Improbable research: The Limerick laureate works his magic In 2003, an independent scholar from New Jersey began submitting limericks for a competition in mini-AIR, the monthly online supplement to my magazine, Annals of Improbable Research. The contest challenges readers to read an off-putting scholarly citation, and explain it in limerick form. Martin Eiger so consistently won that we eventually banned him as an unfair competitor, gave him the title Limerick laureate, and now publish him every month. An early Eiger limerick summarised a Japanese study called Pharmacological Aspects of Ipecac Syrup (TJN-119) - Induced Emesis in Ferrets: If you're hoping to hash out a thesis,And stuck for a topic: emesis,As triggered in ferretsUndoubtedly meritsMuch more than a mere exegesis. Warwick University mathematician Jonathan Warren's 1999 treatise On the Joining of Sticky Brownian Motion includes a three-page proof of the Non-cosiness of Sticky Brownian Motion. The petiole's structure is vexing.It bends, but it's strong.
To Get Students Invested, Involve Them in Decisions Big and Small By Matt Levinson When asked why he became a scientist, Nobel Laureate Isidor Rabi attributed his success to his mother. Every day, she would ask him the same question about his school day: “Did you ask a good question today?” “Asking good questions – made me become a scientist!” Rabi said. Questions are critical, and how to manage and navigate a good question requires practice. The hardest part about using design thinking in class is getting the question right and staying in the question. For teachers, in designing learning experiences for students that are embedded with technology, the wording and focus of the question are paramount. [RELATED: For Students, Why the Question is More Important Than The Answer] “I’ve seen students with iPads and the novelty is there and the engagement is there, but it’s not clear that novelty and engagement will lead to increased academic achievement,” writes Stanford Education professor Larry Cuban In The LA Times.
Stanford Prison Exp IT BEGAN WITH AN AD in the classifieds. Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life. $15 per day for 1-2 weeks. More than 70 people volunteered to take part in the study, to be conducted in a fake prison housed inside Jordan Hall, on Stanford's Main Quad. The leader of the study was 38-year-old psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. He and his fellow researchers selected 24 applicants and randomly assigned each to be a prisoner or a guard. Zimbardo encouraged the guards to think of themselves as actual guards in a real prison. The study began on Sunday, August 17, 1971. Forty years later, the Stanford Prison Experiment remains among the most notable—and notorious—research projects ever carried out at the University. The public's fascination with the SPE and its implications—the notion, as Zimbardo says, "that these ordinary college students could do such terrible things when caught in that situation"—brought Zimbardo international renown. The Superintendent Mark.
Conference 2011: Key Insights on Idea Execution (Pt. III) More insights on making ideas happen from the 2011 edition of the 99U Conference… Soraya Darabi onstage at the 99U Conference. SORAYA DARABI /// Co-Founder, Foodspotting + Digital Strategist Soraya Darabi cut her teeth at the New York Times, leading the drive to integrate the Gray Lady’s content into the universe of social media. Take a beta approach to social media.As new platforms come online, we should be willing to experiment with the ones that seem relevant to us. Starlee Kine onstage at the 99U Conference. STARLEE KINE /// Radio Producer & Writer A radio producer for This American Life and a writer, Starlee Kine took the stage and instantly made the audience feel at ease – as one attendee commented, “listening to Starlee Kine is like sitting on a couch with her.” Tony Schwartz onstage at the 99U Conference. TONY SCHWARTZ /// President & CEO, The Energy Project Yves Béhar onstage at the 99U Conference. YVES BÉHAR /// Founder & Chief Designer, FuseProject What’s Your Take?
Walking Through Doorways Causes Forgetting We’ve all experienced it: The frustration of entering a room and forgetting what we were going to do. Or get. Or find. New research from University of Notre Dame Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky suggests that passing through doorways is the cause of these memory lapses. “Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away,” Radvansky explains. “Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized.” The study was published recently in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Conducting three experiments in both real and virtual environments, Radvansky’s subjects – all college students – performed memory tasks while crossing a room and while exiting a doorway.
Conference 2011: Key Insights on Idea Execution (Pt. II) More insights on making ideas happen from the 2011 edition of the 99U Conference… Laura Guido-Clark onstage at the 99U Conference. LAURA GUIDO-CLARK /// Principal, Laura Guido-Clark Design At Laura Guido-Clark’s design studio, she focuses on the color, materials, and finish, working with companies like Apple, Dell, DWR to “skin” products. “60% of what I do is about ‘passionate consulting’ and 40% of the time, I focus on my dreams.”Actually setting aside a percentage of your time to work on projects unrelated to your day-job (however much you may love your day-job) will ensure that you accomplish what really matters to you.Spend less time on what to do, and more on how to be.Be mindful about yourself and your actions: Are the things you’re spending your time on consistent with the person you want to be? Linda Rottenberg onstage at the 99U Conference. LINDA ROTTENBERG /// Co-Founder & CEO, Endeavor If you’re not being told you’re crazy, you’re not thinking big enough.Crazy is a compliment.
