Billy Nye, Ken Ham, and the Living Dinosaur

In a prior blog post, I considered if creationist proponents were sometimes or often liars for their cause. But an interesting example of what appears to be significant dishonesty has come through the response to Bill Nye.

About a month ago, Bill Nye The Science Guy posted this video on Big Think:



And with that (and at this time 4.5+ million views), the creationists were in an uproar. Having one of the best known science educators in the US calling your entire educational program bad for children obviously isn't going to sit well. But the more prominent response came from the people at Answers in Genesis, run by Ken Ham.

Making their own videos in a similar style to the Big Think, they tried to say Nye didn't understand science, didn't want children to think critically, that creationists didn't fear evolution and teach it correctly, that evolution has nothing to do with engineering, and so on. All of which is laughably wrong, including the last statement.

And there is some joy in this video response to Ken Ham (though probably NSFW due to language and some female images).

I'm copying here the description in the video, in case it goes down and the good links and references get lost (as well as providing a buffer space to the video if you are at work).

Under normal circumstances I probably wouldn't have addressed a video like this because it's a little light on science, but since it was by one of the world's top-tier fucktards who happened to be rubbishing one of the most beloved educators in the country I decided that it was a golden opportunity to give the Reverend Ham the verbal drubbing he's been asking for for decades.
As I said, a little light on science for a regular HH, but nevertheless also a good opportunity to address some of the filthy creationist political propaganda that Mr. Ham was projectile spewing in his surpisingly amateurish video. Not sure whether there will be a censoring reaction to this, so please do what you can to help forestall, or failing that ameliorate, that eventuality as it's not clear to me as yet that creationists are smart enough to have realized that censorship only results in the object of their ire being exposed to a vastly larger audience than it would have been had they acted like decent human beings.
For those who don't know how, the video can be downloaded by pasting the URL into the box at www.keepvid.com.
If you feel the need to hear Ken Ham vomiting up his worthless opinions you can do so here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxX11c1cSWU
If you want to see the Reverend Ham lying to children about biblical glasses you can do so here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5d3AaAL10U
And if you want to have a laugh at Ken's monkeys, whom I mention in the video, you can find them in their enclosure here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-AyDtD6sPA
Bill Nye's Big Think video can be enjoyed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHbYJfwFgOU
KnownNoMore's channel is here (please watch and sub -- he's *excellent*):
http://www.youtube.com/knownnomore
Wisdominnature7's channel (see note above regarding KnownNoMore -- the same applies):
http://www.youtube.com/wisdominnature7
Scripts to this and all my other videos can be found here:
http://thelivingdinosaur.webs.com/transcripts.htm
Intro by the one-and-only ONESPECIES (check him out too!):
http://www.youtube.com/ONESPECIES
Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Symphony No. 9 in C major (K 73)
References:
Arias-Montaño , A. (2011). Evolutionary Algorithms Applied to Multi-Objective Aerodynamic Shape Optimization. Studies in Computational Intelligence 356: 211-240.
Asoutia , V.G. and Giannakogloua, K.C. (2009). Aerodynamic optimization using a parallel asynchronous evolutionary algorithm controlled by strongly interacting demes. Engineering Optimization 41: 241-257.
Berard, Y. (2003). Experiments with Hybridized Genetic Algorithms in Aerodynamics. EUROGEN 2003 International Congress on Evolutionary Methods for Design, Optimization and Control with Applications to Industrial Problems. pp 1-12.
Giannakoglou ,K.C. et al. (2006). Aerodynamic shape design using evolutionaryalgorithms and new gradient-assisted metamodels. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering 195: 6312--6329.
Jones, B.R. et al. (2000). Aerodynamic and Aeroacoustic Optimization of Rotorcraft Airfoils via a Parallel Genetic Algorithm. Journal of Aircraft 37: 1088-1096.
Obayashi, S. and Guruswamy, G.P., (1995). Convergence Acceleration of an Aeroelastic Navier-Stokes Solver. AIAA Journal 33: 1134-1141.
Obayashi, S. et al. (2000). Transonic Wing Shape Optimization Based on Evolutionary Algorithms. ISHPC '00 Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on High Performance Computing. PP Pages 172--181.
Ong, Y.S. (2003). Global convergence of unconstrained and bound constrained surrogate-assisted evolutionary search in aerodynamic shape design. CEC '03 The 2003 Congress on Evolutionary Computation. pp 1856-1863.
Oyama, A. et al. (1999). Fractional Factorial Design of Genetic Coding for Aerodynamic Optimization. AIAA Paper 99-3298.
Oyama, A et al. (2000). Aerodynamic Wing Optimization via Evolutionary Algorithms Based on Structured coding. CFD Journal 8: 570-577.
Sasaki, D. (2001). Aerodynamic Shape Optimization of Supersonic Wings by Adaptive Range Multiobjective Genetic Algorithms. EMO '01 Proceedings of the First International Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization. pp 639-652.
Tubbs, A.D. and Wolfe, A.M. (1980). Evidence for Large Scale Uniformity of Physical Laws. Astrophy. J. 236: L105-L108.
Webb, J. (2003). Are the laws of nature changing with time? Physics World 16(4): 33-38.

