Fun and games
dmunger | March 13, 2009In honor of Pi Day, Greta is baking one of our favorite Chicago-style pizzas. This is our reconstruction of the pizza we ate as undergraduates at the University of Chicago. We spent a lot of time hanging out at a pizza place that would later become famous as one of Barack Obama's favorite haunts: Medici on 57th. They had their own style of pizza -- not stuffed, but definitely deep.
After we moved to New York for graduate school, we missed that great Medici deep-dish taste, and we tried repeatedly to reconstruct the recipe. After about five years, we thought we'd gotten pretty close, and the…
dmunger | January 25, 2009Today's Slashdot poll covers some of the same territory as this week's Casual Fridays study. Their poll asks "How Many Hours Of Work Do You Do Per Workday?" We asked two questions that get at the same concept: How much time to you spend at work per day, and how much of that time do you spend doing non-work activities. So how do CogDaily readers compare to Slashdotters? Not very well (or very well, depending on your perspective):
It appears that Slashdot readers work much harder than CogDaily readers. Could that really be true? Or is it just an artifact of the way the question was asked? The…
dmunger | December 24, 2008There's a fair bit of evidence that playing games can enhance your cognitive ability and prevent decline as we age. Or at least that's the excuse I use when I take a few minutes off during the course of the workday to play a game or two. Here are some of my current favorites:
Str8ts. This game confused me at first, but once I got the hang of it, I was an addict. Follow the walkthrough to get an idea of how it's played, then play the daily puzzle. Tip: You can type as many numbers as you want into each cell, then eliminate possibilities until you figure out the answer.
Kakuro. I play the…
dmunger | December 17, 2008Think about an angry face. Make a picture of it in your mind. Then, answer the poll below.
I'll add in a bit of extra space here so you don't see the poll before you picture an angry face.
Imagine an angry face. What gender is it? ( polls)
Thanks! We'll have more discussion about this poll, along with some exciting research, later today.
Update: See the post about the research behind this poll here.
dmunger | August 19, 2008The current issue of WIRED reveals an interesting quirk of the human perceptual system:
Can you spot what's wrong?
dmunger | April 21, 2008I know CogDaily is supposed to be a psychology web site, but sometimes, you have a question you simply must know the answer to.
I frequently need to boil a mug of water, and I've often wondered what the most energy-efficient method is. Is it the microwave, or the good-old-fashioned teakettle on the cooktop? In these days of global warming, it's an important question. So I finally decided to do the experiment.
Method and results:
I filled a ScienceBlogs mug with 300 ml tap water at 62° Fahrenheit.
Then I heated it at 30-second intervals in a 900-watt GE microwave oven.
Results are…
grrlscientist | March 29, 2008tags: Name that Robot, online quiz, fun and games
I know you all have suspected this, but now you finally have confirmation that it's true; I am not a robot geek!
I correctly named three robots (or maybe four, but that would have been an accident, I assure you). Wow!
dmunger | January 29, 2008Yesterday's post offered a simple poll question:
# How Many People Will Select The Same Option As You?
0%
1-25%
26-50%
51-75%
76-99%
100%
I didn't think this poll would attract as much interest as it did because in one sense I was just copying a poll from Slashdot. I guess people liked the fact that I offered one twist: I attempted to shape the results by suggesting that the "obvious" answer of 1-25% wouldn't work. If everyone was choosing their responses randomly, we might expect about 16 percent of respondents to choose this option, and therefore it would be the "correct" response.…
dmunger | January 28, 2008Slashdot's poll of the moment is just fantastic, combining psychology and reasoning in a very cool way. Here's the question:
# How Many People Will Select The Same Option As You?
0%
1-25%
26-50%
51-75%
76-99%
100%
Just CowboyNeal [this is the traditional joke Slashdot poll answer]
At first pass, you might figure that there are 6 possible responses, so if people respond randomly then about 16 percent will choose each answer, so the correct response would be 1-25 percent.
