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Busting the MythBusters' Yawn Experiment
markmcb writes "Most everyone knows and loves the MythBusters, two guys who attempt to set the story straight on things people just take for granted. Well, maybe everyone except Brandon Hansen, who has offered them a taste of their own medicine as he busts the MythBusters' improper use of statistics in their experiment to determine whether yawning is contagious. While the article maintains that the contagion of yawns is still a possibility, Hansen is clearly giving the MythBusters no credit for proving such a claim, 'not with a correlation coefficient of .045835.'"
If they find out, they may very well make an announcement on the show. Wouldn't be the first time.
*yawn*
Yawn...
it always seems to me that their conclusions are specious. I can't think of any specific episodes right now but they over simplify the data, build elaborate setups that are prone to error, and use inadequate controls.
not to mention that they always try to prove stupid crap like "a rolling stone gathers no moss". I'm waiting for them to try "the grass is always greener on the other side", or "it takes one to know one".
I dunno, the fact that he's willing to state the correlation coefficient so precisely makes me leary of his own statistical expertise.
Please, for the love of God, no more car analogies.
Facinatingly detailed observations like this must go down a treat at the parties you attend Brandon Hansen.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
In almost every episode they do something that invalidates their own findings.
Sometimes they don't things more than once (even when required), other times they don't adequately recreate the conditions of the "myth."
The show is entertaining as hell, and sometimes they do conclusively prove things.
Latewire
I'm often surprised at how many people take the MythBusters seriously. Their show is entertaining, but it's important to realize that neither Jamie nor Adam really have a scientific or engineering background. To think that they could "bust" a "myth" with any degree of certainty is laughable. But every so often I hear somebody use MythBusters as a reference, even intelligent people with at least some scientific background, like medical doctors and geologists.
I'm all for watching their show for its entertainment value. But that's about it. I'd feel like a vagine if I were to use one of their "experiments" to back up my claims.
Science and entertainment do not play well together, it is mostly true because science requires real thought and watching TV basicly does not. If you attempt to put real science on TV today you will watch the other 6.9 million TV stations each gain 1 more viewer while you get a dust bowl rolling through. Maybe it's time we started to realize what the mass public want are crappy reality shows, cooking and some bullshit made to look information but that is infact 75% CGI or "docudrama".
The above is why I wouldn't trust Mythbusters as far as I could throw them. The entire show screams entertainment rather than Science. Unfortunaely I can't find the name of a program that aired in the UK about 6 months ago. It took a team of 4 people to a deserted island and each week they had a task to complete each, they were only allowed to use what was on the island and what was given to them each week (as well as a tool set because, well no tools = screwed). They had to do things like make fireworks, record a song and various other "minor" things which required them to render down various things to achieve the chemicals they needed to complete each task. What they did and what it resulted in was very clearly labeled, having real science explained behind it.
Saddly as I recall it basicly got replaced with some crappy school based soap opera where the kids say "innit" and the teachers fuck anything with two legs (including the kids as the current trailer at least implies). So after this long rant, I guess we just give up on science and go back to the discoery channel, maybe we can catch the 3 minutes of it that isn't Nazis or some form of sport!
I like muppets.
Lies, Damn Lies and !!!!
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
TFA's conclusion is correct but their methods are wrong. For these kind of data, correlations aren't the appropriate test; they should have used a chi-square distribution test. Using TFA's assumptions -- total sample size of 50, 4 yawners out of 16 not seeded, 10 yawners out of 34 seeded -- the chi-square value is .10, which pretty strongly misses the critical value of 3.84 for significance.
Not that it matters anyway, but it's pretty funny to read an article debunking statistics that employs inappropriate statistics itself...
Wow, the guys at omninerd didn't give up after not being allowed to spam Wikipedia, and apparently they keep at it submitting poor stats work like this to Slashdot.
I yawned while reading that link. Does that prove it?
You do not report five significant figures derived from data with only two.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I thought I remember them busting this yawning myth. So I went to the site to confirm. I never got around to it, though. You folks need to check out the "Web Exclusive Ask a Ninja." Hilarious. And can someone confirm, is the Ask a Ninja Ninja the guy that does Strong Bad? It sounds like him and the humor is the same.
