The Psychoanalyst’s Nose, the Year of Lint, the Impact of Cold Wet Underwear, Boys Will Be Boys, the Pride of the Pride (of Lions), Hair (and Hare) Research, Social Dilemmas from the Not-So-Distant Past, Chewing on Knowledge, and Fold When Wet (If Naked Underwater). In episode #207, Marc Abrahams shows some unfamiliar research studies to […]
Tag: social
Budgie Mirror Mystery (study)
“Mirrors or mirror-related toys are often provided to Budgerigars as a substitute for social interactions with a plethora of different mirror toys available for purchase. Despite widespread use, exactly how mirrors relate to social behaviors (i.e. actions directed towards conspecifics within a flock) remains a mystery in Budgerigars.” That’s to say, with reference to […]
A mathematician’s happy diatribe about what happens when mathematicians gather
Doron Zeilberger cast a wary glance at the social gathering habits of his fellow mathematicians. He wrote a little, gleeful diatribe about it: Opinion 104: The Shocking State of Contemporary “Mathematics”, and the Meta-Shocking Fact that Very Few People Are Shocked I just came back from attending the 1052nd AMS (sectional) meeting at Penn State, […]
Garlic — A Sensory Pleasure or a Social Nuisance? [podcast 75]
Whether garlic is a sensory delight or a social horror is the big question in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams — with dramatic readings by Yale/MIT/Harvard biomedical researcher Chris Cotsapas — tells about: Garlic —A Sensory Pleasure or a Social Nuisance?— “Garlic: A Sensory Pleasure or a […]
The M-through-Z of Social Dilemmas (podcast 65)
Social situations sprout all kinds of awkwardness. You can classify some of those awkwardnesses under the letters M through Z, as we do in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams — with dramatic readings by Robin Abrahams tells about: Emily Post and her etiquette — Etiquette, by Emily Post, 1922. […]
Social Touching Maps (taboo or not taboo)
The acceptability (or otherwise) of physically touching another person can depend on many factors – including the social relationship of the toucher and the touchee, and of course, where you touch them (that’s to say, not only the bodily region, but also the socio-geographic location). A research team from Aalto University and the University of […]
Social Media + BS
“What does the future hold for social media and bullshit?” asks professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (Univ. Oxford, UK) in a new communication published in the journal Social Media + Society (“An online, open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal deeply committed to advancing the understanding of social media and its impact on societies past, present and future.”) The […]
The social events objectives of The Worshipful Company of Actuaries
Question: What are the social events objectives of The Worshipful Company of Actuaries? Answer: The answer appears on the web site of The Worshipful Company of Actuaries, on the page devoted to “Social Events Objectives”, in a downloadable PDF document named “Social Events Objectives”. Here is that document, reproduced in its entirety (and shrunken a bit, […]
“Inelegant Mathematics and Worse Social Science?”
For a while, a long while ago, some people thought they would soon make computers simulate the ways people behave with each other. This paper, published in 1974, suggested that maybe such things would not be simple or easy: “Computer Simulations: Inelegant Mathematics and Worse Social Science?“, Hayward R. Alker, International Journal of Mathematical Education […]
Rock/Paper/Scissors/Equations
If you like equations, here’s just part of the fun you’ll find in the newly published paper “Social cycling and conditional responses in the Rock-Paper-Scissors game” (arXiv:1404.5199): (Thanks to Florian Gallwitz for bringing this to our attention.) BONUS: Rock, paper, scissors, robot, monkey BONUS: Rock, scissors, monkey