On the matter of asking useful questions

This blog is all about asking Basic Questions.

Hopefully they will be “the right questions” rather than just any old questions.

Josh Kaufman has written a pertinent blog post:

How to Ask Useful Questions

At last I believe in the Theorem of Pythagoras

Pythagoras was right! Here’s the definitive, rigorous mathematical proof:

See boring proofs at Wikipedia (or elsewhere).

View a collection of other interesting dynamic GIFs here.

All I want for Christmas is a laminal voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative

I’ve always been interested in spoken languages, as a dabbler and non-specialist, since learning some Latin and French at high school and picking ups some basics of various European and Asian tongues while travelling around in my days at IBM.

Today, for no particular reason and while dabbling, I came across this Wikipedia article about the “thorn” letter which takes on the “th” sound in words such as “this” and “thing.”

I was struck by the following statement in the second paragraph:

However, in modern Icelandic it's pronounced as a
laminal voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative

So there! Perhaps something to mull over and help one to doze off after a hefty Christmas meal … or perhaps not.

Anyway, may I take the opportunity to wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Possibly getting eaten by a shark, versus winning the Lotto?

I keep telling members of my family that buying Lotto tickets is a “mug’s game” and that they would better spend their hard-earned money on something else.

They even think that buying a Lotto ticket each week increases their chance of a win. I’ve given up on trying to persuade them, it’s like talking to the proverbial brick wall.

Earlier today I was reading Response to the latest shark bite is fuelled by myth and retribution and reading the various interesting opinions of commenters.

One of them pointed to a web document that turns out to be a real gem, and I encourage you all to read right through its six pages:

Shark attacks and the Poisson approximation by Byron Schmuland

As well as gaining valuable insights about your chances of being gobbled by a “Noah’s Ark” you will also learn about the theory of coincidences: winning the Lotto, having the same birthday as someone else in a group, and the true nature of Edmonton Oiler Wayne Gretsky’s amazing batting average.

What you think is right may actually be wrong – Inferring versus rationalising

Over at The Conversation there’s a thought-provoking new article (16 January 2014) about the process of thinking:

What you think is right may actually be wrong – here’s why

We like to think that we reach conclusions by reviewing facts, weighing evidence and analysing arguments. But this is not how humans usually operate, particularly when decisions are important or need to be made quickly.

The matters broached in this article are very relevant to this blog about Basic Questions, wouldn’t you agree?

Do dogs show empathy? It could well be so.

Just back from checking that our pooch was comfortable on a clear. cool early Winter’s night here Down Under in Melbourne. He was okay, and seemed to appreciate the visit!

Back inside, I went to ABC Australia’s Catalyst science show’s website to catch up on their latest episode. You may recall that back in April I pointed out a story about dogs cute appearance probably being due to their facial musculature (see Cute Canines, Eyes That Engage You and watch the video).

Well, in this week’s new episode there’s another intriguing story, this one about dog empathy which the story describes as:

“. . . the naturally occurring subjective experience of similarity between the feelings expressed by self and others without losing sight of whose feelings belong to who. Translated, what that means is to have true empathy, you have to not only feel someone's pain, you have to know that the emotion belongs to them and not to yourself.”

Watch the video. What do you think?

I’m somewhat convinced. I do know that if I’m playing with my dog (and others before him), I only have to howl or yelp in a certain way – making the sort of sound you hear if you accidentally tread on the dog, or if the dog gets bitten in a dogfight – then consistently the dog will immediately stop whatever he’s doing and cuddle up close to to me as if to offer sympathy.

You only have to do a simple search or two and you’ll find much other material about the unique dog-human relationship.

Fascinating Facts about Flu - What Flu is and isn’t

As southern winter sets in here Down Under, I’m aware that for the previous two years I suffered a number of quite nasty attacks of what I called “the Flu” – But was it really influenza, or something else, and will I succumb again this year despite again getting jabbed with Flu vaccine?

Just-published this first week of June 2013 is a “Facts about Flu” series of articles in The Conversation that sheds light on this topic. There are insights and clarifications, as well as lots of shadowy and dark areas where our knowledge remains deficient.