Quick quote, "Of course ninjas can walk on water. I have to walk on water to get out of my room in the morning."
Where's the +1 Redundant moderation when you need it.
Peter
Downsize DC Today!
Not only was MythBusters embarassingly statistics-free, but the "busting" was done using a wholly inappropriate statistical technique. Hansen used a correlation-based test, which assumes that the data follows a Normal distribution (which a bunch of 1s and 0s do not).
There is a very well-known test, the chi-square test, that deals with exactly this case. (Given the small sample sizes, the Fisher exact test may give better results.) Someone should point Hansen to the Wikipedia page on the topic.
For example, if there are 16 non-primed people, with 4 yawning and 12 not (for 25%), and there are 34 primed people, with 10 yawning and 24 not (for 29%), the chi square test gives a p value of 0.74.
The values Hansen supposes are significant 4,12 and 12,24 are not: p = 0.29.
You have to go all the way to 4,12 and 17,19 (i.e. 47% on a sample of 36) to get significance.
MythBusters was wrong to conclude that their results were significant, but Hansen was equally wrong to conclude that he had shown that Mythbusters was wrong.
when I yawn it doesn't seem to make them yawn.
Maybe it's because I'm always tired and my dogs are always full of piss and vinegar.
**yawn**
You've just applied the slashdot effect to yawning. That sound you hear isn't a web site crashing, it's the whole world yawning, even while watching Heroes.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
MythBusters numbers may mean that someone is 20% more likely to yawn if seeded. Now, what's important is to evaluate the margin of error for this statement given the sample size.
What the article is definitely wrong about is that the sample size does not change anything. The sample size basically reduces the probability of error. The higher the sample size, the more likely that the statement "someone is 20% more likely to yawn if seeded" is true. However, at their sample size, it is not unlikely that the error marging is comparable with that 20% difference, which would invalidate the experiment.
The detailed calculations for sufficient sample size are left as an excercise for the reader.
They *really* screwed up that one the other night where the boat ran into the channel marker. I really lost some of my interest in the show because they did such a poor job with it.
My kingdom for a set of coat tails!
My favourite example of the bogus statistics on Mythbusters was the buttered toast drop experiment. They dropped 10 slices of toast testing the 'dropper' and 7 of them landed 'T' side up (slice was unbuttered 'neutral' slice with a T in texta written on it). Their comment on this result of 7 out of 10? "It's not random enough" In order for it to be truly random for them, it had to be 5 out of 10.
you spent way too much time on this. move on, man.
Not that it matters anyway, but it's pretty funny to read an article debunking statistics that employs inappropriate statistics itself...
Only on slashdot would a statistical analysis done by a painter that contradicts an experiment done by a couple of TV show stars make front page.
What's a matter, slashdot? There aren't any alpha releases of obscure Linux apps out today that you can fill the front page with?
So long as Kari keeps yawning, I'll believe whatever the bald guys say...
*swoon*
I like his references, too..
reference 5 is an episode that won't air for 2 days (maybe he's from the future!)
references 7 and 8 are forum posts (ref. 8 has just 2 replies)
two references are news stories..
these do not suggest a thorough exploration of the matter, but he cites them as if they are authoritative sources
That reminds me of the time my dad split an arrow, around the time the mythbusters aired saying that it was impossible.
NICE JOB GUYS >:(
Too bad the average viewer doesn't understand what the hell he is talking about.
What a Fookin nerd.
Dr. Seuss has already proved the contagion of yawns.
The Myth Busters is, of course, fun. It is fun to see things blow up. It is fun to watch two pseudo-nerds fight.
Here's the thing, not everything they do is crap, sometimes they get it more or less right, or at least right enough that one should pause. Most of they time they do a pretty mediocre job at it.
Don't confuse science with entertainment. It seems that the myth busters work from a layman's perspective and as such, fancy methodologies would confuse the audience.
