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Busting the MythBusters' Yawn Experiment

Posted by kdawson on from the it's-not-the-company-it's-the-hour dept.

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.'"

2 of 397 comments (clear)

  1. Yawn... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Yawn...

  2. Re:Submitter gets an F on this one by mackyrae · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Some things have infinite numbers of sig-figs, such as counting whole things or using conversion numbers (like 1.54 when going between inches and centimeters). Regardless, sig-figs are based on the *least* accurate measurement involved, so if you do 50 people * 1.54976 * 2.4 and with the last two numbers those decimals are as closely as you can round based on your measuring device, you can only have 1 significant digit because 1.4 only has one significant digit.

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