This excellent series is as follows:

Part one: Of influenza, flu, potions and key opinion leaders

Part two: Influenza vaccine for 2013: who, what, why and when?

Part three: H1N1, H5N1, H7N9? What on earth does it all mean

Part four: The Tamiflu saga shows why all research data should be public

Part five: CSL’s flu vaccine leaves a hole in Australia’s pandemic plan

Part six: Should flu shots be mandatory for health-care workers?

Part seven: The Holy Grail of influenza research: a universal flu vaccine

Part eight: Is it really the flu? The other viruses making you ill in winter

Part nine: The heart of the matter: how effective is the flu jab really?

Cute Canines - Eyes That Engage You

My mother adored cats, and I was brought up with felines of all fur colors, temperaments ranging from cuddly to haughty, taking control as they do all over the house. But my wife hates cats, so it’s been dogs during my married life.

I’ve gotten to really like dogs, and I’m in good company. For example, British prime minister Winston Churchill in the movie The Gathering Storm is pictured one day sitting in the farm section of his country property pondering the animals around him. He comments to an approaching visitor:

“You know, a cat looks down upon a man, and a dog looks up to a man, but a pig will look a man in the eye and see his equal.”

I don’t know about pigs, the closest I’ve ever been to one is while eating ham or bacon. Can’t say that I’ve eaten cat or dog (knowingly at least, but then again I have been to parts of Asia).

The dogs that we’ve had have always been cute and devoted. What is it about dogs that makes them into “man’s best friend” as is generally accepted?

Of course, there’s the services they faithfully carry out for us: watchdogs, seeing-eye dogs, wartime duty, lifesaving, farm dogs effortlessly shepherding sheep, and much. much more.

But it was an episode of the outstanding Catalyst science program Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that put forward another fascinating insight. Catalyst features stories about dogs every now and again.

For example, there’s this story about dogs’ eyes:

It was thought, that like humans, all dogs have the same eye structure and see the world the same way. But Australian researchers have discovered that dogs had a completely different retina. Amazingly, it means different dogs see the world completely differently.

All very interesting, but it doesn’t answer my question of why, of all domestic animals, dogs seem so cute and appealing (compared with cats, especially).

It seems that there could be a good scientific reason for this. There’s now a plausible theory that it all has to do with dogs’ eyebrows.

Watch the video, and read the transcript.

Are you convinced?

Do husbands and wives ever fully understand each other?

Now that really is a basic question!

Thanks to Scott Hilburn’s “Wife of Pi” comic of 08 February 2013 for leading me to ponder this most problematic of matters:

More of his works at The Argyle Sweater.

Is perfection achievable?

That’s a pretty decent ‘basic question’ is it not?

I got to thinking about it after coming across the following article:
Don’t Let Perfection Be a Barrier to Improvement

If you know of something that can be done to make a process better and you intentionally choose to leave the issue unresolved, you are violating the principle of zero defects. But if you overspend your resources for a small gain when there is a bigger gain available somewhere else, your actions violate the ‘better, not perfect’ principle.

So, which is right?

I suggest that you read this short article too, including the comments.

Aussie 8-year-olds learning atomic structure and the Periodic Table

Before I joined IBM Australia in 1970, I spent most of the 1960s teaching Chemistry, General Science and Mathematics to older high school students.

A couple of times at the start of each year I would take classes of junior grade kids newly arrived from primary school. I always admired their freshness, openness and willingness to learn – that is, before years of high school regimentation wore off some of that freshness and keenness.

After more than forty years in the IT industry, I am attempting to undertake a broad-brush relearning of all things scientific, on various aspects of physics, chemistry, life sciences, cosmology, climate science and other things that have developed so much over those four decades and still intrigue me.

This includes wondering about how high school science teachers go about things these days. So I was extremely interested in a segment earlier this evening in the 7.30 program on ABC Australian television.

Physics and chemistry are the bane of many a high school student, but what if we're pitching the ideas to them too late? Can eight-year-olds absorb atomic theory? One teacher has asked that question in a bold experiment at a Brisbane primary school. And he says it shows young minds are much more advanced than we think.