At least, it can be. A quick search at Pubmed brings up eight studies that examine the phenomenon of 'contagious yawning,' including in macaques and chimps. So even if the mythbusters experimental setup was pretty crappy, and their sample was too small to have enough power to find an effect, at least their conclusion agreed with the literature.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
If you dislike people who post on Slashdot so much, does that mean you hate yourself?
Picture this...
Guy 1: Hey did you know humans can fly?
Guy 2: No way man, you're trippin!
Guy 1: Na-ah, I've seen it in my own eyes! I saw it... in a movie!
Guy 2: OK, if humans can fly - prove it!
Guy 1: No problem, watch this...
-----
And the crowd goes chanting "Darwin! Darwin! Darwin!"
From Hansen's footnotes:
"Episode 78: Walking on Water." MythBusters. Aired April 25, 2007. Accessed April 2007..."
And yet it is the 23rd. It might be better to footnote an episode that has actually been on.
Well, a chi-squared test would have worked too, but so would Phi correlation (a correlation between two dichotomous / binary variables), which can be computed exactly the same as ... Pearson correlation, which TFA used. In fact, if you take the chi-square value you worked out to a few more decimal places: 0.10504 (from R), divide by 50 (=N, the sample size), and then take the square root, you get 0.046, which is the phi (and hence Pearson) correlation coefficient for the TFA's data. I can't tell if OmniNerd knew this or if s/he got lucky, but there's nothing wrong with the test employed.
So, TFA's conclusion was correct, and so - whether intentionally or not - was the method. It's just not nearly as common as chi-squared test for a 2x2 table.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Look, to spare everyone the continued arguing over which statistical test to use at what probability level and the lack of proper control groups, let me say that MythBusters has never claimed to be a science show like Mr. Wizard. The guys are special effects designers for crying out loud! They are good at what they do, and while their scientific methodology and statistics may be a bit wonky at times, there are some experiments I've seen in peer-reviewed journals that aren't much better. Science education in the United States gets worse all the time, and if these guys can inject some life and curiosity into the current generation to get them interested in science, I applaud the effort.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I didn't watch the show but people who know what they're doing then they might unconsciously fight it. If this is the case then that's bad work on the Mythbusters part. If not than that low of a co-efficient is rather surprising.
but here's a non-myth for you: Brandon Hansen is an over-wound tool.
Seriously does anyone watch Mythbusters looking to prove or disprove a myth. They take a VERY rudimentary look at most myths. One example is mythes that involve old inventors such as Leonardo Da Vinci. The take less than a week to prove or disprove the theory. Leonardo likely worked on it for years so what does 1 week of two hollywood effect men mean?
The show is about entertainment and fun, not about the scientific method.
1, 2, 3.
And there are some experiments on creating a similar contagious behavior.
Nearly every time i am in a room with someone who yawns, i yawn. I do not yawn too often on my own, sometimes i can go 5 nights in a row without a yawn. But if I see or even SENSE a yawn in the room, I yawn.
Also, reading the article and seeing the word YAWN made me yawn. It's a psychological thing possibly, but whatever makes it contagious, IT IS.
And then there was E
mythbusters are to real science what battlefield 1942 is to real war.
mythbusters is the most unscientific bass ackwards show i've ever seen. the other day they did 4 experiments and 2 of them confirmed their theory (agreed with the myth) and they claim the myth was busted!?!? where the fuck did that come from?
not only that but it's pretty annoying when you realize that they basically go out of their way to fuck over their own experiment with some kind of kindergartner logic.
anyway, fuck that shitty show
Some of us have to learn that the hard way. I was at a bar, and this chick said, "Yeah, well, ok, I guess Albuquerque is a better place to live than Phoenix, but name one city that isn't," and she yawned.
And I said, "Hey, MythBusters statistically proved that yawning is conta--" and she suddenly got up and walked away, bored.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
They were shown the article?
