30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
PETWHAC
PETWHAC stands for Population of Events That Would Have
Appeared Coincidental. Population may seem an odd word, but it is the
correct statistical term. I won't keep using capital letters because they
stand so unattractively on the page. Somebody's watch stopping within
ten seconds of the psychic's incantation obviously belongs within the
petwhac, but so do many other events. Strictly speaking, the grandfather
clock's stopping should not be included. The mystic did not claim that he
could stop... 1 
notes
notes16 MAR 2014 by ideonexus
Simultaneous Invention
Thomas Edison invented the light bulb in 1879. What if he had never been born, Would we still have light bulbs? And would they still have been invented in 1879? It turns out that this is not just a philosophical question and the answer is yes, the light bulb would have been invented at roughly the same time. We know this because at least 23 other people built prototype light bulbs before Edison1, including two groups who filed patents and fought legal battles with him over the rights (Sawyer ...Folksonomies: invention synchronicity
Folksonomies: invention synchronicity
1 notes
notesInventions being discovered simultaneously is not just coincidence, it's a regular phenomenon.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Synchronicity in Science
The famous Canadian physician William Osler once wrote, “In science the credit goes to the man who convinced the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.” When we examine discoveries in science and mathematics, in hindsight we often find that if one scientist did not make a particular discovery, some other individual would have done so within a few months or years of the discovery. Most scientists, as Newton said, stood on the shoulders of giants to see the world just a bit fa... 1 notes
notesClifford Pickover on the phenomenon of many scientists making the same discovery at once, because new knowledge has allowed them to see further over the horizon to see the same things.
01 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The 12-Note Octave is Too Good to be True
[Playing notes on a piano] One... Two... Three... Four... Five... Six... Seven... Eight... Nine... Ten... Eleven... Twelve...
12 different pitches, and then back to where we began. Incredible! Fantastic! The mystical number 12. There are 12 hours in the A.M. and 12 hours in the P.M. The new day begins at 12 midnight. There are 12 months in a year. Both the Western and Chinese Zodiac have 12 signs. Further, the Chinese use a 12-year cycle for reckoning time. There are 12 eggs in a dozen. 12 d... 1 notes
notesThe number 12 seems so perfect, but a 12-note scale made of 3/2 ratios brings the circle around to a point a little sharper than the the next octave.
12 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Magical Number Seven
What about the magical number seven? What about the seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven daughters of Atlas in the Pleiades, the seven ages of man, the seven levels of hell, the seven primary colors, the seven notes of the musical scale, and the seven days of the week? What about the seven-point rating scale, the seven categories for absolute judgment, the seven objects in the span of attention, and the seven digits in the span of immediate memory? For ... 1 notes
notesOccurs in many cultural artifacts, but there is not obvious profundity to the number.
12 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Serendipity of Drug Manufacturing
Remember the Three Princes of Serendip who went out looking for treasure? They didn't find what they were looking for, but they kept finding things just as valuable. That's serendipity, and our business [drugs] is full of it. Folksonomies: synchronicity
Folksonomies: synchronicity
1 notes
notesThey don't find what they are looking for, but the find things that are just as valuable.
13 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Darwin and Abraham Lincoln Were Born on the Same Day
Charles Darwin (fig. 4.1) was bom on the same day as Abraham Lincoln—February 12,1809. Like Lincoln, he was a liberating force for humankind, but instead of freeing people from slavery, he freed biology from the bondage of supernaturalism. Philosophers of science have long pointed to Darwinian evolution as the greatest scientific revolution within biology, comparable to the role of Newton's or Einstein's revolutionary ideas in physics or the plate tectonics revolution in geology. Before Dar... 1 notes
notesAnd they both freed humans from chains that bound them.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
A Clock Stopped at the Moment Feynman's Wife Died
Sometimes we can actually pin down the explanation of a weird coincidence. A great American scientist called Richard Feynman tragically lost his wife to cancer, and the clock in her room stopped at precisely the moment she died. Goose-pimples! But Dr Feynman was not a great scientist for nothing. He worked out the true explanation. The clock was faulty. If you picked it up and tilted it, it tended to stop. When Mrs Feynman died, the nurse needed to record tl the time for the official death ce... 1 notes
notesBut he traced the phenomenon to a faulty mechanism in the clock that triggered when the nurse picked it up to record the time of death.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
We Only Notice Certain Statistical Events
Sometimes we can literally count the number of ways you can reshuffle a series of bits - as with a pack of cards, for instance, where the 'bits' are the individual cards.
Suppose the dealer shuffles the pack and deals them out to four players, so that they each have 13 cards. I pick up my hand and gasp in astonishment. I have a complete hand of 13 spades! All the spades.
I am too startled to go on with the game, and I show my hand to the other three players, mowing they will be as amazed ... 1 notes
notesUsing the example of a remarkable card-dealing hand, Dawkins explains how every hand of cards is statistically improbable, but we only notice and awe at combinations that are significant to us in some way.
15 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Demoivre's Death
The manner of Demoivre's death has a certain interest for psychologists. Shortly before it, he declared that it was necessary for him to sleep some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour longer each day than the preceding one: the day after he had thus reached a total of something over twenty-three hours he slept up to the limit of twenty-four hours, and then died in his sleep. Folksonomies: synchronicity
Folksonomies: synchronicity
1 notes
notesHe slept a little longer each night until he slept for 24 hours, then died.
