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POPSParadox of the false positive "Here's how that works: imagine that you've got a disease that strikes one in a million people, and a test for the disease that's 99% accurate. You administer the test to a million people, and it will be positive for around 10,000 of them – because for every hundred people, it will be wrong once (that's what 99% accurate means). Yet, statistically, we know that there's only one infected person in the entire sample. That means that your "99% accurate" test is wrong 9,999 times out of 10,000!" "If we were good at understanding statistics, then here's what would happen when you flew to Las Vegas. You'd step out of McCarran airport, stare down the Strip at all those glittering, palatial casinos and say to yourself, "Holy crap – think of all the suckers who must have lost everything to finance this place!" Instead, our foolish minds are filled with thoughts like, "Man, look at all the money in this town – I'm going to win big!" And another casino is built."
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POPSOlder Brain May Be Wiser “For the young people, it’s as if the distraction never happened,” said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. “But for older adults, because they’ve retained all this extra data, they’re now suddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they’ve soaked up from one situation to another.”
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POPSA Dangerous Sunrise on Planet Gliese 876d [images] "Gliese 876 d is an extrasolar planet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 876. At the time of its discovery in June 2005, the planet had the lowest mass of any known extrasolar planet apart from the pulsar planets orbiting PSR B1257+12. Gliese 876 d takes less than two days to complete an orbit, at a distance only one-fiftieth of that between the Earth and the Sun and is the innermost known planet in its planetary system. Due to its low mass it can be categorized as a Super-Earth." This is the Astronomy Picture of the Day for May 21, 2008.
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POPSRare albino tadpoles "What's unusual about this is that the batches of white tadpoles suggest that a number of adults that carry genes for albinism possibly exist in the area, not just one." "Usually though albino amphibians fail to live to a breeding age - their white colour makes them a blindingly conspicuous beacon for the various animals that depend on frogs for food." she added.
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