Derren Brown's Blog, page 16

Mind Reading: Why Bad Math Can Ruin Your Health

"How do we know which numbers to trust and which health studies are sound? Healthland faces this dilemma every day, so we spoke with Charles Seife, the rare journalist with an undergraduate degree in mathematics, from Princeton no less. In his book Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception, Seife explores the common ways math can be used to mislead people.

What is "proofiness"?

It's the art of using math to tell untruths, the art of using bogus numbers or numbers that are semi-right to mislead.

One example I like is when Quaker Oats had a huge ad campaign to try to convince people that eating oatmeal could lower cholesterol dramatically. It put a graph on the back [of the package] that showed a dramatic decline in cholesterol levels. And there was a drop, according to a study. But if you look carefully, the Y-axis was manipulated so that a really very tiny drop looked huge, when in fact, there was only a few points [decline] out of 200.

And what is the phenomenon you call "randumbness"?

We humans have a hard time recognizing that things can actually have no [discernible] cause. They are random. The roll of the dice isn't influenced by external factors [like wearing your lucky shoes]. That's how Las Vegas makes all its money. People think that if they're winning, they should keep doing [what they're doing]; if they're losing they're due to win soon. The universe doesn't care whether you win or lose — things are just random.

So, it's the fallacy that comes when we think something is [causally connected to something else], when in fact there's no cause behind it. I like to link it to what I call cause-uistry — what happens when, say, there is a cancer cluster or you spot a group of people who have more than the expected number of a certain type of cancer. It may be that there's a toxin or something causing it. But by the sheer fact that you are looking at the entire country, of course there are going to be some places where there is a more-than-average incidence of cancer. Just through random chance, in some places there will be an increase in cancer, and in some places it will be lower than expected.

So cause-uistry is a glib name for the fallacy that correlation equals causation. Just because two things seem to be related doesn't mean that one affects the other. [Still] our brains lead us to connect things even if they are not connected. One fun example: when I was doing reporting on something else, a member of Congress tried to pitch me on building more power plants. He said that if you increase power production, then infant mortality drops. It's true. It's also true that when Internet use goes up, infant mortality drops. And car driving. Of course, those are all symptomatic of a high-tech society that has good health care."

Read more at Time Healthland (Thanks Matt)

A 'self' portrait of an artist with memory loss

"She finished the books and wanted more. Before her mother could fetch some, Lonni Sue started making grids with words hidden in them. Thousands of puzzles poured out of her. Wearing thin the pages of a paperback dictionary, she created elaborate word lists, then puzzles from the lists and then images from the puzzles. A grid of words for things that hang in the closet took the shape of a coat hanger. Words related to trousers formed a pair of pants. Her vocabulary seemed to open a new door for her creativity.

Enter Barbara Landau. She had gone to high school with Lonni Sue in the Princeton, N.J., area. ("She was brilliant," Landau remembers.) Today, Landau is an expert on cognitive science at Johns Hopkins University. She had followed Lonni Sue's career as an artist for years and now, with Hopkins colleague Michael McCloskey, she explored Lonni Sue's amnesia intensively. It was Landau who brought Lonni Sue's art to the Walters.

Scientists often work with people who have lost the use of part of the brain to learn how the normal brain works.

After working with Lonni Sue, Landau concludes: "If we think that art and creativity have to be rooted in what we know about ourselves or what we remember about ourselves, that clearly is not the case."

Lonni Sue has been full of surprises. She can remember how to fly an airplane — "It's like dancing in the sky," she said in an interview — but she can't remember the death of her father.

She can't recognize art she treasured before her illness — "Starry Night" by Vincent van Gogh, for example. Yet she can instantly recognize her own past work.

She can't remember that she was married for 10 years, but she can remember how to play Bach suites on her viola. But if, as she's putting her instrument away, her mother thanks her for playing, she's likely to look astonished and say, "Oh, did I play?"

She cannot produce the kind of finished art she once drew, but her work shows flashes of her old skill as well as her characteristic whimsy and puns.

"When you draw a drawing, you can draw people in," she says."

The Washington Post (Thanks Annette)

We Need You

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Fellow bloggites,

As is usual at Brown Headquarters, we are screamingly busy doing a thousand and one fantastically interesting things (all of which we've told you about, but then made you forget).

So in order to keep your favourite mind-muddler's blog ticking over with the type of scintillating content that you clamour to read, it makes bewildering sense to invite you, yes you, to post us a link to anything that you have happened upon during your daily trawls across the wordly web that you feel should make an appearance on here.

