STATISTICA Blogs

I finally had time to listen highlights from the 2009 Ig Nobel Prizes show. The 19th annual awards were handed out in early October by Improbable research. The Ig awards are presented to the winners by Nobel laureates. The winners are selected:

"For achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK"

Many of these studies/experiments/inventions have real world impacts. For example, Howard Stapleton won an Ig award for a teenage repellant device in 2006. He used a high frequency noise that people over 25 could NOT hear. This noise is very annoying for younger people. Stores would purchase the device to encourage teenagers to "not" hang out outside of the store.

Teenagers are very, very smart... They spotted another application for the high frequency noise. They made it their cell phone ring. Now they could text in class without the teacher hearing.

My favorite 2009 award was for Veterinary Medicine. It turns out that cows with names give more milk.

"On farms where cows were called by name, milk yield was 258 liters higher than on farms where this was not the case (p < 0.001). As a person's attitude is a good predictor of their behavior, these subjective reports suggest UK dairy farmers have a good quality of human-animal relationship with their animals. The pattern for improved milk yield and behavior based on increased human attention to the individual animal requires validation, but it is an encouraging finding based on reported opinions analyzed against objective production data in a survey of commercial farms."

from: Exploring Stock Managers' Perceptions of the Human-Animal Relationship on Dairy Farms and an Association with Milk Production

Image credits:

 /aw