Post: #101

The double slit experiment.

Post: #102

this is the best thread.

more on the double split experiment, and explained more clearly: http://www.highexistence.com/this-will-m...xperiment/

Post: #103

This guy invents a new type of lifeform. Best TED lecture I have seen.

Post: #104

True story:

Back in the early 1980's a British bank went bankrupt.

As such - the bank was nationalised.

So - the Governor of the Bank of England went down to buy the bank for the nominal payment of one pound.

Back then - the UK had £1 banknotes. As well as coins worth £1.

So - after the paper work was completed. The Governor and the former owner of the bank shook hands. And the Governor of the Bank of England handed over a £1 banknote.

"Sorry - No IOU's" replied the former owner of the bank.





So - reaching into his pocket - the Governor of the Bank of England pulled out a £1 coin. And handed that over instead.

Post: #105

NUMBER STATIONS

I first heard about this years ago. And I immediately went to my kitchen radio and managed to find a few of these mysterious stations.

One of the coolest moments of my life. You can actually listen to spies communicate with each other. In code. On your kitchen radio! Some of these broadcasts are pretty spooky.

Post: #106

This is an interesting conceptual tool when analysing historical documents:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion_of_embarrassment

Post: #107

The Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tommy-westphalls-universe

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~kwgow/crossovers.html

Post: #108

Timothy Dexter is one of the most interesting people I have ever read about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Dexter

Post: #109

A couple of years ago - MI6 spent a year having an Artist In Residence:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/fe...mi6-artist

Post: #110

Brilliant blog here. Just stumbled across it.

http://www.futilitycloset.com/

Quote:About Futility Closet

Futility Closet is a collection of entertaining curiosities in history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and mathematics, designed to help you waste time as enjoyably as possible.

The database now totals 7,378 items, and more are added each day.

Each post is short and usually fascinating. Everything on the blog would fit well with the stuff mentioned on this blog.

Here are some of my favourite posts (so far):

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/08/20/memento/

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/08/13/keepsake/

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/08/11/told-you-so/

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/08/11...hinking-4/

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/08/25...-of-truth/

Post: #111

Interesting video on the speed of technology. Funny how quickly the video itself is outdated.

Post: #112

Why I would prefer to be a satanist:
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/...r-god.html

TL;DR: Kill count: God (25 million), Satan (60)

Always thought that was amusing

Post: #113

(07-26-2013 08:09 AM)bacon Wrote:  The origins of the word FUCK

The word originated as the acronym of "Fornication Under Consent of the King," "Fornication Under Command of the King,"

In ancient England a person could not have sex unless you had consent of the King (unless you were in the Royal Family). When anyone wanted to have a baby, they got consent of the King, the King gave them a placard that they hung on their door while they were having sex. The placard had F.*.*.*. (Fornication Under Consent of the King) on it.

Origin of the word fuck. Fixed.


http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/90...Nexus.html

Post: #114

(08-28-2013 05:59 PM)cardguy Wrote:  Brilliant blog here. Just stumbled across it.

http://www.futilitycloset.com/

This is probably my new favourite site

FutilityCloset Wrote:From Gábor J. Székely’s Paradoxes in Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics, via Mark Chang’s Paradoxology of Scientific Inference:

A, B, C, D, and E make up a five-member jury. They’ll decide the guilt of a prisoner by a simple majority vote. The probability that A gives the wrong verdict is 5%; for B, C, and D it’s 10%; for E it’s 20%. When the five jurors vote independently, the probability that they’ll bring in the wrong verdict is about 1%. But if E (whose judgment is poorest) abandons his autonomy and echoes the vote of A (whose judgment is best), the chance of an error rises to 1.5%.

Even more surprisingly, if B, C, D, and E all follow A, then the chance of a bad verdict rises to 5%, five times worse than if they vote independently, even though A is nominally the best leader. Chang writes, “This paradox implies it is better to have your own opinion even if it is not as good as the leader’s opinion, in general.”

Post: #115

Something non-science related here:

All the most important Finns were naturally Swedish speaking:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish-spe...of_Finland

Post: #116

(08-28-2013 10:24 PM)Architekt Wrote:  

(08-28-2013 05:59 PM)cardguy Wrote:  Brilliant blog here. Just stumbled across it.

http://www.futilitycloset.com/

This is probably my new favourite site

FutilityCloset Wrote:From Gábor J. Székely’s Paradoxes in Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics, via Mark Chang’s Paradoxology of Scientific Inference:

A, B, C, D, and E make up a five-member jury. They’ll decide the guilt of a prisoner by a simple majority vote. The probability that A gives the wrong verdict is 5%; for B, C, and D it’s 10%; for E it’s 20%. When the five jurors vote independently, the probability that they’ll bring in the wrong verdict is about 1%. But if E (whose judgment is poorest) abandons his autonomy and echoes the vote of A (whose judgment is best), the chance of an error rises to 1.5%.

