Laugh a little with numerology

Numerological claims to determine personality, life and "fate" of people from their name, surname and date of birth. Some people may try to make you believe that the calculations made by numerologists are complicated, but it is not. Instead, everything is made ​​by numerologist CM1 program, since no more than the Euclidean division by 9.

The arguments against numerology are numerous. I give a few in my book When the numbers are losing the ball. If you read English, you tend to see the impressive work but very readable Underwood Dudley, Numerology: Or What Pythagoras Wrought, which is much more complete.

The comedians have found, through numerology, a topic of choice. André Sauvé and his delightful art of the unspoken and silence or Florence Foresti, always good at playing with words.

Macaques Democrats?

A macaque Tonkean. (source)
Odile Petit is "behavioral scientist" at CNRS. She summarized research on various collective behaviors of primates (and other animals - in the second part of issue) on the air of France Culture, December 27, 2010, in issuing Continent Science.

The researcher traced the issue essentially an outline of the social organization of macaques Tonkean. In these animals, the dominant individuals alone do not determine the behavior of groups, such as travel. Instead, group members seem to suggest directions of movement. Odile Petit and his collaborators were able to show that the collective decisions of the group are under a system which can be likened to a form of democracy, far from the tyrannies that usually imagined in primates.

The concepts of quorum and vote "are advanced by ethologists. For more information on this exciting business, you can read a paper in French by Bernard Thierry, or see this article in English, published in 2009. Also read the book I help myself either, appeared Vuibert.

The social space of faces

Although morphopsychology, which intends to describe the personality from the shape of faces, does not seem very scientific (eg wikipedia or this article), we use every day in an intuitive morphopsychology.

The faces in particular give us an impression more or less dominance and reliability. It concludes that Alexander Todorov, a researcher at Princeton, in a recent article. Todorov shows through factor analysis that dominance and reliability are the two main factors that help classify the faces according to the idea that personality is associated.

The image above shows these two characteristics. We see that the dominance is associated with the character "square" face, and reliability to smile more than the intrinsic shape of the face. Other features of the faces are more or less consensual, as the attractiveness (more or less attractive), or the threat.

Todorov goes further, explaining that some of the faces give, when they are neutral, a feeling of joy or anger. We tend to assign personality traits corresponding to the character ... often wrong.

Effect "White Bear"

Daniel Wegner, a researcher at the University of Virginia at the time, is known for an experience of 1987, which highlights some aspects of intrusive thoughts and how they may turn into obsessions, an important point for study of OCD (obsessive compulsive).

Wegner asked participants to say, for 5 minutes, everything was going through their head. As a group, especially not asked to think of a polar bear (read the article by Wegner, 1987). In another, among other things to think about a white bear. The results are that participants often cite the polar bear when you ask them not to think that when they are told to think. This "ironic effect" (read this article Wegner, 1994) explains why the intrusive thoughts can become true obsession: trying not to think about it, it reinforces them.

In another experiment, Wegner shows that an effective strategy is to set a specific distractor: it has got less polar bears by asking participants to think of a red car at the prospect that the bear stood . Jacques van Rillaer exposes French experiences in a recent article published in Science and pseudo-science.

Implementation of a virtual space

In this new stage of the Ateneo de Malaga one of the projects is the implementation of a virtual space that allows the network to develop an important part of our activities. This is intended to fulfill the objective of promoting public participation in cultural activity in Manchester and make innovation a hallmark of the institution.

Since then no one can imagine today the exercise of cultural diffusion without an active presence on the network, and therefore the idea of ​​setting up a virtual aspect to the maximum possible relevance is presented as a priority. And it is this digital dimension is connected with the real and not independent of it, even that is coexisting in some events.

The first step in this initiative is the creation of a collective blog in which a first step write the members of the Board of the University of Malaga and later opened to the participation of cultural figures of our city. It is intended to open a public space and building a communication channel with citizens who enrich the cultural life of Malaga with the contributions of those who want to add a bit for the project.

Therefore we encourage you here to let either as comments along with an article, contribute to the growth of this blog who has just arrived.