Easy as that! Send us a link with a corresponding headline (links on their own tend to scream SPAM at us and will therefore be ignored) and if it passes the DB Blog Test we'll publish it and credit you for your find.

Have a quick click through the blog categories down on the lower right-hand side to remind yourself of the types of thing that typically grabs us, and send what you find to this address:

blogposts@derrenbrown.co.uk

Thanks in advance and remember: squabbles over 'who found what first' will not be tolerated.

Credit will be given where credit is due and we can all go on about our days as the fine, upstanding citizens of the world that we are.

Turn orange peel into plastic? It's not as crazy as it sounds

"British scientists are pioneering a novel way of recycling that turns orange peel into plastic.

The technique relies on high-powered microwaves that can degrade the tough cellulose molecules of plant matter so that they release volatile gases that can be collected and distilled into a liquid product.

These valuable biodegradable chemicals can then be used in water purifiers, cleaning agents and plastics. Researchers behind the process say it is 90 per cent efficient and works not just on orange peel but almost any plant-based waste such as straw or coffee grounds.

James Clark, professor of green chemistry at the University of York, said he is building a small demonstrator facility to show the novel recycling scheme can be scaled up in order to suit industrial applications.

"It will be able to cope with tens of kilograms an hour. We believe it is the right scale to prove to people that this is a viable technology," Professor Clark said.

"You dice the peel and put it into a microwave field. You then focus the microwaves as you would with a domestic microwave oven but at higher power," he said.

"The microwaves activate the cellulose and that triggers the release of chemicals or further chemical reactions inside the orange peel," he told the British Science Festival at Bradford University.

Volatile chemicals are released in the process, including d-limonene, which is responsible for the distinctive smell of citrus fruit and is used in cosmetics, the cleaning industry and as a biological insecticide.

"As you produce the volatiles you strip them off continuously. It's a continuous process. You feed the peel into a microwave zone and have a pipe that takes off the volatile fractions as they are produced," he said

"The unique feature of our microwave is that we work at deliberately low temperatures. We never go above 200C. You can take the limonene off or you can turn limonene into other chemicals," he said. "It works really well with waste paper. It can take a big range of bio-waste material.""

Read more at The Independent

Controlling Your Child

YOUNG students have been offered prizes for singing the Coles "prices are down" jingle in a primary school presentation by store managers promoting the retailer's "Sports for Schools" program.

Children at a school on Sydney's northern beaches were led into a hall and schooled on the benefits of the marketing program, The Australian's Simon Canning reports.

The promotion has led to thousands of schools displaying giant Coles banners, while parents report students are being asked in class to hold up how many vouchers they have collected.

Rita Princi, a child and adolescent psychologist based in Adelaide, said: "What they are doing is almost a form of manipulation and is a brainwashing exercise."

"It can also cause conflict with parents and is a sign that consumerism has gotten out of hand."

The Coles program allows schools to swap Coles vouchers for sports equipment. Woolworths has its own "Earn & Learn" promotion, which aims to help schools buy educational resources.

Coles spokesman Jon Church said the supermarket was not aiming to change consumer behaviour but admitted that last year Coles had seen a massive uplift in sales as schools urged parents and members of the local community to shop at its supermarkets.

He said the decision to go into school was a local one taken by managers and could not say how many "Coles assemblies" had been held.

News.com.au

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UPDATE 9.07am: COLES has defended itself against claims of brain washing after primary school students were offered prizes for singing the supermarket chain's advertising jingle.

The retail giant has been providing schools with banners and PR advice to promote its $7 million sports equipment giveaway.

At least one school held a competition for pupils reciting the "Prices are down" jingle, at the suggestion of a visiting Coles store manager.

Child psychologist Rita Princi said such blatant promotion of the Sports for Schools program was dangerous.

"What they are doing is almost a form of manipulation and is a brainwashing exercise," Ms Princi told The Australian.

Coles spokesman Jon Church said the claims were ridiculous, and the program was voluntary.

"I gather the store manager ran a bit of a competition for the kids to sing the 'Down down' jingle for a bit of fun," he said.

"To suggest it's anything more than good community relations and trying to help schools get hold of more equipment is just ridiculous."

Mr Church said more than 7500 schools nationwide had registered for the Sports for Schools program, which is in its second year.

Parents Victoria spokeswoman Gail McHardy said she couldn't see an issue with the kids singing a jingle as long as it was done with parental consent.

