Conversational Grunts cause serious problems for automatic voice-transcribing algorithms. In fact, as late as year 2000, experts were writing : “… no satisfactory scheme for transcribing these items exists.” The quote is from Nigel Ward, who is currently professor of computer science at The university of Texas at El Paso. The professor has been analysing, […]
A neutral observer reports on her first Ig Nobel ceremony
What’s it feel like to attend your first Ig Nobel Prize ceremony? You’ll not find a better account than this: Cristine Russell wrote about her night at the Igs, for Scientific American. Russell begins: Ig Nobel Prizes Make You Laugh, Then Think By Cristine Russell | September 23, 2014 CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—What happens in the brains of people who […]
Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris explains the clockwork saw
Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris savors the clockwork saw, in this brief video: (Thanks to Adam Rutherford for bringing this to our attention.) BONUS: Additional detail, from someone else who saw the saw
The Dilemma-Zone Calculation
Yellow traffic lights posed and provided an opportunity for applied mathematicians. Witness this study, published more than a half century ago: “The Problem of the Amber Signal Light in Traffic Flow,” Denos Gazis [pictured here, reportedly thrilling an audience], Robert Herman, and Alexei Maradudint, Operations Research, vol. 8, no. 1, 1960, pp. 112-132. The authors, […]