The tomato lovers

Joel Sternheimer (aka Evariste the time he was a singer) is the inventor of a theory, Genod which rescucitation myth plant lovers. Against the backdrop of a scientific discourse, he rehabilitated the idea that music can help plants grow. For this, he claims that use melodies called protéodies, sequences of sound that would thrill of selected proteins or specific parts of DNA. That idea upsets or amuse scientists, for the simple reason that such a great advance in science that require experimental validation is still lacking after 20 years of existence.

We are getting very modern

ICT training for teachers is the issue that has entertained me this year. With training centers in my school (IES El Palo), experimentation with digital books, a course in CEP de Málaga, and many breaks in the comment I gladly and resolve the difficulties posed by the use of ICT in the classroom keep boredom at bay since last September.

The first conclusion after the first half of course is that the arrival of the School ICT 2.0 has been a shock final for the effective incorporation of ICT in teaching practice in the IES El Palo, the fact that students of 1 º ESO bring your laptop has been a huge boost and more than twenty teachers have decided to complicate your life, also with ICT. In addition to the School of Languages, in addition to the tutorials, etc..

Surely there are several factors behind this change, the educational potential of these tools, the fact that we no longer decide when to ICT for students in the classroom and bring in the backpack, the possibility of receiving training in the center ... For these and other reasons the fact is that there is a very interesting dynamic of experimentation with different types of tools (blogs, Moodle, digital books, ...) which is already beginning to bear fruit.

Nini told me recently, a colleague of Physical Education, students told their teachers that we were getting very modern this year, that many e-mail asking, they have to read (and even write) blogs, we send homework digital platforms, etc.. Another partner, Eulogia, recently told me that his class of 1 º ESO looked like a school as his students worked on our Moodle platform focused on the tasks she had prepared.

Barnum and Forer effect

In the 1940s, psychologist Bertram Forer, following a discussion with a handwriting night-club, carried out an experiment with (or?) 39 students. They passed a projective test (that is to say a Rorschach test type) which is to establish a picture of their personality. They then makes a 13-point description of their personality, supposedly established on the basis of the test. In fact, they all have the same description. The results are published in the 1949 article.

So quite striking, students felt that their picture was a very good description of themselves. In reality, the descriptors used by Forer are very vague, rather positive or neutral, often double-meaning, but mostly they apply to 'anyone. Thus, everyone can find something like it: this is what the phenomenon called Drill subjective validation, but we then called "Forer Effect". In 1956, Paul Meehl renames the "Barnum effect"because the publicity circus Barnum says there there's a little something for everyone

Finally demonstrated precognition?

An article by Daryl Bem forthcoming (in a few months) in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, claims to have scientifically proven the existence of precognition. Many websites and newspapers have spoken, and the article is already criticized the methodological point of view by James Alcock in this article.

Other researchers have criticized the way Bem uses statistics, and advocate a Bayesian approach in the humanities. Their article should appear in the same journal.

I would add just a little note of importance, which greatly join those of Wagenmakers et al. In Experiment 1, Bem asked subjects to guess which side is an image that is sometimes erotic. In reality, there is no image before the subjects choose. Since the latter are in more than half of the erotic image, Bem concluded that precognition exists.

This result is valid at risk of 1% with one-tailed test. Surprising? No!

Bem because A does not test, but the equivalent of 16: First, it tests four sets of images to the same conclusion (the existence of psi). Each series is tested using 2 test (a test of Student, then a binomial test: we really wonder what the Student test doing here!). In addition, while an error rate well below 50% also show the existence of psi (one can imagine that people are reluctant to choose in an experiment erotic image, and avoids, for example ), Bem has chosen unilateral tests.

In the end, everything happens as if Bem was tested 16 times the same event ... he must correct the error for multiple testing, which led to accept the overall conclusion to 5% if one test is valid ... About 0.3%, meaning that none of the tests does Bem.

A re-analysis data Bem thus leads to the conclusion that they are in no way evidence of phenomena of precognition. The same phenomenon occurs on 9 (duffer!) Experiments reported in the article.

Besides if Bem was right, we should now understand why this wonderful effect that allows us to destroy the casino does not operate in such establishments.