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
There is one thing they (the Mythbusters) don't do that much of the so-called science community is doing right now. That is claiming a "consensus" is scientific fact. I remember the last time a scientific consensus was used to affect the population at large. Galileo could better tell the story, but the scientific consensus was that the planets and sun orbited the Earth. They spent lots of time, money, and effort trying to discredit and ruin the lives of those claiming that was an incorrect view. In fact they had mathematical models demonstration the Earth was the center of everything. These models worked. Sounds like the computer models if today. Garbage in garbage out. The Earth is warming because the sun is hotter, and the block of ice called "Greenland" was named so because the Earth was warm enough before to make it green. The biggest problem with science today is that scientists only know their field of expertise and have blinders to other equally important fields. It's the rare few with experience in many fields that have the advantage of perspective. Those chemists and geologists willing to learn about astronomy and other fields are those who can even hope to be able to start to understand the complexities of planetary weather and it's connection to chemistry, solar radiation, cloud cover, particles, geology of stored gases, etc. Science can't predict the weather tomorrow, let alone for the next 100 years. Many base their science from the day they were born. The summers are hotter than when they were younger, AAAHH the sky is falling! We're destroying the planet! History is another good thing to look to, because the Earth has been considerably warmer in the recent past and distant past, as well as periods of considerable cooling. Frankly, the Mythbuster's science tends to be more reliable than some I have seen recently. With many scientists they have moved from scientist to religious fanatic spouting the religion of man-made Global Warming. Once again, a consensus is not science. Science is using the scientific method to prove without doubt or question, using clear and undeniable, AND verifiable testing methods. Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to the religion of Global Warming. The "best minds" say it's happening, so it must be true! Incidentally, Mythbusters is ENTERTAINMENT. To quote Adam Savage "I reject your reality, and substitute my own." It's a TV show, not a scientific symposium for Pete's sake. Let the environmentalist wacko flaming begin!
I was attending my first professional hockey game, approximately 30 years ago - some guys from my high school were playing, but I'd be lying if I called them buddies. A hockey rink, for those who don't know, is smaller than an (American) football stadium, but larger that a basketball court. Anyway, during the second period, I yawned hugely. Moments later, a few people across the ice yawned back. The people sitting around me yawned, and then, to all appearances, everybody on the other side yawned. Personal experience, after all, is more convincing than any amount of scientific data; I've known yawns were contagious ever since.
Yeah It's a TV Show and they use basic scientific methods to test out the thousands of things people send them emails about, it makes for good entertainment.. of course they don't show every little detail yawn yawn. How many people want to watch paint dry? Kinda like congress how many weeks does it take them to decide what kind of toilet paper to buy? The Mythbusters at least try to listen to peoples comments while still making the show fun and exciting even though they probably get a butt chewing about pretty much everything... /. comments galore right? You can never get people to agree 100% about anything at thats what keeps us interesting isn't it?
I watch it for entertainment isn't that a good enough reason.... oh and for Kari too :-)
*yawn*
This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
XXX#######
Looks like a bug crawled up dr. Bunsen's ass.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I'm not kidding, I actually yawned when I read tfa. Maybe I'm just tired, but poking holes in a loosely scientific tv show for those reasons is stupid. I mean, if you're taking results of Mythbuster experiments that seriously, I would urge you to find a secondary information source that might be better suited to that kind of analysis.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
If they are, and if these experiments succeed, however, it most definitely will not be because MythBusters had anything to do with "officially" determining the contagiousness of a yawn - not with a correlation coefficient of
Straight from the researchers' mouth.
I've been reading through the comments and I'm fairly alarmed by how many people think Mythbusters isn't worthwhile based solely on scientific merit.
Look, the show never said it was teaching people about science. Adam and Jaime themselves have said many times they're more entertainment than science. They're special effects people by trade, not scientists. They build things and blow shit up. It's what they enjoy doing. You can even see it on Jaime's face when they're doing myths that don't involve blowing things up (e.g. Adam building a wind tunnel for the penny drop myth).
When the show first started, there wasn't even mention of science. They looked at urban legends such as rocket car and getting airborne in a lawnchair. The show was about the stories themselves, not the methods. Only in about season 2 or so did they start including things like "controls" and "variables" (probably by Discovery's request), but they never lost sight of the fact that they're a TV show, and television (by and large) is meant to entertain.
