Improbable Research and the Ig Nobel Prizes are getting a bit more organized about Twittering. Follow us on Twitter at improbresearch, and please spread the word!
As we get a bit more organized about it we’ll include info there and on the Improbable Research web site about how to follow some of the individual AIRheads on Twitter, too.
This week’s cryptic scientifical free verse:
Chip Groat
gave a keynote
at the J.J. Pickle
Extending and complimenting recent investigations into nocturnal Roman underwear comes another research article which touches, albeit briefly, on the same subject. In 2003, professor Kelly Olson at the Department of Classical Studies, University of Western Ontario, published ‘Roman Underwear Revisited’ (Classical World 96.2) And, according to professor Olson, another reading of the very same body of Latin text which was examined in ‘Did the Romans keep their underwear on in bed?’ (see previous post) suggests that:
Click to continue reading “Nocturnal undergarments in ancient Rome – a follow up.”
A smiley-face is very expressive, statistically. By tweaking the eyes, mouth and other bits, you can literally put a meaningful face on any jumble of numbers. Herman Chernoff pointed this out in 1973 in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, in a monograph called The Use of Faces to Represent Points in K-Dimensional Space Graphically.
Subsequently, folks took to calling these things Chernoff faces. Chernoff faces can make statistical analysis into a recognisably human activity. Most people, when shown some statistics, sigh and get boggled. But Chernoff realised that almost everyone is good at reading faces. So he devised recipes to convert any set of statistics into an equivalent bunch of smiley-face drawings….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.
As fans of the Ig Nobel Ceremony, opera, and large-scale economic failure may remember, “The Big Bank Opera” premiered as a featured part of the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. A few weeks ago, we posted all four acts to YouTube, each as a separate episode (#124-7) of the Improbable Research TV series.
The libretto of the Opera is also published in the latest issue of the Annals of Improbable Research.
Furthermore, Acts One (“Two Bankers Meet in a Bar…”), Two (“How to Solve The World’s Biggest Problem”), Three (“Big Bank Theory”), and Four (“To Boldly Go”) have now been made available on Vimeo, for redundancy and higher-quality video enjoyment.
The grand finale from Act 4 is embedded after the break.
Click to continue reading “The Big Bank Opera (video), redux”
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