Nice one, Kirk

 Just imagine a room full of people not thinking it would be worth a retake of the scene is someone said "I made this image better by copying it four times."

(I'm guessing the original script had a 10^4 rather than a 1^4, but dropping a zero here and there doesn't really matter, des it?)

Innumeracy, Polling Data, and Statistical Models

It was suppose to be a close election, wasn't it?  What happened?  Sophisticated models like those used by Nate Silver actually called it correctly.  I had thought that political pundits were saying the election was going to be close as a get-out-the-vote ploy, but according to this recent Scientific American Blog, the pundits really just didn't understand the model.  Statistical projections apparently are just too complicated for them.

The blog entry also introduced me to an awesome Nate Silverism:  “When criticized by pundits, Nate Silver doesn’t get angry – he regresses toward the mean.”

Can you believe that they can predict the weather using statistical models?  They can't do that - weathermen can only actually tell us the weather right now, right?

Next Town Over: Only 2 Gallons Away!

Wired Magazine comes through again on p. 157 of the October 2012 issue (in bold no less):  "...and releases 2 joules of force onto the glass -"

Joules for energy, Wired; Newtons for force.

Proteins as small as Neutrons!

In the Feb 27 issue of Forbes Magazine, they have a quick, relatively harmless article about a doctor who thinks we should spend more time and money on healthy lifestyles and preventative medicine over, say, classic cancer research.  However, toward the end of the article, this little zinger is in there:
"The trouble is, tracing proteins is hard to do - they are the size of a single neutron."
Huh?  Would the editor let a phrase like "The Declaration of Independence is a phrase shorter than a sentence" get by?  'Cause that is a less egregious error!

Interestingly, they fixed the statement on the version online (apparently after someone commented on this after the original posting).  Now it reads, a bit more reasonably:
"The trouble is, tracing proteins is incredibly hard to do -- they have to be examined at the level of a single neutron."
I assume they are referring to tracking isotopes which can differ by as little as one neutron from isotope to isotope.  However, isotope spotting is generally not thought of as being done at the neutron level - rather you just mass the whole atom and infer the extra neutron that way...
Here's the link to the fixed article:
http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/17/david-agus-end-illness/

Colbert Get 'Em Good

Thanks to Irene who forwarded me this video from the Colbert Report: http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/wed-january-4-2012-john-heilemann

from 8:10 to about 8:50 he mocks a reporter who cannot subtract!

Really?!?  When the reporter says "Again with the math!", I think to myself if the reporter could not pronounce something on the teleprompter, would he say "Again with the spelling!"? 

Tsk Tsk, History Channel

Tonight, we checked out the History Channel's "How the Earth was Made" (2009).  It was humming along until this line about Carbon dating caught my attention "Because of its molecular structure, Carbon 14 decays after a plant has died and ...."   Ouch!  Molecular structure?  First off, Carbon-14 is an atom, a radioactive isotope of regular carbon and the whole point is that is binds in molecules just like regular Carbon 12. 

This is as if a show about English history off-handedly described Shakespeare's "Othello" as a Sonnet.  Tsk Tsk...

Batteries and Charges In WIRED Magazine

It's a common misconception regarding electricity that we deal with in class all the time, but Wired Magazine got it dead wrong this month (Aug 2011 issue p.30):

"A battery works by converting chemical energy into free electrons; some of the electrons get used, and the rest return to the cell."

Forgivable is the implications that the chemical energy creates the electrons (the energy is used to free the already existing electrons).  Unforgivable is the line "electrons get used" and don't return to the cell.  For every electron that leaves a battery cell, another one enters; there are no electrons getting used up in the process.  The number of electrons in a battery or in any circuit is always constant.  Rather, it is the energy used to promote the electrons to being free in the battery that gets used up in the circuit.

This description of a battery is the same as saying "A factory works by converting breakfast foods in the morning into factory employees.  Some of the employees get used up in the factory doing work and the rest come home in the evening."

Radiation or Radioactivity?

With the Japanese crisis in the news, there is lots of bogus stuff flying about these days. 

First of all, don't tell me about some minuscule amount of radiation found anywhere that is 1000 times below the minimum standard of danger.  If I get more radiation walking in the sunshine without sunblock, then I don't need to hear about it! 

Second, please distinguish between exposure to radiation (the stuff that comes flying out of radioactive material and is only harmful if you stand in the line of fire) and radioactive isotopes (which you might ingest and thus expose yourself to its radiation for as long as the isotope exists in your body).  No one is finding radiation from the nuclear reactors miles away - it's all been absorbed by then.  What you may find is radiation coming from radioactive isotopes which may have come from the damaged power plant! 