Understanding the Monty Hall Problem

Previously I talked about how our intuitions are not so great in the context of classical physics, but this is hardly the limit to what we haven't the best intuitive understanding of. In the world of statistics and probability, our intuitions really are not great, and one classic example of this is the Monty Hall problem.

What is it? Suppose you are on a game show (hosted in this case by Monty Hall of Let's Make a Deal), and there are three doors labeled 1, 2, and 3. Behind two of those doors is a goat, but behind one of them is a new car. You want to win the car, but you only have a 1 in 3 chance of guessing the right door.

Here is where things get interesting. You pick one door which remained closed, and Monty will show you one of the remaining doors has a goat. Monty then asks you if you want to choose the remaining door. The question is: do you stay, which the other door, or does it not matter at all?

When this was posed, most people have the intuition, included well educated people, that there is no benefit to switching. After all, if there are two doors left and one of them has the car, there is a 50/50 chance it is behind either the door you chose or the remaining one, right?

There are apparently a number of nuances about how the question is asked, but these pieces of nuance ultimately matter because of what other information it gives the game show contestant, and the way it is set up here has the surprising results: you ought to switch to the other door; your chances of winning double.

Why is this? Suppose you take Door 1 as your first pic (it doesn't matter which so long as the car is equally-probable behind any of the 3 given doors), you can have two sets, doors picked and doors not. The set of doors picked has one member (Door 1), and the set of doors not picked has two members (Doors 2 & 3). That means the probability that the car is in the second set (doors not picked by you) is 2/3, while the probability of the first set (doors you did pick) is 1/3. Now, when Monty shows a door with a goat (say Door 2), it is from the second set of doors (the ones you did not pick), meaning he shows one member of that set is not the one with the car; this does not affect the set of doors you picked. The probability of either set having the car is still the same, but now you know one member of the second set is not the correct one, while only one member remains. Thus, that remaining member of the second set (Door 3) has a 2/3 probability of having the car, while your first choice of the door (Door 1) still has a 1/3 chance. Thus, you are twice as likely to get the car if you switch rather than stay put.

Crazy, it seems. It also means that if we did this with 100 doors, you picked one, and Monty revealed goats behind 98 of the 99 remaining doors, the chances of getting the car by switching is 99/100, way more likely than if you stayed. And all because Monty gave you more information about the set of doors you didn't pick.

The Wikipedia page also gives other proofs, such as the use of the decision tree as well as more formal proofs, but the set format I used seems the most helpful, at least to me. If you still feel like there is some trickery, this has been also verified empirically:

You can see from this computer sim now the probabilities asymptotically reach 2/3 (66.7%) and 1/3 (33.3%) respectively. You can try out a simulation as well.