But that leads to an interesting question: even if they DID follow proper scientific method, how do you even apply that to some of the myths they examine? For example, they did a myth where a hillbilly chased a raccoon into a sewer pipe, decided to throw gas down it, attempted to fill the thing with fire to kill the raccoon and was purportedly "shot out". How on earth do you test that scientifically? Nowhere in the myth does it says how big the pipe was, how much gasoline was used, etc. Nowhere does it mention if he was stuck (which is important, as they found the man could only be shot out of he was wrapped in a sabot). All they have is a fun story to go off of.
If nothing else, Mythbusters gets people interested in the process of examining life, not teaching how to use proper scientific method. If their only accomplishment is making people critically question things that are usually taken at face value, they'll have succeeded in my mind.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is actually kinda common, Mythbusters disappoints me rather often because they decide to use poor statistics or don't test scientifically enough. A good example of this would be the episode with the sniper shootout, where they tried to shoot through the other sniper's scope.
They admitted from the beginning that it was an extremely close range for a sniper. They decided to move the rifles closer together in order to guarantee that the shots would be accurate. Now as they moved the rifles closer, they caused more damage to the other scope. Wouldn't it make sense, therefore, that it's possible for the rifle to be more likely to pierce straight through if they were farther apart?
It's things like that that bug me about the show.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Mythbusters is my favorite show, it has been ever since I saw the episode where they tried to build a backpack flying machine from internet plans, man what an awesome show. I LOVE the show, but almost every myth I find myself screaming cuss words at the TV when they conclude that a myth is busted or not, this is mostly because their test data and sample size is WAY too small, or the test is badly designed.
Even so, I still do love the show and they do get a lot of things right, after all they are working on a fixed budget and time, there is only so much they can do. For myths such as this they really shouldn't say 'its busted', but that they didn't find any proof. Sadly the show also seems to be going downhill the last few seasons, as they seem to be doing dumber myths on average.
Significance arithmetic is a folk theorem anyway. You should be using interval arithmetic instead.
I've always insisted though that the show's not out for accuracy, but 1. Entertainment, and 2. Inspiration. To you or me it's a big whoop. To a 8 to 13 year old, though, it can open their eyes to things, get them inspired in science, and help start the next wave of students down that track. If they happen to get things right, great.
Actually, I'd say sometimes they intentionally leave the door open to crappy results. It's called "revisit show" or "free publicity" when someone makes a big hooplah of proving them wrong on the web. Job security through incompetence (sadly seems common in the science world.)
(OT Side idea... The grass is greener... might be interesting to test to see if there's some weird reflection/refraction properties in the grass or the perspective angle of the grass might cause the light to always come back greener. I know, silly idea, but who knows, maybe they'll try for fun. It takes one, though.. can't even come up with a smart alec way for them to try that. Darn.)
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
I once yawned in front of my cat as I was stroking him and it triggered a yawn in him. God's honest truth.
You're forgetting that we can assume the maximum possible measurement based on the scale included with the measuring device. Sig figs takes into account a wealth of information about the difficulty of reading a scale after it runs out of marks.
You're making the assumption that either we cannot measure anything to the precision guarenteed by a scale, or that we can measure past the precision guarenteed by a scale. In either case you'd be wrong. In the former case, you'd even be suggesting that measurement is useless.
Also, if you're in a laboratory setting collecting data for a scholarly work, you'd better damn well be collecting data to the maximum precision allowable by your instrument. What would be the point of the science if you didn't go as far as you could in obtaining a precise measurement?
Calling it a myth is pushing it.
SRSLY.
Unfortunately, he BSs about a vast number of other kinds of E, in a manor that is less entertaining and more, assholish, often insulting other cast members or the audience.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I remember watching an episode where they said that it was impossible for a bird to fly through an aircraft windshield because it dissipated it's energy to fast.
Not only does the length of energy dissipation not have anything to do with proving that birds cannot fly through windshields, but there conclusions were actually WRONG. Not only can a bird destroy a windshield, but also a massive jet turbofan made out of titanium and aluminum. Furthermore, there have been dozens of reports of geese and other birds rocketing through helicopter and airplane windscreens.
