{"id":19562,"date":"2013-03-24T00:01:33","date_gmt":"2013-03-24T05:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19562"},"modified":"2013-03-23T11:20:24","modified_gmt":"2013-03-23T16:20:24","slug":"humans-are-very-good-at-spotting-patterns-even-when-they-arent-really-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/03\/24\/humans-are-very-good-at-spotting-patterns-even-when-they-arent-really-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Humans are very good at spotting patterns &#8230; even when they aren&#8217;t really there"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <em>Slate<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/health_and_science\/medical_examiner\/2013\/03\/cancer_cluster_in_toms_river_new_jersey_the_link_to_a_superfund_site_is.html\" target=\"_blank\">George Johnson<\/a> explains why the human ability to detect patterns can sometimes work against us:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Lay a chessboard on a table. Then grab a handful of rice and let the grains fall and scatter where they may. They won\u2019t spread out uniformly with the same number occupying each square. Instead there will be clusters. Now suppose that the chessboard is a map of the United States and the grains are cases of cancer.<\/p>\n<p>Each year about 1.6 million cases of cancer are diagnosed in the United States, and epidemiologists regularly hear from people worried that their town has been plagued with an unusually large visitation. Time after time, the clusters have turned out to be statistical illusions \u2014 artifacts of chance.<\/p>\n<p>The Erin Brockovich incident, one of the most famous, is among the many that have been debunked. Hexavalent chromium in the water supply of a small California town was blamed for causing cancer, resulting in a $333 million legal settlement and a movie starring Julia Roberts. But an epidemiological study ultimately showed that the cancer rate was no greater than that of the general population. The rate was actually slightly less.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Slate, George Johnson explains why the human ability to detect patterns can sometimes work against us: Lay a chessboard on a table. Then grab a handful of rice and let the grains fall and scatter where they may. They won\u2019t spread out uniformly with the same number occupying each square. Instead there will be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,66,28,13],"tags":[139,290],"class_list":["post-19562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-health-science","category-media","category-usa","tag-psychology","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-55w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19563,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19562\/revisions\/19563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}