But of course, if everyone used that same logic, then many more than 25 percent of respondents would choose that…
dmunger | January 9, 2008Yesterday's demonstration about perception of tempo simply didn't work. If we had successfully replicated Schultze's Vos et al.'s study, we would have seen a systematic bias in the results.
I'd like to give this one more shot (I promise this will be my last attempt!). There are a couple reasons why the original might not have worked. First, people might have been using the visual progress of the audio player to help determine whether the clips were slowing. I've corrected that by narrowing the width of the player so you can't see the progress of the clip as it plays. Second, because the notes…
dmunger | October 26, 2007Here are a few neat optical illusions.
1. Multi-colored X?
(via Grand Illusions)
It appears that the X is two different colors, but it's actually made using just one shade of pink.
(more below)
2. Is this a circle?
(via eluzions)
It is indeed.
3. Some classic illusions embedded in an animated video:
Hope you enjoyed these!
[Mainly this is to distract you from the fact that there is no Casual Friday post today. There was a billing problem with our survey provider. I fully expect Casual Fridays to be back next week]
dmunger | October 11, 2007Yesterday, in our post on perfect pitch (usually called absolute pitch in research reports), we offered a quick test to see if we could identify the portion of our readers with absolute pitch. At first, things were looking good for the absolute pitch crowd. Readers listened to this note:
A whopping 18.8 percent of the 165 respondents identified it correctly as E. Since random chance would predict that just 8.33 percent of responses would guess this note, it would appear that over 10 percent of our readers have absolute pitch.
But some readers pointed out that many string instruments have an…
dmunger | September 22, 2007There's a short interview with me at the Scranton Times-Tribune -- it's their Saturday "Five Questions" feature so it's supposed to be funny rather than serious.
dmunger | September 18, 2007We have one of these little dragons in our living room.
Here's the page with instructions on how to make your own. Hint: Use stiff paper!
dmunger | September 18, 2007When we were in Vienna this past summer, we were surprised to learn that in Mozart's time, symphonic concerts were often mish-mashes: single movements and "greatest hits" arias instead of complete works. Audiences applauded after each movement. We saw a reenactment of such a concert, in 18th-century costumes:
If only we had been studying for the LSAT, we might not have had to read the program notes. Apparently the reading comprehension items in a recent study guide focused on how music was performed at the turn of the 19th century:
A. The final movements of symphonies by Mozart and…
dmunger | September 11, 2007This is a fun little study. The instructions are embedded in the video.
Did you get it right? Have you seen this study before?
It's based on an experiment by Daniel Simons. You can find another demonstration here.
dmunger | August 22, 2007This video (QuickTime required), captured last week by fellow ScienceBlogger Tara Smith, demonstrates a rarely seen visual and auditory effect:
When you watch this video of me singing the Men Without Hats one-hit-wonder "Safety Dance," it appears as though can I neither dance nor carry a tune.
I wonder if any of our commenters can offer an explanation.
Perhaps of more interest to the scientific community: a first -- Greta and I are finally photographed with Professor Steve Steve!
dmunger | August 21, 2007One cool thing about running a lab is that there aren't really many restrictions about decor. As long as the immediate area around the equipment is clear of visual distractions, anything goes. That's why we're inviting readers to send us examples of crazy lab art. Here's a great example of what can happen working too many hours in a row in a cell biology lab, courtesy of "Winnie":
Here's what the main room of Greta's lab looks like. This is where her Perception and Attention students go to participate in demo experiments, plan experiments they'll be running more formally in subject-running…
dmunger | July 10, 2007We've been away from the internet for a while now, but finally have a slow connection here in rainy Prague. While in Pisa, however, we were able to avail ourselves of a unique opportunity. The favorite trick of the amateur photographers here is to create the "illusion" of their friend/family member "saving" the tower from falling down, like this, admittedly poor attempt:
I've neglected to instruct Nora on the proper angle to hold her fingers, and I should probably have held the camera lower.
But a different illusion is both easier to create and, I think, more impressive. A similar photo…