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Mathematical Parrot Reveals His Genius With Posthumous Paper
ananyo writes "Even in death, the world's most accomplished parrot continues to amaze. The final experiments involving Alex – a grey parrot trained to count objects – have just been published (abstract). They show that Alex could accurately add together Arabic numerals to a sum of eight, and correctly add three small sets of objects, putting his mathematical abilities on par with (and maybe beyond) those of chimpanzees and other non-human primates."
Why wasn't that on Slashdot?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~ebarnes/python/dead-parrot.htm
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
They (octopuses sic) have trouble with base 10, they're pretty good with octal.
Alex was clearly pretty smart. However, it is as yet still unclear if Alex was actually a representative parrot or was smarter than other parrots. A lot of the current work being done will help answer that. There's also some concern that some of the early experiments with Alex didn't adequately handle the Clever Hahns problem- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans where an animal rather than give actual answers uses subtle cues from the examiner on how to answer correctly. The more recent experiments help address that. It seems clear at this point that Alex's intelligence, and that of the other African Greys, is genuine, but what the average is like is still unclear. One thing is certain though: the use of the word "parrot" to mean mindlessly repeat is deeply unfair.
That would've been even more impressive than his math abilities.
And Most US grade school teachers.
The reason why the US is Lacking in Math and Science is most teachers Hate and are Afraid of Math and Science and past that hate of learning to their students.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
...that IS genius!!!
but only up to 8.
It also looks like your English teacher Hated and was Afraid of English, and Past that Hate to you.
How do dolphins and octopuses rank? I tried a search w.r.t. octopuses but didn't find anything (and wikipedia has nothing about it).
Octopuses are the smartest invertebrates on Earth. I do sparrow fishing as hobby and they don't stop amazing me, from their ability to deploy decoy legs able to walk alone, annoying ink jets and their fantastic camouflage they are pretty good stealing items too! They should join thepiratebay!
(it's a joke, I know the difference between stealing and copying)
But it has a Kevin Bacon Number of 3.
Alex the Parrot
WorkedWith
Irene Pepperberg
WhoWasIn
"Ripley's Believe It or Not!" (1999) {(#1.5)}
With
Dean Cain
WhoWasIn
"Ellen: The Ellen DeGeneres Show" (2003) {(2003-10-08)}
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
With time, the dinosaurs might have evolved to create civilization.
They actually had an advanced civilization but it collapsed. When the time came to actually DO something about the massive rock heading for the planet, they built a trajectory altering rocket that would land on the asteroid, dig itself in, and then fire its engines to steer the asteroid the necessary fraction of a degree away to save the planet.
Unfortunately they used touch screens for everything (instead of keyboards and mice) to cater to the T-Rex crowd with their short arms. When it was time to launch, they futilely pawed at their dPads but they just couldn't get any actual work done.
Just finished reading the book. http://books.google.com/books?id=I0xiJfwPukUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=alex+and+me&hl=en&sa=X&ei=awhET92BCYm22gXK15GaCA&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=alex%20and%20me&f=false
I did a calculation a while back that compared a middle grade teachers salary with an engineers. I took into account the normal days off from holidays+summer vacation that teachers normally get, compared them to the Holidays and standard vacation time an engineer gets. With a standard 8 hour day from an engineer and a 10 hour day from a teacher. It worked out that the engineer was only getting paid a small amount more. I think 1 dollar an hour difference.
Now that 10 hour day is an average that teachers bitch and moan about to me, however from friends who are teachers I usually see them working up to 12 hours some day and 6 - 8 hours the other... So 10 hours seemed fare. Most engineers I know work more then 8 hours a day to but they don't complain about it as much.
Teacher have a powerful union behind them (My personal feeling is Unions are holding good teachers back from getting what they deserve but that is too much digressing) that makes sure that they are treated fairly most engineers do not have such protection.
But this anti-Math and Science from teachers starts well before they are teaching. Normally for anyone graduating from High School who is choosing a major a Teaching degree is one of those that you can get that has an obvious career path that doesn't require heavy Math and Science, so they go that route. I went to college I know education majors, I saw the classes they took, I saw their masters classes too... They are joke classes to give them a degree.
The Poor teacher excuse is getting really lame today. For they are a few groups without strong math or science skills who can get a decent middle class job, they are not going to be rich but they will be able to pay their bills and feed a family.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
(it's a joke, I know the difference between stealing and copying)
Octopuses don't. Just the other day one was telling me SOPA was essential to saving Hollywood from all those filthy movie thieves. I have no idea why everyone thinks they're so smart.
I do sparrow fishing as hobby
Sparrow fishing? Is that fishing for sparrows? Fishing with sparrows? Is this live bait fishing? Seems like casting would be difficult but oh-so satisfying if they're House Sparrows.
The enemies of Democracy are
There, FYFY
Working on your doctorate?
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Corvids are as, or may even be more, intelligent. There's the classic story of the Caledonian crow who custom fashioned it's own tool to get at grubs, a trait previously only known to primates, to cite one example. Others abound, but I'm feeling too lazy right now to go hunt them down. Heckle and Jeckle would've outsmarted Wiley E. Coyote any day of the week.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Now your grad school adviser can look at your project and comment:
"a dead parrot would have better chances of getting its paper accepted than you."
Well, Alex can do sums up to 8 and so if we had 8 Alex's and an Meta-Alex that counted just Alex's and so on then you can see that we could build a quite complex Parrot Processor. This will come in handy in the post-apocalyptic world where there is no electricity but plenty of parrots because we will be able to construct vast turing machines that require nothing more than thousands of parrots and bird seed for power.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
<rimshot/>
Have gnu, will travel.
Yes. Back in about 1976 Psychology Today had a pair of articles - one showed that of all professions, teachers had the highest incidence of a 'mental block' against math, and the other showed that they were successful in communicating that to their students. In Grade 3 about 50% of all students liked math. By Grade 5, only about 15% of girls and 30% of boys liked math.
In my own experience, back in the late 1950s my school was one of those working with the experimental 'New Math' from Stanford Research Institute (now SRI international) - the books were stapled together paperbacks. The New Math basically taught math from an algebraic perspective. It worked great, and it probably accelerated my own understanding. Nationwide the New Math failed, and the analysis showed that while it worked great for students the teachers just couldn't hack it. So school systems dropped it, to the lasting detriment of all students for the last four decades.
It's yet one more unfortunate result of the stultified Education establishment, along with phonics, critical thinking and other power learning tools. The system was originally developed (by Dewey's own account) not to teach but to indoctrinate good industrial workers. The entire concept of age-based class cohorts was never efficient, cost effective or productive. It is now a completely obsolete anachronism, where crowd control and logistics comprises between 75% and 85% of a given day, and actual learning the poor relation.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/