“A new information-theoretical model of human sensory perception and memory sheds light on some peculiarities of the nervous system.”
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2012/thinking-logarithmically-1005
“A new study has found new evidence that educated adults retain traces of their innate sense of numbers from childhood — and that it’s more powerful than many scientists think. The findings could contribute to the development of methods to more effectively educate or treat children with learning disabilities and people with brain injuries.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140122134231.htm
“If you were around during the last technology boom and bust cycle of the early 2000s you were likely exposed to the concept of really big numbers. Countless business plans for all manner of ill-conceived ideas began with “If just 0.00001% of all internet users visit our site…” and used that as the core foundation of their revenue model. While it all seemed logical at the time, the logic of really big numbers had two fundamental failings.”
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-decision-maker/the-problem-of-really-big-numbers/
What determines how much we fear something? Is it based on the actual risks posed? Or do our emotions lead us to fear the wrong things and weigh risks differently than we should?
Interesting piece comparing the relative risks of swimming pools and guns and how much we fear each.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2001/07/27/levittpoolsvsguns/
This is a clever program that does an analysis of every 4th down play in every professional football game. It determines based on mathematical expected value whether teams should go for it, punt, or kick a field goal. It breaks down the math behind its decision making. What’s interesting is how often the mathematical decisions are not the ones followed by the people on the field. Who is right in a case like this? What happens when the “common sense” approach is different from the mathematically “true” approach?
“Those fourth down calls epitomize Kelly’s aggressiveness but what the average football fan doesn’t realize is that Chip’s play-calls (the fourth down tries, fake punts, two-point conversions, etc.) are almost always the correct mathematical decision. Like Paul DePodesta and Billy Beane did in baseball, Kelly’s genius comes from exploiting arithmetic that other coaches are too naïve to acknowledge.”
Popularized in the book and later on the movie, Moneyball, Sabermetrics is “the search for objective knowledge about baseball.’ Thus, sabermetrics attempts to answer objective questions about baseball, such as ‘which player on the Red Sox contributed the most to the team’s offense?’ or ‘How many home runs will Ken Griffey hit next year?’ It cannot deal with the subjective judgments which are also important to the game, such as ‘Who is your favorite player?’ or ‘That was a great game.'” -Bill James.
Sabermetrics has caused tremendous controversy among sports analysts and enthusiasts because of the positions they take on questions such as: How do we reconcile mathematical knowledge that contradicts our intuition? What if our eyes tell us one truth and our numbers tell us a different one?
Some people complain that the reliance on numbers takes away from the “magic and mystery of the game.”
The baseball organizations themselves have adopted the data driven approach to analyzing players. With the success of the Oakland Athletics (a team that was an early adopter of the mathematical methods known as Sabermetrics) and later on the Boston Red Sox, most if not all teams use these analytical methods.
The first link below is an introduction to the basics of sabermetrics and below that are two disagreeing with its use.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/death-to-sabermetrics/
http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/sabermetrics-moneyball-stat-geeks-are-ruining-sports-092211
A general website that focuses on TOK topics in Math.
“The situation is understandable; it’s a learning experience in the limits of science. The protocol of science is the process of hypothesis and test. This three-word phrase, though, does not do it justice. The philosopher Karl Popper did when he described “the method of science as the method of bold conjectures and ingenious and severe attempts to refute them.”
Dr. Gupta interviews Joel Osteen.
He started by telling the story of his own mother, Dodie Osteen, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer back in 1981. She was told “there was no treatment that could be given to her.”
It was liver cancer, and she was just 48 years old. Osteen told me, “She prayed, she believed, and she quoted scripture. Thirty-something years later, she’s alive.”
Osteen is describing a sort of faith healing or at least the power of prayer, and it is an issue that deeply divides the medical community.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/21/health/gupta-religion-medicine/
TOK Topics 