I think I'll believe the dozens of FAA reports than one BADLY conducted and haphazard TV episode. Kind of ironic how the entire premise of the show is the debunking of popular myths and urban legends through the use of the scientific method, yet they manage to blow all but the most obvious "experiments" ("obvious experiments" being the legends and myths that anyone with a brain stem can figure out the answer) with shoddy analysis and half-assed conclusions.
If you are going to demonstrate the scientific method, THEN DO IT CORRECTLY! If you can't demonstrate it correctly, for whatever reasons, then please don't do it at all.
Sad to say, the MythBusters are becoming to Science what the Porn Industry has become to Art.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals
So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel
Do it again now
From the song "The Bad Touch" by the Bloodhound Gang, from the Hooray For Boobies album.
My mom says I'm cool.
...just by reading the headline.
Technoli
...when the common man realizes how shoddy the science (at least, what's shown) on MythBusters really is. It will mean that people are actually starting to "get" science.
http://outcampaign.org/
Apparently a Season 1 ep that I've not seen concluded that while CD-ROMs spinning in excess of 40X *could* shatter inside of a drive, it's "highly unlikely" and therefore mostly busted. I wish I still had the CD drive in which I actually saw this occur. Dropped a brand-new burned CD into a mostly-new CD-ROM (52x, as I recall), heard it spin up.....and then an extremely loud *crack*. The largest piece of the CD-ROM remaining, when I eventually pried the drive open, was maybe 1/10 the total disc area. The rest was fragmented into tiny shards. Needless to say, the drive was a total loss. Granted, I've worked with a lot of CD-ROM drives over the years, and I've only seen that problem occur once--but there's no doubt it could (and does) occasionally happen.
I dunno, the fact that he's willing to state the correlation coefficient so precisely makes me leary of his own statistical expertise.
The Fact that they use a standard deviation to test an Hypothesis, you know, instead of Hypothesis Testing makes me certain that he doesn't know jack about statistics.
you do _NOT_ use descriptive statistics to study samples!!!
I can't believe how wrong this analysis is... What you're supposed to test is that when seeded with a yawn, you're more susceptible then when not seeded, and this is a whole other set of calculations...
I did try it... but it made me yawn.
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
From TFA: "Faced with these numbers, the masters of determining truth from error cited the "large sample size" and the 4% difference in the results in confidently concluding the yawn seed had a significant effect on the subjects and, therefore, the yawn is decisively contagious."
Huh? IIRC, the MythBusters thought this was inconclusive. They called the myth "plausible", but absolutely did not do what the TFA claims here. It my recollection of this particular episode flawed?
Wikipedia seems to agree with my recollection, but I'm not sure that says much... :p
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Next they're going to tell us that pretty girls don't actually fart.
1. Write boring-as-batshit blog entry on inane, but slightly geeky topic.
2. Sign up to AdSense.
3. ???
4. Profit!
Go to an auditorium filled with people. Ask everyone to please be quiet. When everyone obliges... Then you yawn! If it is contagious, people will yawn back, causing a chain reaction of yawning that would be interesting. Same princible as Stand by Me's throwing up, but less disgusting.
God spoke to me.
I have news for you. Not only can I make the cats yawn, but I can even make them lonely!
C|N>K
Is that the article itself is a yawn seed.
Goodnight.
Something witty goes here.
This is ridiculous. Just by watching the show, it is clear to anyone with the most basic of science/math backgrounds that the MythBuster's methods lack rigour. But it would be wrong to criticise them for this - they do not claim to be scientists, statisticians or to offer great rigour and completeness in their experiments. They illustrate scientific principles and do cool stuff that's great fun to watch (and show some impressive creativity and intelligence in their designs).
The MythBuster's are not publishing papers or writing books and so this sort of criticism is redundant.
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
This week on Mythbusters, Horse vs. Donkey: There is a widely known rumor that a donkey can accelerate faster than a horse from the line, so this week Adam and Jamie investigate! Starting out with a series of tests using actual horses and actual donkeys that the kids like to watch and understand, they proceed to test the effect of adding dynamite: will the horse be able to beat the donkey with a stick of dynamite to assist it? Does donkey poo or horse poo travel fastest when propelled by dynamite?