Read the transcript and watch the recording here… Weird science reveals more advanced students … I think you’ll be surprised, or even a little amazed.

What causes Ice Ages to come and go?

Anyone who thinks that climate science is straightforward has “rocks in their head” (a term coined by geologists, perhaps?).

Because I’m flat out trying to keep up with changes in the computing and IT world, so don’t pretend to have the time to be anything more than an interested part-time observer of what’s going on in climate science (and cosmology, and mathematics, and physics, and chemistry, …).

I’ve been following meteorological science at a distance for half a century or so. The models for prediction of next week’s weather certainly do seem to be getting more accurate and reliable, yet still with the occasional surprising miscalculation: storms on a predicted sunny day, or vice versa. Extend the time scale to next month or next year and the same can’t be said, so complex are the relationships and so dependent are the models on the various assumptions upon which they’re based.

When you go from weather science to climate science, not only are the time periods so vastly longer but also the underlying assumptions are more debatable, the geographical scale so much wider and the measurements so much harder to obtain that the predictions flowing from the climate models by their nature must be rather uncertain.

I was reminded of all this when reading Unlocking the secrets to ending an Ice Age with its several charts of the type that I commented upon in this blog a few years ago (for example, The rattlesnake’s rattle).

I don’t class myself as a climate change skeptic – an appellation that unfortunately these days has a negative connotation, since all scientists should be prepared to be skeptical – but probably as a “concerned that proper science being done and that  governments then strive to develop and implement appropriately sensible policies and legislation” skeptic.

Nature, complexity, myths, skepticism, caution? What am I on about?

It’s very easy to come to the wrong conclusions (and base wrong policies on these conclusion). New Scientist has recently published Climate myths: Ice cores show CO2 increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming [registration might be necessary to view this article] but is careful to point out:

“The lag proves that rising CO2 did not cause the initial warming as past ice ages ended, but it does not in any way contradict the idea that higher CO2 levels cause warming.”

To consider a relatively simple case, here Down Under in Australia we’re building a National Broadband Network (NBN).

Part way through the NBN roll-out there’s still considerable opposition – from the Liberal National Coalition (the federal opposition political party) as well as from some individual critics -- to the technology being implemented (FTTH / FTTP architecture) as being too costly and unwarranted.

It’s quite surprising that the debate is still so heated, considering that the technologies are so well understood (in distinct contrast to the complexities of climate science). The same coalition party also opposes the Australian Carbon Tax and it seems they’re doing so more for political than scientific reasons.

Science wasn’t meant to be easy. Nature is complex. Clear thinking is too hard for many to aspire to. Science and politics (and often, religion) don’t seem to mix well.

But it’s all worth the struggle, and can ultimately be rewarding -- plus a lot of fun!

I’ll do it in a minute (or two, or three)

Professor David Suzuki has some wise words for us all, watch and listen to his Test Tube story as he shares a common scientific observation.

TIP: enter just a single word when prompted in the opening screen.

Scaling the heights and depths of the universe

Today I stumbled upon Cary and Michael Huang’s The Scale of the Universe animation (2010). Quite impressive …

Move the horizontal slider button (or click the left/right arrow keys) to zoom in and out across the scale. Click the down arrow key to improve the quality of the image.

In a similar vein, watch Cosmic Journeys: Cosmic Energy Powers of 10 …

Not enough for you? Then why not also watch From Quarks to Outer Space …

Here’s the same as a Java animation.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the classic Powers of Ten documentary produced in 1968, written and directed by Ray and Charles Eames:

And to finish off this post about distances across the universe, take a look at the smorgasbord of free videos offered by SPACE Rip called Cosmic Journeys – what a grand feast!

A world clock of life, death and the environment

Here’s an interesting variation on world clocks, click the image below to open in a new window …

It’s quite interesting to watch the statistics build up inexorably over a number of minutes.

But I wouldn’t keep it running all the time though, if I were you, since I noticed that it chews up a full 25 percent CPU (one of the processors on my quad-core system).

Beyond belief – denial, scepticism and all the rest

There’s a thoughtful discussion of belief versus rationalism, as it applies to climate science, over at Climate Spectator.