But as one last bit of fun, let's see what we get using a Bayesian approach. Bayes' theorem is as follows:

P(A|B) is the probability A is true given B evidence, P(A) is the initial probability A is true, P(-A) is the probability not-A is true (or probability A is false), P(B|A) is the probability of seeing evidence B given A is true (same applies for P(B|-A)). We have the rules that P(A) + P(-A) = 1, and all probabilities must be between 0 and 1. So, what are the numbers? (Another treatment is given here, but I think my method may be a bit easier to understand for this example).

Well, P(A), the prior probability before we have Monty open any goat doors, is 1/3, and the probability of P(-A) is necessarily 2/3. Now, evidence B is the opening of a door with a goat. So, P(B|A) should be 1/2 because the goat would have been behind either one of the remaining doors given we picked the right door from the start (that is, A is true). P(B|-A), on the other hand, is 1. Why? Because if the car is behind one of the doors you did not choose, then the unopened door must have the car (remember, P(B|-A) is the probability of having a goat behind a door if in fact the car is behind one of the doors not chosen). 

Put that all in, and you find the probability of staying with the initial door is 1/3 (P(A|B) = 1/3), and the probability of winning by switching is 2/3 (P(-A|B) = 2/3). So now we have two proofs, and one using Bayesian methods.

And I push Bayes' theorem because it is so powerful and will need to be used more and more in the sciences to make sure we draw proper conclusions. But the debate between Bayesians and Frequentists must wait for another post.

Learning with Coursera

Yesterday was the first day of classes for me, though not at the school I am working at. I recently enrolled in classes through a free, online medium called Coursera. It's a great concept: have university-level classes available to anyone interested and administer it for free. So no crazy tuition rates, no room and board in the dorms, and you can read and watch the materials on your own time frame.

Now, that last point could be a problem. Without the motivation to actually watch a lecture as you would with the normal environment because of no due dates or times when it is not possible to watch, it becomes easy to forget or just be lethargic. There is also the limitation that without some sort of feedback mechanism you don't really know if you are learning.

From what I can tell, there are features in Coursera classes that fix that. There are quizzes and homework, for example. The stats class I joined, for example, wants me to program things using the R computer language (which I haven't used before). And there is a time frame. There is also the certification that you get if you do the work assigned, so there is a goal as well. I will have to see what my experience is to discover how effective it is.

Soon I will find out if this will help me learn while I am doing my research on learning. All the more interesting to compare with the computer-based tools I am helping with as well.

If you are interested, you can still join classes that have started up. Oh, and it's still free!

Physics and Intuition

Nicholas Covington over at SkepticBlogs has a post that relates to the borderlands of science and philosophy, intuition and its utility. His observations are done in light of some of the blog posts by Luke Muehlhauser (who more recently went to work at the Singularity Institute and the website Less Wrong).

Philosophers have long worked with what ideas we have in our heads, the primitive notions of things such as the reliability of the senses, our reasoning abilities, that other people have minds, etc. However, there is a continuing body of growing research that shows the limitations of our intuitions and our mental faculties (some I mentioned on my appearance on the Magic Sandwich Show). Nonetheless, Nick is correct that we ought not to go all-out against intuitions having epistemic value. Though we ought to be aware of its limitations (Nick mentions the Monty Hall Problem which drives first-year statistics students and normal people nuts.) Moreover, intuitions should not be beliefs that some have called properly basic, as they can and should be subject to scrutiny. Nick concludes that we have inductive reason to take them as probably true since they seem to work rather often.

But this leaves the question of when are our intuitions untrustworthy? Should be consider evolutionary history? Richard Dawkins had commented that perhaps because we evolved at the macroscopic level we did rather than nanoscopic (extremely small) or megascopic (extremely large) we may not have the mental faculties to understand modern physics like quantum mechanics and special relativity. This implies that we would be better adapted as Newtonian thinkers, since that is the world we live in; Newton's laws and principles correctly explain most everything material in our day-to-day world, the world our ancestors would have inhabited. So this implies a potential limitation on what we can understand and what we do understand.