Finally the duo will conclude with a set of precise, statistically accurate analyses (to only the most suitable numbers of significant figures!!!!11111) intended to appease the exacting standards of Slashdot nerds who cannot otherwise sleep. Additional donkeys and horses will be tested in a similar manner to the first. Hypothesis tests will be run to determine whether it is likely that all donkeys are faster, or if it is just a small portion of donkeys, based on the results of the tests. Tests will be conducted using N-zero-body, Karez-McDamnit and Hausad De Ywannabe methods, and we conclude with our answer neatly written and underlined in red.
The scary thing is, people would probably watch it. At least until the poo bit was finished.
// cinn
Although I thought that this mythbusters experiment was kind of interesting (although apparently flawed in it's statistics) - they did leave out one aspect that I thought could have potentially effected the results. In their experiment they had Kari fake yawning to see if seeing one person yawn would make someone else yawn, but they didn't test to see if there were any environmental factors that could cause people to yawn. If there were some environmental factor that caused people to yawn, then it would certainly give the appearance of yawning being contagious because all the people in the area would be yawning.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
The only scientifically relevant statistic for Mythbusters is that a high percentage of the audience (most of the men, and probably a significant fraction of the women) want to see them do more experiments with Kari in a body suit (ala the butt-moulding exercise).
-Styopa
Anyone with half a brain knows that statistics can be twisted to say what you want.
and... Granted, I've worked with a lot of CD-ROM drives over the years, and I've only seen that problem occur once
Sounds to me like they got this one straight on. You've worked with many CD drives and have only seen this occur once. One would then conclude that it really 'is highly unlikely', but could happen. So...what exactly is your beef with this mythbuster's result?
I've studied statistics. I can follow this guy's math. It makes sense, and he's right. But the fact is, I'm rusty enough to not find it to be "obvious". (Hell, I find about 90% of the field of statistics to be non-obvious.) Perhaps 25% being very close to 29% should make it obviously wrong, but it was this erroneous, superficial line of reasoning that made the Mythbusters mess up in the first place. Maybe the blogger found it to be obvious. Or perhaps he was so experienced with statistics that he did some of the math in his head. But, more likely, he didn't know for sure that the mythbusters were wrong until he sat down and did the math.
There's nothing "obvious" about this.
There have been few occasions where someone yawned in my presence or even over the phone that didn't initiate a yawn for myself. Even as I finished that sentenced I just yawned! To me it seems very likely that the yawn reflex is communicable. It seems very easy to get some one to yawn... just yawned again... of course it is 8 am and I got only a few hours sleep last night.
When are people going to realize that Mythbusters isn't a show about science? It's a show about engineering. The "science" part of it is rudimentary, at best, with inadequate controls, irreproducible results, and improper methodologies. The fascinating part of the show is the engineering necessary to construct the device to test the myth. When viewed as a show about engineering...how they brainstorm to use engineering to solve a problem, it is a fascinating show. When viewed as a show about the scientific method, it is just maddening.
I think they know this and advertise that they do "science" because it sells better than doing engineering. Scientist are sexy now, whereas engineers are boring.
I have seen a CD split into 2 halves, but never shatter.and that was once in 15 years. Unless I freeze them with compressed air and throw them against the wall. :)
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
http://www.krzyzewschefs.org/pics/MythbustersYawni ngWithErrorBars.png
The error bars show the Bayesian 95% credible interval for a binomial distribution. They are calculated using the Clopper-Pearson Method.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_proportion_c onfidence_interval
**yawn**
actually one watches "Mythbusters" to see if they can get Grant to prance around in the skintight suit. \swoon Grant swoon
I would have replaced "Grant" with another person on the show, but she gets enouph grief already, shark week, painted silver, 360 swing, etc
**Yawn**
real reason for one to watch myth busters, is to see the hosts walking around in skin tight outfits
Jamie in wetsuit = the sexy (esp with berret)
Not Always Scientifically Accurate
Mike
After reading the word "yawn" a couple of times in the headline blurb. I actually yawned. Now I have yawned while typing this.
"...the shortest distance between two points may be straight line, but it is by no means the most interesting."