Climate Spectator is a website “that will seek to cover not just the science and politics of climate change, but also the key business parameters: the massive flows of investment expected in coming years and decades, the changing business models, the new technology, and the creation of new markets and investment propositions.”

In his article Beyond belief Paul Gilding starts off:

It’s time for true confessions. I don’t believe in climate science.

That’s because I’m a rational person. Belief is important in my life and I apply the term to things involving faith. Faith is how we believe when there is no rational basis for a decision. Faith and belief often apply to matters of the spiritual realm. But they also apply to matters of a more worldly nature, where the capacity for faith and belief has framed many positive developments in humanity over history.

There are quite a few interesting points made by Paul and the people who commented on his post, so don’t delay, go read it now!

The rattlesnake’s rattle – Part 2

My previous article Climate change – debating the rattlesnake’s rattle (posted on 23 March 2010) invited readers to think about the very basics of scientific procedure: questioning, measurement, interpretation, hypothesizing, and all the rest of it.

At the end of that article, I included the following image:

Imagine that the snake represents climate changes
going way back in time, and we’re positioned
at the very tip of the rattle

Readers may not have understood what I was trying to get at, so here’s some more about my intention in introducing the snake analogy.

Firstly, a rattlesnake has a nasty bite! So I’m a little concerned that – whatever “wrong” might signify -- asking the wrong questions, taking or focussing on the wrong measurements, making the wrong interpretations, presenting the maze of information in the wrong ways, will all lead to wrong conclusions and wrong actions being taken (at great effort and expense for us all).

When searching for a rattlesnake image, I was thinking about the rather snakelike, wavy shape of the global temperature fluctuation graph over a very long time scale. I should have included such a chart in that article, but time ran out on me.

Take a look at the Wikipedia article Geologic temperature record and click on each of the thumbnail charts to view larger versions. Think hard!

Here’s one rattlesnake, and what I’ve called its “rattle area” I’ve circled in green. It shows “the long-term evolution of oxygen isotope ratios during the Phanerozoic eon as measured in fossils” (I’m sure you all immediately understand what that means):
 
View of climate change extending back through the last 540 million years, including many cycles of change from warm to cold and back again.

Hmm, I’m not at all sure if I’m interpreting this correctly! But it seems to be saying that around 450 million years ago (circled in pink) it was even colder than now. And it was certainly far hotter around 70 million years ago (circled in red), even hotter around 270 million years ago (and pretty hot around 360 and 480 million years ago).

Maybe the phanerozoic chart above is not saying that at all, is it? I might be classified as a “trained scientist” but am in no way a climate change specialist, so my interpretation could be way off beam. Exactly what is the above chart telling us?

Then there’s this 65 millions year of climate change chart, obtained :

 Expansion showing climate change during the last 65 million years. Note that the scales are not numerically the same since they are based on measurement different types of taxa under different conditions.

My “rattle area” this time is circled in pink. Somewhere in that condensed area of the chart is the last few hundred years of climate change.

Hmmm, again. Benthitic Oxygen-18 measurements, changes in chart scaling factors, polar ocean equivalents – but it sure looks impressive!

To me, from this 65 million years chart it’s hard to interpret whether current temperature changes that are filling the headlines are of much significance compared with changes in the last million years or so. Specialists in this field please explain, exactly what does this second chart tell us?

So, sitting on the fence and feeling very uncomfortable,  I leave it there for you all to ponder! … Time has run out for me again.

Technorati Tags: Climate Change,Global Warming,Global Cooling,Scientific Methodology,Interpretation

Climate change – debating the rattlesnake’s rattle

My aim with this Basic Questions blog is to encourage people to think “scientifically” and to ask the “right” questions. If you don’t ask the “right questions” then you can’t hope to come up with meaningful, dependable answers.

This applies to all walks of life. There are some issues such as the debate on AGW (anthropogenic global warming) where confusion and misinformation abounds, as highlighted for example by a recent post of mine A little bit of Carbon Dioxide? (the claim that only 3.4% of carbon dioxide, which is only 3.62% of greenhouse gases,  is caused by human activity).