Unfortunately, my own research in physics education shows that college students are not Newtonian thinkers, and this has been the conclusion of PER since at least the 1980s. For example, there are the interviews done by McCloskey et al. as summarized in Scientific American back in 1983. They noted that often students seem to have something like the medieval impetus view of motion.

For example, they asked the question of you walking at constant speed in a straight line while holding a ball out and shoulder level. If you continued on an the same speed and on the same path, and you dropped the ball, would you expect to see it fall behind you, in front of you, or at your feet? Before reading the conclusion, think about what the answer is to yourself.

Don't scroll down unless you have an answer.

Have a guess now?

Really?

OK, go ahead and read on.

Well, most of the people asked said the ball would fall behind them. 49% said it would fall over the exact spot the ball was let go, and a small percentage (6%) said it would actually travel backward. Only 45% accounted for the forward velocity of the ball when it was let go. And this was asked of college students, which means students with more education than the average in the US, let alone the world.

What is going on here? Some have noted the students had a general model for how things move. One of the things most people have in their minds is that without a force things don't move. There is also the notion of a force in the direction which tends to weaken with time (like the impetus dissipating as the object traveled). More recent research argues against most people having a complete model in their minds of how things work, and Andrea diSessa's idea of p-prims tries to account for what is going on with a collection of primitive ideas about physics (physics primitive ==> p-prims). What the correct model is, I cannot say.

However, the question of where these intuitions come from is one that currently needs more research, and I am glad to be working on that currently. I shan't say too much of what I have done until publication, but what I can say I did at the AAPT meeting last month. And what I did reveal is that students claim to actually feel the sorts of forces that may account for these anomalies from reality, but those forces simply are not real. At the intuitive level, we seem to believe we are pushed around in ways that simply are not true and at variance to Newtonian (let alone modern physical ) mechanics.

This indicates that Dawkins is wrong about our adaptability to understanding the Newtonian world--we don't even get that right. Perhaps that should be no surprise since it took near 2000 years of science to come up with Newton's physics (starting with Aristotle, and then on from there). Physics teachers also have come to learn that the correct ideas are hard to get into their students, and they tend to revert to incorrect views. On the other hand, we tend not to have strong convictions about things at the extremely small level or at super-fast speeds, so perhaps the theories of special relativity and quantum mechanics are easier to learn, if not necessarily understand, since we don't experience this realm and cannot fall back onto our beliefs of what happened last time.

All this would also imply that we should be very cautious using the intuitions we build up at the level we live and project them into realms we have no experience. If our experience will betray us about moving in a circle, why think they are unquestionable with things beyond our current comprehension, such as the state of the universe before the Big Bang?

I see science as progressing by testing our intuitions and seeing that they fail, and in the process building up new intuitions via the scientific method, thus creating a coherent, tested theory. It has at least been working pretty well.

So when are intuitions trustworthy? Perhaps the best rule of thumb (which is all an intuition can be) is that intuitions are useful in situations you have had significant experience. You don't need to bring out a piece of paper and a calculator to see if a train is about to hit you based its distance and speed; you can tell you need to move, else you won't be there to analyze your intuitions!

However, this would be extremely limiting to thought experiments that philosophers use all the time. How to deal with this? That is another avenue of research that needs exploration, and I know there are people on the case. In the mean time, I have a gut feeling that this won't convince everyone to give up their gut beliefs about how the world works, from politics to morality. Oh, so much work ahead.

My Whetstone: Books

A great line reincarnated from the book series A Song of Fire and Ice, now the HBO TV series Games of Thrones.

HT to Chris Hallquist.