Even more surprisingly, if B, C, D, and E all follow A, then the chance of a bad verdict rises to 5%, five times worse than if they vote independently, even though A is nominally the best leader. Chang writes, “This paradox implies it is better to have your own opinion even if it is not as good as the leader’s opinion, in general.”

Anyone here help explain how this is true? I am having trouble visualising it.

Really fascinating stuff!

Post: #117

(08-29-2013 02:23 AM)cardguy Wrote:  

FutilityCloset Wrote:From Gábor J. Székely’s Paradoxes in Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics, via Mark Chang’s Paradoxology of Scientific Inference:

A, B, C, D, and E make up a five-member jury. They’ll decide the guilt of a prisoner by a simple majority vote. The probability that A gives the wrong verdict is 5%; for B, C, and D it’s 10%; for E it’s 20%. When the five jurors vote independently, the probability that they’ll bring in the wrong verdict is about 1%. But if E (whose judgment is poorest) abandons his autonomy and echoes the vote of A (whose judgment is best), the chance of an error rises to 1.5%.

Even more surprisingly, if B, C, D, and E all follow A, then the chance of a bad verdict rises to 5%, five times worse than if they vote independently, even though A is nominally the best leader. Chang writes, “This paradox implies it is better to have your own opinion even if it is not as good as the leader’s opinion, in general.”

Anyone here help explain how this is true? I am having trouble visualising it.

Really fascinating stuff!
[/quote]

I think they worked out the probability according to a jury majority vote.

To keep the explanation simple, let's rather work with a jury that must have a unanimous vote.

Let's figure out the chances of them being wrong. To figure out the probability of one event, given another event, you multiply the two probabilities (you can also think of this as one probability dividing by the inverse of the other probability, which is how I finally understood the process).

As an example of what I'm saying, the chance of rolling a 6 on a die is 1/6. The chance of rolling two 6's in a row is 1/6 * 1/6, which will be 1/36. Alternatively, (1/6)/((1/(1/6)), but that makes more sense when you draw a probability tree.

So if the jury unanimously gives the wrong verdict, the probability of such will be: 0.05 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.2, having converted the percentages given in the vignette into decimals.

This gives us the chance of a unanimously wrong verdict as 0.00001 or 0.001%, assuming all of the jurors vote independently.

If juror E decides to base his vote on A, then his vote is no longer an independent event and therefore does not add to any change in probability. Therefore the outcome will be based on probabilities A to D, excluding E:
0.05 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 = 0.00005 = 0.005%

As you can see, the chance of the jury being wrong dramatically rises (by 5 times!) if juror E sacrifices his independence.

If all the jurors decide to follow A, then their votes are no longer independent and only A's vote counts. And since A has a 5% chance of being wrong, that represents a dramatic jump from 0.005% chance of wrong unanimous verdict.

I'm not strong enough in math to figure out how they got the 1% figure (I'm guessing they worked out the probability based on a majority vote), but I believe it follows the same pattern as above, where the more independent votes there are, the less likely the chance you will get several wrong votes in a row (the same way it's hard to throw several 6's in a row with dice).

Anyone who is strong in math is welcome to correct me if I made a mistake.

Post: #118

@Thomas: A majority vote means either 3, 4, or 5 votes for one side. You need to calculate all those probabilities and add them together.

Post: #119

(08-29-2013 05:49 AM)Architekt Wrote:  @Thomas: A majority vote means either 3, 4, or 5 votes for one side. You need to calculate all those probabilities and add them together.

Any easy way to work out all those possible combinations of 3 and 4 votes?

Post: #120

Since history is my favorite subject, here are some facts that I found interesting when I first came across them:

1. Benito Mussolini was named after Mexican President Benito Juarez. Mussolini's parents were extremely political.

2. Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, most famously known as the general who lead the pyrrhic Mexican offensive on the Alamo and the main general who lost to the Americans in the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, is credited for inventing the chicle, namely the mini size gum you see poor kids sell on the streets of Mexico.

3. Adolf Hitler has been credited for inventing the blow up doll. Hitler's reasoning for the creation blow up doll was to keep the soldiers of the Wehrmacht away from fucking Slavic women, since he thought that Slavs were inferiors and did not want the German race to be contaminated.

4. Hugo Boss designed the uniforms for the German Army (I don't remember if he designed all of the uniforms for the Army or just the ones for the SS).