"Big corporates know that when young people get on board so do families," she said.

"But it's just another of example of what schools have to resort to to get money for their schools."

Under the program, shoppers collect vouchers for every $10 spent in Coles stores. The vouchers are then redeemed for sports equipment.

For example, to qualify for a Sherrin football worth $180, parents would need to spend $30,450.

Heraldsun

Take the visual Turing test

"The Turing test is the most famous benchmark of artificial intelligence, but it is flawed. Now an addition that gauges a machine's visual skills has been proposed.

Devised by 20th-century mathematician Alan Turing, the test pits the conversational abilities of chatbots against humans. To pass, judges must be tricked into believing that a bot is human, based only on a typed exchange. But many researchers believe the test is sorely in need of an upgrade.

"It has served its purpose. Now we need Turing Test 2.0," says Aladdin Ayesh, who organised a symposium entitled Towards a Comprehensive Intelligence Test at the AI and Simulated Biology conference in York, UK, in April.

That's why Michael Barclay and Antony Galton at the University of Exeter, UK, and colleagues have created a test that asks machines to mimic some of our visual abilities.

Click below to continue to New Scientists interactive feature to try the test yourself."

New Scientist Turing Test

Dozy hamsters reverse the ageing process

"People will do almost anything if they think it will help them cheat death. The futurist Ray Kurzweil has utterly transformed his lifestyle in a bid to live until 2050, by when he thinks technology will allow his consciousness to be uploaded into a computer, making him immortal.

His anti-ageing regimen is based on established research that has identified ways to slow the process. Cutting your intake of calories and getting plenty of exercise both seem to help.

One of Kurzweil's ploys is to get lots of sleep too. In this, he is unwittingly emulating the Djungarian hamster. These rodents use short hibernatory naps to reverse the ageing process."

Read more at New Scientist

Eyes in the Skies

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The Police Department in Ogden, Utah, will be the first metropolitan police force in the world to use a crime-fighting blimp.

The $14,000, helium-filled 'HB50 Hyperblimp' measures 54ft  in length airship can stay airborne for seven hours at a time with a top speed of 40mph. It packs a radar transponder and two CCTV cameras.

Ogden Mayor Matthew Godfrey said:

"We believe it will be a deterrent to crime when it is out and about and will help us solve crimes more quickly when they do occur."

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Commenting on the blimp's military-grade specs and crime-fighting prowess, Godfrey confidently asserts:

"The blimp is long but narrow and moves quickly and quietly, meaning it should be fairly undetectable."

It will only be allowed to be operated by police officers, with pilot's licenses, from the patrol parking lot at the Ogden Public Safety Building.

They hope to launch the cruise missile-shaped aircraft in time for Christmas.

Source: Small World News Service

 

Hipnotizados!

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Forty-one Colombian high school students experienced mass-panic and had to be taken to hospital following a hypnotism show at the culmination of their annual 'Fun Day'.

Out of an amassed (paying) audience of 590 students, eight were put into a trance by Miller Zambrano Posada who then made them lift their arms, walk in circles, cry like babies, laugh hysterically, bark like dogs and act like chickens (were it not for the setting, one could be forgiven for thinking that they were behaving like a very normal group of teenagers during breaktime).

The performance was concluded to a round of unforced applause, but as the eight students made their way back to their seats the proceedings appeared to go a bit "Pete Tong".

Some children in the audience began crying while others dived to the ground for no reason Others beat their chests with the palms of their hands and one female student screamed that she could see 'the devil'

A total of forty one students experienced what has been described as a mass panic, only one of whom had been an on-stage participant in the hypnotism routine.

Whilst the children were escorted to the hospital, Miller Zambrano Posada was escorted off the premises in police custody facing charges of witchcraft from the parents and teachers.

Source: Hispanically Speaking News

Concentrate On The Telly

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How often have you lost track of the remote and been forced to face the unwelcome prospect of having to get up out of your seat to change the channel?

Well, Chinese consumer electronics firm Haier are making moves to eliminate that problem with the unveiling of the Haier Cloud Smart TV that you can control with the power of your very own mind.

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No really, that's what it does. By integrating NeuroSky brainwave reader technology into an attractively cumbersome headset, the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is all systems go!

The mind-reading telly is due to go on sale in October. We're not sure where or how much for, but we doubt that you'd  be interested in buying one anyway. You'd probably be much happier just to have a go with one in a shop and leave it at that, wouldn't you?

Source: Akihabara News