Shock study, replicates Milgram's findings Nearly 50 years after the controversial Milgram experiments, social psychologist Jerry M. Burger, PhD, has found that people are still just as willing to administer what they believe are painful electric shocks to others when urged on by an authority figure. Burger, a professor at Santa Clara University, replicated one of the famous obedience experiments of the late Stanley Milgram, PhD, and found that compliance rates in the replication were only slightly lower than those found by Milgram. And, like Milgram, he found no difference in the rates of obedience between men and women. "People learning about Milgram's work often wonder whether results would be any different today," Burger says. Milgram found that, after hearing the learner's first cries of pain at 150 volts, 82.5 percent of participants continued administering shocks; of those, 79 percent continued to the shock generator's end, at 450 volts. —K.I.
Test Your Creativity: 5 Classic Creative Challenges Fascinated by how brains and creativity work, we frequently share new research on the 99U twitter feed, showing how everything from drinking alcohol, to taking vacations, to moving your eyes from side to side can make you more creative. What’s particularly interesting, however, is that most of these studies rely on just a small group of core creativity tests – and you don’t need any special lab equipment to take them. Below, we’ve collected five of the most commonly used creativity challenges for your self-testing pleasure. While creativity “testing” is far from an exact science, trying your mettle at these challenges could yield insight into when, where, and how you’re most creative. 1. Developed by J.P. Hold papers togetherCufflinksEarringsImitation mini-tromboneThing you use to push that emergency restart button on your routerKeeping headphones from getting tangled upBookmark The test measures divergent thinking across four sub-categories: 2. 3. 4. 5.
Edheads - Activate Your Mind! 5 Words You’ll Never Hear on the Campaign Trail In this (and every) election year, I find myself amazed all over again at the phenomenal effort our elected and would-be elected officials put into the denial of their own mistakes. They don’t ever want to fess up to anything, it seems. 5 words you’ll never hear on the campaign trail: “Here’s How I Screwed Up.” I get it; I understand their motives. They want to get nominated, elected, or re-elected, and they don’t want to give any more grist to their competitors’ meat-grinding mill than absolutely necessary. I understand that leadership in the political arena is, in many ways, different from the day-to-day, up-close-and-personal leadership you and I practice in our places of work. There’s no such thing as a perfect human being, and the minute one tries to appear to be perfect, he or she is automatically suspect. So, how about we all stop trying so hard to market ourselves as flawless? Here’s the question: How bold and public are you willing to be with your own valuable screw-ups?
Stability and Change in Children's Intelligence Quotient Scores: A Comparison of Two Socioeconomically Disparate Communities Skip to Main Content Advertisement Journals Books Search Close Advanced Search Search Menu Article Navigation Volume 154 Issue 8 15 October 2001 Article Contents Journal Article Stability and Change in Children's Intelligence Quotient Scores: A Comparison of Two Socioeconomically Disparate Communities Naomi Breslau, Naomi Breslau Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Howard D. Howard D. Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Ezra S. Ezra S. Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Thomas Matte, Thomas Matte Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Kung-Yee Liang, Kung-Yee Liang Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Edward L. Edward L. Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar American Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 154, Issue 8, 15 October 2001, Pages 711–717, Published: Article history Received: 16 November 2000 Accepted: 11 May 2001 Abstract child, family characteristics, intelligence, socioeconomic factors Open in new tab IQ measurement Statistical analysis Am Stat
How to Motivate People: Skip the Bonus and Give Them a Real Project Science has managed to reveal some crazy things that fly in the face of almost every commonly accepted management practice. Here's the latest: Rewards for top performers lead them to worse performance. And if you want to foster innovation, bonuses won't work either. Rather, it's all about letting people slip from under line management and strike out on their own, on projects they care about. Dan Pink lays all that out in this new video, which illustrates a talk he gave at the RSA (a kind of British version of TED): Wild stuff, and all the more unsettling because of the current mess on Wall Street. The fact that science has also created a new vision for workplace performance--fueled less by management and more by individual goals--is shocking. Pink tackles those themes at length in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
5 Experts Answer: Can Your IQ Change? | Intelligence Tests & IQ Scores Each week, MyHealthNewsDaily asks the experts to answer questions about your health. This week, we asked psychologists: Can your IQ ever change? Jack Naglieri, research professor at University of Virginia: The answer to this question, like many others, depends on a number of factors. I've been able to teach children to be better in mathematics without teaching them mathematics. Understanding changes in IQ also requires carefully considering how intelligence is being measured. The best way to measure intelligence is to measure those abilities that underlie the acquisition of knowledge, separately from the knowledge we have. Richard Nisbett, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan: Yes, your IQ can change over time. The most volatility in IQ scores is in childhood, mostly in adolescence. Also, the average IQ of people is changing over time. Now, validity of IQ as a measurement of all that we consider "intelligence" is another question. Absolutely. Alan S. It depends.