I'm currently listening to the audio book form of the third book in the series, A Storm of Swords, performed by Roy Dotrice. Quite awesome so far, and I don't mind the changes in the HBO series, at least not yet. But I must hurry up.

Winter is coming...

Goodbye Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)

As has been reported, the first person to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong, has died at the age of 82 in Columbus, Ohio (and I wasn't there).

Obviously his best known contribution to the human experience was traveling to the nearest large astronomical body, and that landing will be historic forever. His friend and the second person on the Moon with Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, also has great remarks. President Obama also made a statement.

He obviously helped the sciences move forward, paving the way to more missions to the Moon and bringing back and leaving materials to better study the body and thus the rest of the solar system. Armstrong also did some teaching after his historic mission at the University of Cincinnati for about a decade.

When it comes to skepticism, he wasn't so involved in debunking the Moon landing hoax, (Buzz did a lot of that, including punching one guy in the face), but Armstrong did take part of an expedition to Cueva de los Tayos which showed Erich von Däniken was dishonest, thus also helping kill the ancient astronaut hypothesis.

He will obviously be missed, but his efforts and adventures will live on as long as humanity exists.

First Day of Classes

It's the first day of classes here at OSU, and it seems to be the same for many others across the US. Which is odd because OSU had until this year been on a different academic calendar than the rest of the world. We had a system of quarters instead of semesters, but that has changed this year. It's been hectic preparing for this new system, and I had been working over the summer to prepare a new physics curriculum for one of the undergraduate classes. But we hope to see if it pays off. We have our testing tools ready to go, and we'll see if our PER methods will help.

But for now, to arms!

And I better work well, since it looks like the university system in general is failing PhDs and students with massive budget cuts:

The Star of Bethlehem & Zeitgeist - Video

As practice in my video editing and to make the material more viewable, I now have made my previous blog posts about the Star of Bethlehem and its treatment in the film Zeitgeist into a short YouTube video.

 

Hope you enjoy!

AAPT Summer 2012 Meeting

I recently returned from Philadelphia which had hosted the American Associate of Physics Teachers. There I was able to give a talk (two actually since my adviser wasn't there to give it) and a poster. Both talks were short (< 10 minute); the first was about the origins of student misconceptions, and the other was about my paper summarizing research on Project-Based Learning (PBL). The poster was about a PBL curriculum to teach Newtonian mechanics with a roller coaster. Neither of the talks were recorded, but I do have a picture of my poster:

I hope to publish on a number of things in the near future, but I have kept myself busy in making curriculum materials for the upcoming semester. A lot of changes are happening, and they will include the latest physics education research. So much work, but I'm hoping for a good payoff.

Back to work now!

Recent Publications

It's been some busy times, and now they have paid off. In this last week I have had two articles published, so a small synopsis is given here.

The first article concerns the Star of Bethlehem and its history of interpretation. I focus on scientific versions of the object, but there is plenty of other points as well. Unlike other articles, this one does not propose a theory or say which ones are best. I will save that for some other time. The article itself is published by Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion, and the issue my article is in is up for free until the end of the year! Give it a read either online or download the PDF (link is to the abstract).

The other article is based on my master's/candidacy paper with my adviser. It concerns the teaching modality of project-based learning (PBL), a subset of inquiry-based instruction; this is a general review of the subject, including its characteristics, history, and effectiveness. It also discusses the best ways to implement PBL, what difficulties it has, and how to test and see the effectiveness of a curriculum. This went through a lot of revision, so its content should be well-vetted and useful. The comparison between PBL and other teaching methods, such as traditional lecture-based instruction and some of the more innovative methods from the mid-late 20th century, is unique and ought to be helpful. Like the Zygon article above, this one is online for free, but it should be up there indefinitely. It's from the journal REAL: Research in Education, Assessment, and Learning, and it is focused on physics education research, though it is more expansive than that.

All in all, a good week last week getting things through the peer review process. Hope to have a several more things published this year, so stay tuned.