Let’s look at another claim by Burt Rutan (referring again to his PDF and this PowerPoint presentations). At slide 16 of the latter, he talks about dishonest presentation of information, such as the now famous (or perhaps infamous) “hockey stick” claims about global warming:

And at slide 16 he decries what he says is “data manipulation” – the apparent sleight-of-hand in doing away with the medieval warm period -- by the United Nation’s intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC):

And so on. There are so very many presentations available that you are likely to lose your way in the overabundance of pretty charts and different data “interpretations” or whatever you want to call them.

Apart from Rutan’s, and as just one other example, try battling your way through some of the presentations by The Global Carbon Project (GCP) such as The Carbon Budget 2007+ presented at CLIMATE CHANGE - Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions (Copenhagen, 10-12 March 2009).

UPDATE: Bill McKibben of 350.org says in Dissecting the sceptics (2) that "Very few people really want to change in any meaningful way, and given half a chance to think they don’t need to, they’ll take it" and “at bottom, that’s a battle as much about courage and hope as about data.”

Who’s “right” and who’s “wrong” about all this complicated stuff, if it can be put so simplistically? There’s dissension among even the climate science specialists, so how can non-specialists make sense of it all and come to logical conclusions about what can be done (if anything) to modify the climate changes?

There’s little doubt that there has been some warming during the last several decades, but my question this time is:

How significant is the present global warming trend in the very-long-term picture of global climate change?

What I’m getting at here is, if we try to estimate what has happened to the climate going back not just a few hundred years (such as the medieval period), but many thousands and even many millions of years, then what picture emerges (and how reliable is it)? It has been a lot hotter at times long ago (such as when there were green forests in what we now call Antarctica), as well as much colder during various ices ages.

Are the current temperature fluctuations, in comparison with with the totality of changes over the eons, like just the rattle on the rattlesnake’s tail?

Imagine that the snake represents climate changes
going way back in time, and we’re positioned
at the very tip of the rattle

Are we focussing too much on the rattle, warning sign though it is, rather than on the picture that emerges if we stand right back and look over the entire rattlesnake?

Is the tiny part of the historical global temperature graph just a “pimple on a pumpkin” and nothing more than a tiny squiggle at the very end of a curve that has had many ups and downs, some of them perhaps much larger than current variations?

I’m not sure, are you? What can and should we do, if anything, to avoid the rattlesnake’s bite?

Technorati Tags: Global Climate,AGW,Misinformation,Data Interpretation,Misrepresentation

The universe is 20 million years older than previously thought

Thanks to my friend William Atkins for pointing out at iTWire that astrophysicists from Princeton and Johns Hopkins universities have determined the age of the universe more precisely, and it turns out to be a “little” older than previously thought.

The scientists have analyzed data from WMAP, NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, and have come up with an additional 20 million years.

WMAP definitively determined the age of the universe to be 13.73 billion years old to within 1% (0.12 billion years) -as recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records! So a mere 20 million years can be considered just a tiny amendment of the universe’s age!

This Basic Questions blog has a number of earlier posts about such cosmological matters. If you’re at all interested in cosmology, the WMAP site should definitely be on your must-see list. Since 2000, they say, the three most highly cited papers in all of physics and astronomy are WMAP scientific papers.

Timeline of the Universe

Technorati Tags: Cosmology,Age of Universe,NASA,WMAP

Noxious chemical alert – global environmental threat!

It may not be widely realized, but this chemical substance is in heavy use and can be measured in very significant concentrations in our rivers and lakes.

It is also present in all sorts of commercial products including pesticides, is found inside most nuclear reactors, and is used in many other situations which would give any right-minded environmentalist reason to worry.

Please, please, please watch this video and become aware of the global threat to our rivers, oceans and atmosphere.

Show your understanding and support by commenting below. Even Albert Einstein (pictured below?) might sign a petition to ban it. Would you?

Do you see what I mean? Don’t be fooled, stand back and consider it carefully.

As a one-time chemistry teacher -- and putting aside any false modesty due to the serious nature of the environmental threat -– trust me, I’m an expert having considerable knowledge about this pervasive substance.

Technorati Tags: Contamination,Pollution,Global threat,Environment,Dihydrogen Monoxide,Gullibility