Ig Nobels
Here's an interesting article I read last weekend...a funny spin-off of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Weird Nobels, real math
First posted 03:14am (Mla time) May 13, 2006
By Queena Lee-Chua
Philippine Daily Inquirer
EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT THE Nobel prizes, but what about the Ig Nobels? These awards started in 1991 when science magazine editor Marc Abrahams began recognizing scientific work that "cannot or should not" be reproduced. With around 5,000 nominations yearly, the Ig Nobels are awarded in medicine, physics, chemistry, biology and peace, with secrecy perhaps as great as that in Stockholm.
The first winner was Prof. Bernard Vonnegut who in 1975 studied chicken plucking as a measure of tornado wind speed. Other Ig Nobels studied the effect of music on suicide, necrophilia in the mallard duck, the use of magnets to raise up frogs, the psychological defense of farting, and for peace, Japanese inventor Daisuke Inoue, for his karaoke invention (which makes people "learn to tolerate each other").
Winners are informed beforehand and are given a chance to turn down the prize, but surprisingly, few do so. The ceremonies are held at Harvard, with the audience peppering the stage with paper planes. Real Nobel prize winners present the awards to their Ig counterparts. I thank my colleague, Dr. Norman Quimpo, for sending me an article on the Ig Nobels, which can be found at www.english.aljazeera.net/.
Young Japanese
Now for real science. Believe it or not, powerhouse Japan is worried about its youth's declining test scores! In a 2004 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development involving 41 countries, Japanese children slipped in their ability to read and understand prose passages and diagrams.
Why? First, children excessively used mobile phones and Net chatrooms to communicate, both of which tend to ignore grammatical rules. Second, the Education Ministry introduced a liberal (criticized by many educators as "easier") curriculum in 2002. Third, more students are no longer studying at home. Fourth, children are not reading enough books. Fifth, teachers have been criticized for lack of quality.
Sound familiar? The Japanese government has been working overtime to make sure that such declines are reversed.
Understanding statistics
Knowing math can save lives. For instance, suppose a depressed patient read that the chances were 70 percent that she would respond to a certain antidepressant. So 70 percent of the time, the patient would feel better, right?
Not really. A better understanding of the figures would mean that if 10 people with depression were prescribed the drug, then seven would be expected to get better. But the statistics came from a large sample, and did not necessarily apply to individuals. Thus, the patient would either improve with the treatment or not, notwithstanding the statistics she heard about.
Confused? Harvard statistician Dr. Judith Singer put it this way: "The number of possible outcomes--in her case either responding or not responding to an antidepressant--has nothing to do with the actual probability of either outcome happening.
"For example, either a woman is pregnant or not. She can't be a little pregnant. But that doesn't mean that she has a 50-percent probability of being pregnant. A woman who takes a fertility pill may stand a much higher chance of actually getting pregnant than if she goes without it."
To help children understand math better, I recommend this nifty interactive dictionary website.
E-mail the author at blessbook @yahoo.com.
Weird Nobels, real math
First posted 03:14am (Mla time) May 13, 2006
By Queena Lee-Chua
Philippine Daily Inquirer
EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT THE Nobel prizes, but what about the Ig Nobels? These awards started in 1991 when science magazine editor Marc Abrahams began recognizing scientific work that "cannot or should not" be reproduced. With around 5,000 nominations yearly, the Ig Nobels are awarded in medicine, physics, chemistry, biology and peace, with secrecy perhaps as great as that in Stockholm.
The first winner was Prof. Bernard Vonnegut who in 1975 studied chicken plucking as a measure of tornado wind speed. Other Ig Nobels studied the effect of music on suicide, necrophilia in the mallard duck, the use of magnets to raise up frogs, the psychological defense of farting, and for peace, Japanese inventor Daisuke Inoue, for his karaoke invention (which makes people "learn to tolerate each other").
Winners are informed beforehand and are given a chance to turn down the prize, but surprisingly, few do so. The ceremonies are held at Harvard, with the audience peppering the stage with paper planes. Real Nobel prize winners present the awards to their Ig counterparts. I thank my colleague, Dr. Norman Quimpo, for sending me an article on the Ig Nobels, which can be found at www.english.aljazeera.net/.
Young Japanese
Now for real science. Believe it or not, powerhouse Japan is worried about its youth's declining test scores! In a 2004 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development involving 41 countries, Japanese children slipped in their ability to read and understand prose passages and diagrams.
Why? First, children excessively used mobile phones and Net chatrooms to communicate, both of which tend to ignore grammatical rules. Second, the Education Ministry introduced a liberal (criticized by many educators as "easier") curriculum in 2002. Third, more students are no longer studying at home. Fourth, children are not reading enough books. Fifth, teachers have been criticized for lack of quality.
Sound familiar? The Japanese government has been working overtime to make sure that such declines are reversed.
Understanding statistics
Knowing math can save lives. For instance, suppose a depressed patient read that the chances were 70 percent that she would respond to a certain antidepressant. So 70 percent of the time, the patient would feel better, right?
Not really. A better understanding of the figures would mean that if 10 people with depression were prescribed the drug, then seven would be expected to get better. But the statistics came from a large sample, and did not necessarily apply to individuals. Thus, the patient would either improve with the treatment or not, notwithstanding the statistics she heard about.
Confused? Harvard statistician Dr. Judith Singer put it this way: "The number of possible outcomes--in her case either responding or not responding to an antidepressant--has nothing to do with the actual probability of either outcome happening.
"For example, either a woman is pregnant or not. She can't be a little pregnant. But that doesn't mean that she has a 50-percent probability of being pregnant. A woman who takes a fertility pill may stand a much higher chance of actually getting pregnant than if she goes without it."
To help children understand math better, I recommend this nifty interactive dictionary website.
E-mail the author at blessbook @yahoo.com.
12:10 AM
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