Awesome and True Shark Science

I don't think I need to explain to anyone what Shark Week is; Discovery Channel's celebration of sharks is well known all around the world. But what some people, especially those who continue to tune in to it annually and enjoy it, might not realize is that in recent years Shark Week, much like the Discover Channel itself, has been getting a really bad rap amoung scientists and science educators for (what's a nice way to put this?) including content that ranges from somewhat misleading to pure fiction.

So, in an attempt to promote actual learning some of the leading science channels on Youtube are hosting their own Shark Week this year; you know, with facts and stuff. If you like sharks, I would highly recommend you watch these videos. Or just go to the whole playlist.

3 Common Myths About π

I am something of a hipster about pi; I loved it long before the Internet turned it into the celebrity number and hate some of the things that people do with it now days (Pi day, really? How can you even call yourself a pi lover if you think 3.14 is a good approximation? )

But the thing that grinds my gears more than anything is that love of pi doesn't go hand in hand with truth about pi. People want to get some good "I-am-a-nerd" feeling without taking the time to actually learn anything about the subject they claim to be nerding out about.

Nowhere is this more seen than the many memes that wanna be nerds spread about pi.

Myth #1 That Pi is a "Natural Number"

If you don't see anything wrong with this,
you credibility as a math nerd is suspect.

I have been seeing memes like this a lot lately and just want to smack the people who make them.

Sure you could argue that this is using the colloquial definition of natural and not the mathematical one, but it would be about as appropriate to do so as using the colloquial definition of theory in the midst of a discussion of the validity of evolution.

In mathematics the natural numbers are those used for counting.

 

Myth #2 That Pi Contains Everything Imaginable

If you don't see anything wrong with this,
you definitely aren't a math nerd.

This is the meme that made me hate IFLS. I spent a very long time trying explain to people there why this is a complete falsehood, but since IFLS (and the Internet in general really) are less interested in what is true and more interested in making science something that a person can geek-out over, I was shouted down.

More that anything this falsehood is based on a misunderstandings of what it means for something to be infinite, and what it means for a number to be irrational (i.e. an infinite non-repeating decimal).

Rather than try to explain to you why infinity means "continues without end" and not "contains every conceivable possibility" (I am not going to attempt this because I have  learned that some people really don't want to give up their misconceptions about infinity, but if you want more information about this I highly recommend the youtube channel Numberphile while is run by the math department at the university of Cambridge) I am going to invent an irrational number right now that clearly does not contain everything in the universe.

0.101 001 000 100 001 000 001 000 000 100...

Even though a human brain can easily see a pattern in the number above (that there is one more zero between each successive 1), the pattern is non-repeating and therefore the number is irrational.

But if you translated this into ascii (as directed by the meme) you would only generate 4 possible ascii characters, and as it turns out, none of them are even letters. How are you going to write the name of every person I have ever loved using just spaces, tabs and line carriages?



Myth #3 That Pi is an Inherent Property of the Universe

Pi is a number. All numbers, and in fact all mathematics, is merely a descriptive language. Math is as much a part of the universe as English is.

But moreover, pi describes something that doesn't even exist in the real universe - a perfect circle. Pi is the relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle. Even in the days that pi was been calculated by hand people had determined it to hundreds of decimal places. Today the world record holder in memorizing pi once recited it to 67,890 places. The world record for calculating pi by a super computer is to over 10 trillion places.

How many decimal places do you think it would take to calculate the circumference of the largest possible circle (ie the circumference of the universe) as expressed in the smallest possible unit of distance (the planck)? The answer is less than 60.

The universe has literally no use for anything more than 60 decimal places of pi. Anything beyond that is an invention of humans. It is an invention that I love, and it pains me that people wish to pervert it.

Of Pigeons and Creationists

I have a rule of thumb when I am on Facebook, that I don't pick fights with friends of friends. I will happily get into flame wars with friends or with strangers, but never with my friends' friends.

My reason for this is that the place I am most likely to be in contact with friends of friends is on the walls, posts and pictures of my friends, and I really don't think it fair to my friends to have two people (even though we are both friends of theirs) get into a virtual screaming match on their stuff.

Anyways, yesterday a friend of mine posted this meme:

Which hit a kind of uncanny valley with me, where it was both similar and different enough from the original quote to really irk me. So despite knowing it might ruffle some feathers, I responded with the original quote.


"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory." 
 - Scott D. Weitzenhoffer


Although most respondents seemed to appreciate my posting the quote, one came back with this:


"Conversely debating evolutionists on the topic of creation yields the same result. Both think they are right but there is no evidence to support either point of view exclusively. Even Einstein, Darwin and Hawkings stated that it is difficult to believe the complexities of the universe happened by chance without the hand of a supreme influence. Life on earth lacks it's own proof. There is no fossil evidence to support the theory of evolution exclusively. My theory is, I would rather believe in God only to discover there isnt, than to not believe in God only to discover there is. You have to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em brother."
-Larry


I consider it an enormous act of will power on my part that I have not and will not be responding to this in the original discussion. I suppose the fact that I am responding here, where most likely everyone who reads my response will be in agreement with me, could be construed as proving one of his points, that "evolutionists" (his word) are as self congratulatory as creationists. But I am not looking for high fives here any more that I was looking for a fight earlier. I am looking to get a dirty feeling out of my system left from letting falsehoods go unchallenged.

