This week’s Expert Logic Puzzle is simple. How many leaps of faith are necessary to make a sturdy chain of logic that ties together the parts of a single press release? Count the number of logic assumptions in the text of the press release [to see the entire press release, click on the link]. Start point of the chain […]
Tag: assumptions
Count the tempestuous assumptions
Blustery academia sometimes coughs up a perfectly delight-filled storm of assumptions. With that quasi-thought in mind, can you count the assumptions in this new study? The study is: “Female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes,” Kiju Jung, Sharon Shavitt, Madhu Viswanathan, and Joseph M. Hilbe, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), epub June 2, 2014. Here’s one, […]
Just the facts, man… The persistence of misconceptions
Derek Muller writes (and explains in more detail than I’m presenting here): “It is a common view that ‘if only someone could break this down and explain it clearly enough, more people would understand.’ However it is debatable whether clear, concise explanations really work…. People have existing ideas about real world phenomena before they encounter […]
The unexpected end of 2011 (an Ig Nobel tribute)
This year, 2011, is ending—unexpectedly—in December. To celebrate, we pay tribute to the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize in mathematics. The prize was awarded to: Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982 [and whose book is pictured […]
Intoxicated assumptions
Today’s classroom exercise is to [1] read this snippet from a psychology paper, then [2] identify all the assumptions that the authors make about what people think about, then [3] ask yourself if you believe those assumptions. The paper is “What Men Want: The Role of Reflective Opposite-Sex Normative Preferences in Alcohol Use Among College […]