<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://www.clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/cbbf34b3-b999-4862-bd52-c8a862a55017/C4BB18AA-7CA4-4702-AC86-1BCFA5440567/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apophenia&oldid=136502234" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apophenia&oldid=136502234" style="font-size: 11px;">en.wikipedia.org</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apophenia&oldid=136502234"><P><B>Apophenia</B> is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term was coined in <A title="1958" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958">1958</A> by <A title="Klaus Conrad" class="new" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Klaus_Conrad&action=edit">Klaus Conrad</A>, who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness".</p> <P>In <A title="Statistics" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics">statistics</A>, apophenia would be classed as a <A title="Type I and type II errors" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors">Type I error</A> (false positive, false alarm, caused by an excess in <A title="Sensitivity" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity">sensitivity</A>). Apophenia is often used as an explanation of some <A title="Anomalous phenomenon" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_phenomenon">paranormal</A> and <A title="Religion" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion">religious</A> claims. It has been suggested that apophenia is a link between psychosis and <A title="Creativity" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity">creativity</A>.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apophenia&oldid=136502234">Conrad originally described this phenomenon in relation to the distortion of reality present in <A title="Psychosis" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis">psychosis</A>, but it has become more widely used to describe this tendency in healthy individuals without necessarily implying the presence of <A title="Neurology" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurology">neurological</A> or <A title="Mental illness" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_illness">mental illness</A>.</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apophenia&oldid=136502234"><DIV class="thumbinner"><A title="The identification of a face on the surface of Mars is an example of pareidoliac apophenia." class="internal" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Martian_face_viking_cropped.jpg"><IMG width="200" height="175" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Martian_face_viking_cropped.jpg" class="thumbimage" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Martian_face_viking_cropped.jpg" alt="The identification of a face on the surface of Mars is an example of pareidoliac apophenia." /></A> <DIV class="thumbcaption"> <DIV class="magnify"><A title="Enlarge" class="internal" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Martian_face_viking_cropped.jpg"><IMG width="15" height="11" alt="" src="http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/magnify-clip.png" /></A></DIV> The identification of a face on the surface of <A title="Mars" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars">Mars</A> is an example of <A title="Pareidolia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia">pareidoliac</A> apophenia.</DIV> </DIV></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/C4BB18AA-7CA4-4702-AC86-1BCFA5440567/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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