Never liked their show and their misleading "analyses" and practices. In general, I find more flaws with their reasoning and conclusions than reasonable conclusions. YMMV.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
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The author suggests that a coefficient of 0.10 or higher is necessary for significance. This is not typically considered the threshold for social sciences like psychology. The significance threshold level of 0.05 is typically used.
I yawned several times just reading about people yawning.
I didn't see the episode. We have 2 groups of people, one primed with a yawn, the other not. If the group is all in a room together, and one of them yawns, haven't they primed the group again? As soon as one person in the non-primed (control) group yawns, that whole group has now been primed. Or did they actually confine each of these 50 people and observe them individually?
I've always thought the show should be called "MythTesters" anyways. Going in there with an assumption that you're going to debunk the myth is not good!
I think it's best to view Mythbusters as the start of the experiment. That is, often when doing science, a scientist will conduct a small experiment with less rigorous standards to get an idea of the scale of the result and to get an idea if there is anything worth investigating. So while the science often leaves something to be desired, they sometimes have some interesting results that hopefully lead to a more rigorous examination.
The main thing they teach, is the spirit of experimentation. Most people go through their entire lives without ever testing anything they are told. The Mythbusters guys show how anyone, even some tv guys with no real science background can test their preconceived notions and have fun doing it. One of the problems modern science faces is we don't feel the need to test most of the myths because the answer is "obvious". While a scientist may be happy with a result calculated on paper using physics, the general public does not understand the laws (and thousands of experiments behind them) used to do so, and so in a way a scientist telling them the laws of physics say its impossible is no different from a priest telling them god did it.
Heck just look at the popularity of "New Age" beliefs in things like crystals etc. Scientists just law it off, because they have limited time and resources, and more credible claims to test, so we need people like the Mythbusters willing to to actually test it. And if they get a result counter to what science tells us, hopefully some real scientists will be moved to perform more rigorous experimentation. And unlike most people, the Mythbusters have shown a willingness to accept they make mistakes and have been wrong, and have dedicated entire shows to revisiting myths they screwed up. So don't think of the mythbusters as a couple failed scientists, when they never claimed to be scientists in the first place, but a group of everyday people willing to some of the more outrageous things we all hear in everyday life to the test.
I usually don't care how far off they are on the science but I do cringe when they make an elementary mistake. For example, they once tested a myth of a person surviving a fall from a plane by his fall being cushioned by a large explosion. As an initial step they needed to figure out how high they needed to place Buster before dropping him so that he would be at terminal velocity when he reached the impact area. Adam calculated this by using a rough assumption of the terminal velocity of a falling person and then calculating how long it would take to reach this velocity by falling in a vacuum. This may have seemed like a simple approximation that won't greatly change the result. However, he was off by 100% (they would have needed to drop Buster from about twice as high to get within 5% of terminal velocity). The more precise calculation was much more complicated (since it was a limit problem and the terminal velocity of an object depends on its area as well as its mass) but with the help of Wikipedia it only took me about 10 minutes to perform. He would have been blown up all the same but with such horrible accuracy with your calculation why even bother whipping out your calculator in the first place?
And depending on how you calculate with statistics you can get just about any answer you like. Just add to the case which time of day it was when each subject was tested and you will end up with some interesting extra results having an impact on the data.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I really wish I'd gotten a better grasp on > basic algebra math in high school. I had some extremely fast paced teachers, and I missed some of the underlying concepts early in the classes.
At some point in 7th or 8th grade I was above my class for that level of math, and they decided to skip me a year ahead in classes, and I was screwed thereafter.
Am 24 now, and have a nice job doing webdev and as the only office tech admin in my department, but more advanced math is one of the major things that's made me doubt trying to go back to school and get a CS degree. I have a lot more drive and patience now than when I was 17, but I wouldn't even know where to begin as far as teaching myself.
The correlation coefficient is an exact amount in this case, assuming that the data collected was accurately (which should be the case, since it's not at all difficult to tell if someone yawned or did not yawn), because there was no measurement error.
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Not rigorous science? Maybe. But so much better and nutritious for the mind than all other TV series...