So here are my problems with his statement, piece by piece.


"Conversely debating evolutionists on the topic of creation yields the same result."


This sentence is more important than it first appears because of what comes after it. Larry is going to try to paint himself as being a moderate who has respect for both sides, but I am going to guess that based on this sentence he is largely lying about that.  In addition to mentioning that he gets frustrated debating those who support evolution, he uses the term "evolutionist"; its not a word used by anyone who actually supports evolution, but rather one used by creationists to describe those who oppose them.


"Both think they are right but there is no evidence to support either point of view exclusively."


If you have access to the internet your only excuse for not understanding the just how enourmous the weight of evidence in favour of the Theory of Evolution is willful ignorance.

• Berkeley
• Wikipedia
• Smithsonian
• Dawkins

"Even Einstein, Darwin and Hawkings stated that it is difficult to believe the complexities of the universe happened by chance without the hand of a supreme influence."


This sentence more than anything else is what had me burning up inside. While my interest in Darwin is casual, as a physics major in university I had more than just a passing interest in Einstein and Hawking; Larry is grossly misrepresenting all three of them.

First of all, Darwin was agnostic, Einstein was pantheistic, and Hawking is an atheist. If you have any familiarity with any of them you should know that none of them ever indicated they believed in the necessity of the hand of a supreme influence. (of course, in creationist circles they love quote mining famous scientists, and Einstein and Hawking both have several that are ripe to be taken out of context)


"Life on earth lacks it's own proof."


I keep wondering what he means by this.


"There is no fossil evidence to support the theory of evolution exclusively."


It really blows my mind that creationists don't realize that science has moved forward in the last 150 years. They don't get that we have found literally millions of fossils since early biologists worried about some of the holes in the fossil record. They don't get that we have sequenced the genomes of countless creatures and discovered that the DNA evidence confirms the fossil evidence. They don't get that we have literally watched evolution occurring.


"My theory is, I would rather believe in God only to discover there isnt, than to not believe in God only to discover there is.  You have to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em brother."


I have no desire to address the theological reasons I don't believe in god, mostly because its not really relevant to this discussion; many people have faith in god and yet are able to accept the findings of science.

But I have heard this argument before, that its better to believe in god to CYA, and I think its an absurd argument. First of all, it assumes that if god exists, that he can be tricked; sure he's the all knowing creator of the universe, but if you bluff him, he'll fall for it. Second of all, it fails to explain why that the best strategy to CYA is to pretend to believe in the Christian god, as opposed to that of any other religion.

Anyways, thanks for putting up with me while I got this out of my system. If you want a more thorough debunking of this sort of malarkey, I highly recommend the youtube series Why Do People Laugh at Creationists?

So You Think Its Colder Than Mars

So here we are in the midst of a winter where much of North America is experiencing colder than normal temperatures. And if there is one thing people love more than complaining about how cold winter is, its using hyperbole to express their opinion of how cold winter is.

With those two truths in mind, its seems every news organization in the world is taking a turn at comparing various cold cities to Mars; not surprisingly, a lot of these reports then get shared on social networks where its stated as "OMG its colder here than on Mars!"

Clearly the Discovery Science logo is shaped like a teardrop
because they endeavor to make scientists cry.

First of all, while the news reports usually mention that the temperature in question is the daily report from Curiosity, that is frequently lost when the stories go viral. Mars is a planet. Saying the temperature on Mars right now is x, is a lot like saying the temperature right now on Earth is x, except worse. Because of the thin atmosphere on Mars it experiences a greater of temperature variance than Earth; the temperature variance on Earth is about 145 degrees Celsius, while on Mars its about 175 degrees Celsius.

While the average temperature on Mars is about -63 C compared to +15 C on Earth, there is a lot of overlap in those two ranges; in the Martian summer it can get as hot as +35 C. Remember, many astronomers place Mars in the habitable zone of our solar system.

Dark green is definitely habitable,
light green may be habitable.

Second of all, before you can place any weight on weather reports coming from Curiosity you need to understand where it is on Mars. Curiosity is in the Gale crater, which is located at 4.6°S and 137.4°E; Curiosity is in the tropics of Mars. Now, admittedly it is almost the start winter for the southern hemisphere of Mars, but, just like Earth, areas near the equator are less impacted by the change in seasons.

Third, its important to note that what's almost always being compared is the daily high at the Gale crater to the daily low at whatever city is the latest victim. That's hardly fair as it isn't comparing like to like. The daily lows at the Gale crater in the past week have ranged from -84 C to -125 C (aka from colder than anywhere on earth to much colder than it has ever been on earth).

So, its awesome that people are paying attention to Mars and that someone is actually looking at the Curiosity weather reports (you can see them here ). But bragging (or complaining) that your city got colder than Mars is absurd unless you live somewhere that has really mild winters. And if you live somewhere that has really mild winters, complaining about how cold your winter is this year is just asking for a Canadian to come kick your ass.