Don't confuse an author for his book and don't confuse some words and phrases found in isolation with an entire book.

Solar Wind

The Boston Globe Ideas section had a nice explanation of the Northern Lights. 

However, it is not quite right to say "...[charged particles] are carried outward by the solar wind." 

My understanding is that the charged particles ARE the solar wind!  Also, Newton's first law will get the charged particles to Earth just fine after they have been thrown off of the surface of the Sun.  (no need to be "carried" - inertia does the trick).

Might seem picky, but just like you are not pushed forward to tomorrow by time nor is water pushed towards shore by waves;  i's just not quite right.

The articled also misses a nice symmetry in regards to the northern lights:  Magnetism.  Although the Earth's magnetic field is mentioned as a deflector of most charged particles, the article seems to imply that some particles just happen  to "come hurtling toward the atmosphere at the north and south magnetic poles".  In actuality, the charged particles are spiraling around the magnetic field lines and those fields themselves bring them to the north and south pole (which is where the magnetic field lines exit and enter the Earth). 
The symmetry bit is that magnetic field lines are the original cause of the Solar Eruptions that flung the particles into space in the first place:

The Sun's magnetic field lines throws 'em out and the Eath's magnetic field catches 'em.  That is the outerspace baseball game we catch the tail end of and call "Northern Lights".

Snowflakes

Scientific American just turned me onto this one:  No more four or five sided snowflakes, please!  The real six sided  (always six sided!) ones are beautiful enough:

(picture from snowcrystals.com)

No big deal, though - right?  Humans have five fingers but sometimes they have only four in cartoons.  True enough, but I think we all know the difference - and besides we are all a little creeped out when we notice the missing digit.  No one seems to get creeped out by a five sided snowflake

The six sides of a snowflake come from the hexagonal shape of the solid form of water.  If it didn't have that shape, then ice wouldn't float and we probably could not have evolved on this planet.   Primitive ocean life needs the ice to float so it can survive in the waters underneath.

Moon and Stars

When the moon is not full, is it still there?  Of course it is, but many paintings and drawings will show a crescent moon with a star (or stars) right in the middle of the dark side of the moon.  Children's books are some of the worst offenders.  For example, see the picture below  (taken from "Sleepy Dog" a Step Into Reading book by Harriet Ziefert (illustrated by Norman Gorbaty)).

Showing the moon and stars in this configuration is like saying "When Julius Ceaser ruled Rome in 500 BC".  I won't comment on the "turn on the moon" part 'cause that's kind of cute, right?  I mean "notice the reflection of the sun's light now made more dramatic by the surrounding darkness" just doesn't have that easy reader feel...

Solar Eclipses and Robin Hood

In a recent episode of the BBC show Robin Hood ("Total Eclipse"), a daring rescue is executed at the moment of solar eclipse.  Standard fare, but within minutes of the eclipse we see a shot of Robin Hood with a moon in the back ground and the sun nowhere to be seen.  To top it all off, the moon is only 3/4 full! 

Showing a non full moon on a solar eclipse day is like showing a haiku-style poem and saying "Do you like the sonnet I have written?"

Warming Up in Springtime

The local news just reported that we are "finally warming up as the sun gets closer, err, the angle gets closer".  It is a deeply entrenched belief that things only feel warmer when they are closer.  Most people know that the Earth is not actually closer to the Sun in the summer, but I think the angle of the sun's rays argument confuses the issue because it's not intuitive for them. 

Why can't we just say that because of the axial tilt, in the spring the days get longer (while the nights get shorter) and we get more hours of sunlight and that's why we warm up?  Of course both are happening and contributing, but I think the hours of exposure is more intuitive.

It's not that we are stepping closer to the campfire to warm up, it's that as we spin in place, we are spending more time facing the fire than facing away from the fire...

Hours of daylight vs. Angle Effect graphs can be found here.

It's complicated, but I think this NASA site sums it up nicely:

"Although the length of the day is an important factor in explaining why summers are hot and winter cold, the angle of sunlight is probably more important." (emphasis mine)

When we emphasize the abstract angle argument to kids and they don't get it, they go right back to thinking we are farther away.  Start with the partial truth to replace the untruth and then work our way up methinks...

