a big grape is about 1 inch, etc.

Comment on How big is an Acre? How much is inside other stuff? by jd2718

jd2718 — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:27:29 +0000

cute - but the problem is real - most of the units we use are beyond the immediate grasp of our students and colleagues.

plus the stories are funny.

Comment on How big is an Acre? How much is inside other stuff? by samjshah

samjshah — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 04:18:09 +0000

Oh, gold in Goldschlader… good question that I can’t believe I haven’t thought of…

But I recently learned about http://www.sensibleunits.com which helps makes sense of various units — and I love it. So if you type “! acre” you get:

9.3 basketball courts.
7.4 football penalty areas.
2.2 ice hockey rinks.
0.81 hockey fields.

As someone who knows nothing about sports, most of them don’t make sense… but the BB courts makes sense. And seriously? 9.3 basketball courts can fit in less than 1 hockey field? I’m so confused. Is a hockey rink so huge? But I like the site — it can deal with bytes, leagues, and Kobe Bryants. Seriously.

Comment on Summer Reading by Maria H. Andersen

Maria H. Andersen — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:03:37 +0000

Love Jodi Picoult. I have read every one of her books. If you like these, you might like Nevada Barr (mystery/adventure set in national parks) or Sandra Brown (always a plot twist in the end + romance).

Comment on Summer Reading by Lessons Taught; Lessons Learnt » Blog Archive » Summer Reading: Part 1 — Books for me

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:04:46 +0000

[...] many other people, I find the summer a great time for kicking back and catching up on some reading. My [...]

Comment on Make a guess, any guess by Ξ

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:28:14 +0000

Thanks for your more-careful reading of the paper — I missed that last night. My informal survey also differed from the authors in another important way: they said:

“It is important that neither group knew they would be required to furnish a second guess, as this precluded subjects from misinterpreting their task as being to specify the two endpoints of a range.” (p. 3)

but I actually asked for two guesses.

I wonder if knowing about this study would change the guesses at all. If my first guess for the number of people on the Titanic were 1000 and my second guess was going to be 2000, maybe I’d average those two and choose 1500 as my second guess. Which quickly leads to a kind of series problem, although one that (I suspect) rapidly loses any sort of scientific validity!

Comment on Make a guess, any guess by Jon Ingram

Jon Ingram — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:51:17 +0000

It’s an interesting statistical experiment, and one I’ll file away to possibly try with some of my sets next year. You raise a point in your post:

“Better accuracy comes when the guesses are several weeks apart, but several commenters note that this may be because people looked up the answer in the meantime.”

They address this in the paper:

“This benefit of averaging cannot be attributed to subjects’ finding more information between guesses, because second guesses were less accurate than first guesses in both the immediate condition, and the delayed condition.” (page 4).

They also attempt to quantify the benefit of asking someone twice compared to asking two people the same question:

“Simply put, you can gain about 1/10th as much from asking yourself the same question twice as you can from getting a second opinion.” (page 5).

Not entirely sure how valid their attempt to quantify the relative benefit is, but it’s at least not immediately implausible, which makes it better than average for the use of statistics in the social sciences :).

Comment on Saturday Smorgasbord by Ξ

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 16:36:32 +0000

I’ve been impressed with the web-translations, though (via Google or Babel Fish, and there are probably others). It’s a little more work and it doesn’t pick up on all the nuances the way that someone who understood the language would, but it does allow me to get the jist of your site and some others in languages I don’t speak.