mortiz080

Let's consider a real question...  As you know, new therapies come onto the market every so often. Those therapies have risks and benefits.  How do you evaluate these things?  What do you do to actually do the research you need to evaluate these things?  Consider this one:  SDF (Silver Diamine Fluoride) treatment is a way to treat teeth with a simple coating that not only prevents future cavities (caries), but also seems able to reverse  the damage in some existing cavities.   Suppose that you're considering getting this treatment for someone in your family.  How would you go about doing some checking to see if it's effective, and if it's safe.  (As you know, not all medical treatments turn out to be safe in the end; think radioactive water as a spa treatment ... a really bad idea.)   Ideally, we--the SearchResearchers of the world--would be able to do some kind of sanity check before taking on a new treatment regime. ...

A list of items is a useful thing to have.  When you're learning something new, having a list of examples of that thing gives you something to learn from.  It's a natural way to try and get your mind around a given topic.  We do this all the time.   This week's Challenge is intended to show you how to quickly get a list of a category.     As I mentioned, I wanted a list of Pre-Raphaelite artists, and was able to get Google to give me this list.     But the Challenge was to find a general way to get such lists of things.  Here's the Challenge:   1.  Can you find a way to find a set of each of the following:          a.  Pre-Raphaelite artists        b.  fictional works written in the Regency era       c.  clans in Scotland       d.  trees that are evergreen throughout the year         e.  Canadia...

The frequency illusion...  ... aka the Baader-Meinhof effect, happens when you learn something new, and then suddenly start to see it everywhere.  This happens when you finally decide to buy a new car and after weeks of agonizing, you finally pick that very special one, the very distinctive car that speaks to only you.  You're so happy.   And then you start to see that car everywhere. It's not distinctive at all, but actually pretty common.   That's the Baader-Meinhof effect.  It happens because you don't notice all of the cars that are just like it before  you made the choice--it's an illusion of the frequency  of the item.   It also happens with words.  If I use the term  whale shark  and you learn that as a new concept, suddenly you'll see it everywhere.  Trust me, you'll start to see whale shark everywhere now.   So when Regular Reader Ramón wrote it with a Washington Post article, it was a nic...

I often find myself in the position of looking...  ... for a list of things.  It's a natural way to try and get your mind around a given topic--if I can give you a list of items in that category, you'll get a sense of how that category of thing is defined (or at least how it looks).  People often do this when it's hard to define something precisely.  The difference between a vegetable and a fruit is tricky, but if I tell you that apples, strawberries, bananas, and grapes are all fruits while potatoes, carrots, corn, and peas are all vegetables, you'll start to get the idea. This doesn't give you a technical definition (difficult question: is a cucumber a fruit or a vegetable?), but it gives you a working intuition.   This came up for me a few weeks ago when I went to see an art exhibition of the Pre-Raphaelites.  I love their artwork, and while I knew a few of the artists (Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and John William Waterhouse, I cou...

My goal was simple...    ... I just wanted a movie that's a scan of the flight path.     Why?  Because as I was looking out the window, I saw beautiful things, extraordinary things, and I wanted to be able to stop the plane and look around a bit.  How could I do that?   So this became a search for a tool that would let me do exactly this.  I set up the Challenge like this:     1.  Can you make a movie that recreates the experience of flying from San Francisco to Austin?  Obviously, you don't want it to take all 4 hours.  How about a 2 minute version of the flight that just shows off the really interesting parts between Arizona and West Texas?  This isn't an ordinary SearchResearch Challenge--this is really a Challenge about (A) How to find such a tool?  and (B) How to use the tool to create a video that follows the flight path.   (You'll get to choose your own tool, along with your altitu...

I hate to do this to you...  ... because the answer to last week's Challenge is fun..  but I'm doing a tour of upstate New York this week.  I'm teaching at Cornell today and the University of Rochester tomorrow.   "Far above Cayuga's waters..."   Cornell University As a side-effect, I've had no time to write up my answer to the "Can you make a video?" Challenge.  BUT... I'll have time this weekend, so I'll post my solution next Monday, October 15.   Keep searching (and making those videos) until then!  In the meantime, I'll be teaching (and occasionally looking for the color changes in the fall leaves... which I have to admit, seem rather muted this season).   Search on! 

Estimation is an art...  ... that deserves practice.  And by practice , I mean that you very deliberately look at your mistakes and learn from them.   In an earlier post about Fermi Estimation , I showed how I estimated Enrico Fermi's height by this method.  Here's an infographic showing what I did.   That's great.   HOWEVER... As good as estimation is, it's worth checking your work from time to time in order to learn where you can be better.   In that earlier estimation post, Regular Reader Chris wrote in with a great comment.  Here's what he wrote:  As Jon said in an earlier post, the average size Italian was 5 feet 6, but I would say he is below average height. My estimates would make him between 5 and 5"3" Using this image  and assuming an bench height of about 30 inches, this would make him only 60 inches tall (5 feet). Using this image with Robert Oppenheimer (on the left)  I estimate him [Fermi] at about ...

Last week I flew from San Francisco to Austin, Texas...  ... as usual, I had a window seat to I could see the landscape slowly rolling past the window.  In my opinion, this is one of the most wonderful things you can do: look out the window at the glorious southwestern geology.   At some point in my flight, I saw many extraordinary things... forests, craters, mountains, brilliant white salt flats, and center-pivot irrigation systems that defined small communities in the middle of a vast loneliness.   What I really wanted to do was to make a film that would capture all of the beauty of the country we were passing over.  Alas, I didn't think to tape my video camera to the outside of the plane.. and have it run for the 4 hour flight.   Here's the path we took from San Francisco, over Phoenix, over El Paso and over West Texas into Austin.   After I landed, I thought that there MUST be a way to do this with a bit of online research....