The Ed's Up #131
The 8-Bit Game That Makes Statistics Addictive
"Before I started playing Guess the Correlation, I didn’t expect to spend an hour of my Easter weekend obsessing over an 8-bit video game, much less one based on something that many scientists do every day. I also didn’t expect to be hypnotized by graph after graph of black dots, trying to accurately gauge the patterns they concealed, in exchange for points and a place on a leaderboard. And I definitely didn’t expect to have fun doing it."
What Wildlife Shows Don’t Tell You About African Wild Dogs
"In the first study of its kind, a team of scientists led by Alan Wilson from the Royal Veterinary College fitted a pack of wild dogs with collars that recorded their position, speed, and acceleration. The collars gave the first unbiased view of the dogs’ hunts, revealing what they do in places where the scientists couldn’t see them. The data revealed that the dogs chased almost all of their prey over short runs rather than long pursuits. They didn’t coordinate their attacks, and they never showed signs of teamwork. On average, they killed just 16 percent of their targets. In other words, nothing about their reputations bore out in the data." (Image: Wildlife GmbH, Alamy)
Gut Microbes Can Evolve From Foe to Friend—And Do It Fast
"Most microbes don’t cause disease. Many share our bodies and those of other animals, and these residents—our so-called microbiome—are important parts of our lives. And they can evolve too. A microbe can even evolve quickly from a parasite into an ally. Kayla King from the University of Oxford found an excellent example of this in the guts of nematode worms. She showed that a bacterium called Enterococcus faecalis, which causes mild disease, can suddenly turn into a protector if its host is challenged by another more dangerous threat, Staphylococcus aureus or Staph." (Image: Hansn)
How to Make Psychology Studies More Reliable
"There’s another way, says Eric Luis Uhlmann from INSEAD: Get your own studies independently replicatedbefore they are published. He is leading by example. In August 2014, he asked 25 independent teams to repeat all of his group’s unpublished experiments, before he submitted them to academic journals. Many replication initiatives are about removing the weeds from the scientific record. Uhlmann’s effort—the Pipeline Project—ensures that only flowers bloom in the first place. “The idea was to see if findings are robust before they find their way into the media and into everyone’s lectures,” he says." (Image: Phil Noble)
More good reads
- In the 1910s, in the early days of film, women dominated action movies. What happened? Great pieces on The Hazards of Helen, The Perils of Pauline, and other forgotten shows, by Adrienne LaFrance
- Chimpanzees have been observed performing the same rituals over and over. Is that spirituality? Barbara King discusses.
- The Nameless Mouse Behind the Largest-Ever Neural Network. By Katie Palmer
- This is a wonderful story by Chris Baraniuk about Jennifer Null and other people whose names break databases
- "I've seen the greatest AI minds of my generation destroyed by Twitter.” By Anthony Lydgate
- Wonderful piece by Maggie Koerth-Baker on the (il)legitimacy of dinosaur names
- Andy Goldsworthy arranges leaves, sticks, and stones to create magical land art
- Is Ebola hiding in the eyes of survivors? Fascinating story by Emily Baumgaertner
- A team of rival scientists came together to fight Zika. A great story of scientific collaboration by Amy Harmon.
- “This has been the saddest research trip of my life,” says coral scientist Terry Gross on the biggest Great Barrier Reef bleaching event ever.
- That time when Amazon sent Ian Bogost some lumber as a prank
- A video game company is trying to deal with toxic behaviour in the world's most popular online game. By Brendan Maher.
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And that's it! Thanks for reading.
-Ed