Eating Beef vs. Driving your Car

Latest headlines: "Eating beef causes more environmental damage than driving your car"

You gotta love oversimplification.  There are so many variables involved.  Is the study counting the production and maintenance costs of the car itself?  Is the cow corn-fed or grass grazing?  I was looking for a scientific source on the old "is it more environmentally friendly to stop driving your car or to stop eating beef" question and the only thing I came across was this from Scientific American:
"Producing the annual beef diet of the average American emits as much greenhouse gas as a car driven more than 1,800 miles"

The average car in america is driven over 12,000 miles per year so an average american driving averagely eating an average amount of beef is still harming the environment by a factor of 6-7 times more simply by driving compared to their beef eating.  The larger truth is the Buddhist maxim - there is nothing you do in life that is pure good.  You have to look at your own lifestyle and make reasonable changes to decrease your own personal footprint.

How about "Having children is the most ecologically damaging thing you will every do in your life" as a headline?  Just being alive has an environmental cost, give us some headlines that help us make reasonable incremental changes, please!

Fibonacci Who?

In today's Boston Globe, in an otherwise insightful book review, the reviewer felt obliged to place the famous Fibonacci Series (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,...) in the reader's mind by reminding them the series was "made famous by 'The Di Vinci Code' "!?
 
Indeed, just like when you reference Shakespeare, you'd best remind me that he was the main character in that movie "Shakespeare in Love" or else I might not know who you were talking about!

Zula Patrol Strikes Out

In general., I love PBSkids.  They seem to be making a big push on science.  Zula Patrol is one of the shows that is all about science and I have been very impressed with it, usually.  But today, in "Hey Kids, Amazing Space Monkeys!", they disappointed me.

Centripetal Motion is a tricky subject and I find I have to do a lot of careful unpacking of what students think they already know happens when you travel in a circle.  In this episode, the Zula Patrol explains that a "centrifical [sic] force pushes stuff out" when you travel in a circle.  No no no!  Centrifugal forces push things out and they don't exist when you are going in a circle - a centripetal (center seeking) force pulls you in while your inertia wants to carry you out - along a tangent straight line!

Getting this wrong just hammers in the everyday  incorrect perception of what is happening.  Later in the same episode, they go down to the molecular level trying to explain with nice visuals what is happening when a solute is dissolving in a solute.  How hard would it have been to show an overhead shot of things spinning out of the circle along a tangent line and making the lesson about inertia rather than force?

It's like saying someone was "deported" from the country when they really were just leaving on a business trip.

Wind Chill

Another weather-related fallacy:  Wind Chill.

"Today it the temperature will be 10 degrees but the wind chill will make it feel like -5"

Wind Chill is NOT how it will "feel" - it is a model of how fast your skin may cool down towards the actual temperature.  It is a model that makes a whole LOT of assumptions (most of which are probably untrue as you go out into a cold, windy day).  Slate.com has a good article about this here. 

This is like saying you may overshoot your destination today because the traffic is bad.  Stick the facts please:  just tell us the temperature and the wind speed.
 

Negative Zero

Watching our local channel this morning (WBZ) and the weather map of local temperatures had a big "-0" in the middle of other chilly temperatures throughout the area. 

Negative Zero?  That's like trying to make a noun into the past tense!  Makes no sense.

I tried to find the exact map on their website, but I couldn't find it - this is the type of map I'm talking about:

If You Take a Mouse to School...

...he will demonstrate great spelling abilities but write down mathematical nonsense:

(image captured from google books where it was displayed curtesy of HarperCollinsPublishing)

We've been reading this book at home for years - If You Take a Mouse to School by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond.  Great little story for kids - but check out this page.  The spelling is all legit, but difficult words.  But the math - oh my!  It's mostly gibberish. Why? Why not use high-level calculus, which would probably look equally confusing to the average person but would actually be legit?

And lest you think this is an isolated occurrence - check out this puzzle featuring a Wubbzy, a Nick Jr. character:

Apparently, a strong grasp of mathematical nonsense is central to an academic environment.

Element or Chemical, Atomic Mass or Number

Recently, NPR ran a story on the finding of possibly high levels of antimony in a certain toy.  I did not hear the original piece, but I did hear NPR reading from a listener's letter complaining about NPR's confusing the subtle distinction between "a chemical" and "a chemical element."

So, in the midst of apologizing for calling antimony a 'chemical', the host says that he "sees antimony right there on the periodic table between tin and tellurium, with an atomic mass of 51)"

While retracting on something that probably wasn't wrong in the first place, they make a definite blunder and confuse atomic mass with atomic number.  That's like confusing the number of men at a party with the number of people at a party!  Atomic mass counts protons and neutrons and the average number for antimony is 122.  51 is the atomic number and merely the number of protons.