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February 6th, 2007

2007 02 06

Science

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The Most Random Number

A few days ago, there was a little poll over on a science blog: Pick a number between 1 and 20. I picked 17. I wasn’t alone.

The idea is that 17 will always be the most common answer when people are asked to choose a number between 1 and 20. But neither Cosmic Variance nor Pharyngula offered a reasonable means of testing this proposition. That’s where our poll came in. This morning, I took a look at our data, and with 347 responses, I can confirm that 17 is significantly more popular than any number.

And here I thought I just had a remarkable feel for the will of the people.

2007 02 06

Airy Persiflage

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Feed Your TED

Via Eolake Stobblehouse: David Pogue and CBS have a video story on the TED conference:

I’ve blogged about TED several times … It’s a truly outlook-changing four days of talks, each 18 minutes long, from experts in every field of human endeavor — much more than Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED).

Among the participants in Pogue’s video piece are cartoonist Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, astronomer Cliff Stoll, better known as the author of The Cuckoo’s Egg, and musician Peter Gabriel.

You can watch or download videos of some of the TEDTalks. I haven’t done much exploring, but it looks worth checking out.