5. Ferdinand Porsche, the founder of Porsche, made tanks for the German Army. He also made the Volkswagen Beetle but due to his affiliation with the Nazis during the Second World War, he received none of the profits from the hugely successful Beetle.

6. The United States Freeway was based by the German Autobahn. General Eisenhower came with the idea during World War II.

7. French Mathematician Evariste Galois, founder of Galois Theory, was expelled from school and failed to enter the Ecole Polytechnique. More interesting, however, was that he was able to come up with such profound and abstract mathematical ideas, which changed the course of Mathematics, before his death at the age of 20.

8. Whether the following is a myth or fact, I don't know. Nonetheless, I found the story still interesting since I am interested in math. Carl Friedriech Gauss, the most acclaim mathematician of all time, managed to find the Summation formula of positive integers when he was only kindergarten.

9. Contrary to popular belief World War II was fought in US soil, namely the Aleutian Islands in the Alaskan territory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_Campaign

10. Jet Packs, like the one Sean Connery uses in the movie Thunderball, do exist.

11. Polish Mathematician Marian Rejewski managed to break through Enigma, the German machine for encoding and secret messages, which gave a huge advantage to the allies.

12. Before FDR died, he wanted to remain on friendly terms with the Soviet Union after the end of the war. As a result, he called Josef Stalin as "Uncle Joe."

13. Ian Flemming, inventor of James Bond, smoked up to 70 cigarettes a day.

14. The Kaiser Wilhelm II of the German Empire had one arm longer than the other. Furthermore, he and Tzar Nicholas II were distant cousins. This is emphasized in the Nicky and Willy telegrams where Tzar Nicholas II pleads Wilhelm to not invade Russia since they're related.

Anyhow, those are all the facts I came of the top of my head. If any of the facts I posted seem trivial, common, or incorrect, I apologize.

If I remember any other facts, I'll be sure to post them here.

Post: #121

What Happens When You Stick Your Head Into a Particle Accelerator

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/...celerator/

Post: #122

Quote:Came across this awhile ago. The 50 most interesting articles on wikipedia. It is an excellent collection of stuff worth checking out.

http://copybot.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/...wikipedia/

These Wikipedia 50 are indeed very interesting, thanks! Quite a few lost nuke stories...

Re: #8...I find it funny that the Russian word for "borehole" is скважина (skvazhina)...

Post: #123

William Montgomery McGovern led quite the interesting life.

From Wikipedia:

Quote:He was possibly an inspiration for the character of Indiana Jones, but McGovern's life may be more incredible than the fictional character he spawned. By age 30, he had already explored the Amazon and braved uncharted regions of the Himalayas, survived revolution in Mexico, studied at Oxford and the Sorbonne and become a Buddhist priest in a Japanese monastery. He became a beloved lecturer, war correspondent and military strategist.

During WWII, he became a Naval Officer, with a wide range of contributions to the war effort, including conducting psychological warfare behind enemy lines at Guadalcanal, crossing the Rhine as part of General Patton's entourage, and writing an entire newspaper everyday that compiled intelligence on enemy capabilities and intentions that was breakfast reading for President Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs.

Check out the entire Wikipedia entry on him here.

Post: #124

Here's another incredible Wikipedia article I stumbled across.

Known as "Dancing mania", this was a social phenomenon that occurred in Europe throughout the 13th-17th centuries. Thousands of people would just began dancing erratically until they collapsed from exhaustion. In some instances, tens of thousands of people would just dance for weeks at a time, with people suffering broken bones and ribs from dancing too much.

The dancing itself was incredibly varied; at times, it was calm, but it was not unusual for people to began parading around naked and howling like animals. In fact, the color red had a particular effect on the crowds, usually driving them to violent fits of rage.

Also, local governments would enlist musicians to help them quell these outbreaks of dancing, because they thought the music would calm the dancers; usually, the effect was the opposite of what they intended.

Post: #125

Antoine Charles Louis de La Salle. The most badass of the napoleonic generals.

Quote:he led a party of troopers to his lover's house — deep within Austrian lines. Lasalle was fluent in many languages, including German, so he deceived the various patrols. He left the marquise's house at dawn, neglecting to hide his French uniform. Lasalle and his men were surrounded by 100 Austrian hussars. He escaped by leaping his horse over the parapet of a bridge. With only 18 men left, he routed the Austrian hussars but in the heat of the pursuit found himself isolated. Refusing to surrender, he fought his way out, injuring four hussars, losing his horse, and having to swim across the Bacchiglione River.

Quote: To Roederer’s question if he were traveling via Paris, Lasalle replied, "Yes, it’s the shortest way. I shall arrive at 5 a.m.; I shall order a pair of boots; I shall make my wife pregnant, and I shall depart"