Plus or Minus - Sixty Symbols

[suburiboy]

@BinaryEggRoll Ok, my impression was that they were used to denote the precision of your measurements. oh well.

[suburiboy]

This makes me want a video about significant figures. It's come up in secondary school frequently and I wonder if physicists actually use them.

[MegaAwsomeName]

aero bar?

[lintfordpickle]

I don't know why, but that bit at the end with the "sufficiently dodgy measurement" made me laugh.

[ILLhumanati]

It was Donald Rumsfield that first said "known unknowns." His new book has something to the effect in the title. Zizek has a great take on that quote. Anywho, I like your videos and will sub.

[eggman1600]

these ARE ALL CONFUSING YOU GUYS.. NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE ARE JUST WORDS WE USE... IN REALITY AND IN THE UNIVERSE THERE ARE NO WORDS.. WHAT YOU SAY IS NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE IS ACTUALLY THE SAME THING

[Qermaq]

@eggman1600 So give me negative one million dollars. :)

[HWGuyEG]

+/- is expressed in programming a lot, you often want thing to happen when within or outside a range..

[RectumPilum]

First: comment.

[slonamu]

I do not know, but why this video reminds me of Donald Ramsfield? I know that I do not know...

[Tetraglot]

That's not a plus or minus sign… That's just a plus sign over a hyphen

[ElveeKaye]

I learn more about science from these videos than I did from science classes at school!

[tsuikjoshiomatsu]

the unknown of the unknown is the known.

or in "fail" terms the unknown of the unknown is still the unknown.

[omgiwaswrong]

I think you could do a follow up to this on publication bias. Not sure what the symbol for that is since Pb is lead. :D

[Films4You]

I know that I know but I don't know that you know that I know +-4.5 LOL

[BlueCollarScience]

The need to give the uncertainty in a measurement is such an important idea in science. I think it would be great if you could expand on your elucidation of this subject.

[soulvibe2007]

One parsec is approximately 3.262 light-years and theres 1000 parsecs in a kiloparsec

[safibn1]

The plus-minus sign is also used when either case gives you the answer.

for example, the square root of 25 is plus minus 5, since either one works.

Otherwise, great video, but I am still unclear about 2 things:

1. how long is a kpc (kilopacle or something)

2. How did they always get wrong answers to the question of length from the sun to the center of our galaxy?

[psychodave0]

Kiloparsec, 3.08568025 × 10^19 meters.

For number 2, I imagine they made the same mistake when making measurements. As said, there's psychology involved, so even when people measured the correct answer, they probably didn't speak up about it.

[safibn1]

thanks. Not often someone answers questions like that on the internet.

[bng44270]

He made a statement that the distance of the sun to the center of the universe is shrinking. How does the idea that the universe is constantly expanding set with that or is that not a truly scientific concept?

[Miscskies]

Confirmation Bias and Peer Pressure are the terms the Prof might have wanted to use.

[jacoman1234567]

Cool, could you guys make some video's on General- and/or Special Relativity? That'd be awesome!

[culwin]

I give this video 3±2 stars

[LWStupidus]

lol

[leporidus]

One phrase one often hears (in connection to the psychology of publication bias mentioned) is the "file drawer effect": work with agreeable outcome gets published, work with unfvorable results get filed away.

[YogiToad]

Lol I always love the people who tell me that the scientific method is infallible because of peer reviews and checks and balance systems because i know that what this man says is true, that scientists often fudge their work to meet the standards and often times things go unchecked and are adopted almost with religious fervor because the scientist who said it is considered some sort of god in the science community.

[anon4everr]

There's always someone bound to arise and challenge these frauds. Not everyone in the scientific community is corrupt. Hardly anyone is, really.

[YogiToad]

Well, I don't really agree with that.Scientists get allot of funding for "trying" to find cures for illness e.c.t., and money corrupts. There is a doctor in Italy that has been using baking soda to cure cancers, he believes that cancer is a fungal infection and uses baking soda to cure it. He has shown his work worldwide but to no avail. What most people do not know is that when cancer is present,100% of the time a certain strain of fungus is present at the site.

[Cyrathil]

There's also something most people do know: That doesn't mean a thing until you can demonstrate that the fungus is what causes the cancer, or that killing the fungus removes the cancer. Until you can provide the evidence for this, it's an interesting claim, if true, but isn't necessarily useful in curing any of the myriad forms of cancer. Which is another problem: Different forms of cancer require different treatments. If one cause was the problem (this fungus) why would that be?

[YogiToad]

The videos presented here on youtube present the doctor and the actual footage of the cancer treatment being used. It may also be true that it is not useful on all cancers, as I do know that in the Netherlands they are able to cure the most common form of brain cancer with marijuana.

[seanbrockest]

What he says near the end, about the psychology of uncertainty, is just the kind of quote that anti-evolutionists, YEC, and global warming sceptics would love to quote mine.

SEE SEE! Proof that not all scientists are honest!

[JimPrower]

Typically used in Engineering to allow for errors in the manufacturing processes, too. :3

[holsson85]

When we date rocks throu radiometric dating we always have this +- in age. For example some Scanian (S Sweden) basalts have a age of 110 +-5 milion years. An acceptible result. If we date Icelandic basalt the same way, we perhaps get a age of 0.05 +-5 milion years. Here the error is larger then the actual age, meaning that the result is rather useless.

[G0ldenGoose]

See i love comments like this. Watching the video is brilliant, but then reading the comments also brings such different sides to the topic.

Thanks :D

[goliatmo]

I learn more math in the summer than in school..

[YogiToad]

That's because the American system has been dummied down so lo that you can get a better education just "talking" to someone raised in Europe, skipping an American education all together actually could be beneficial. My generation was the last of the well educated ones in this country. However, kids today are far more open minded and kind hearted, I do have to say.

[cc3814]

Are there any papers about his baking soda cure for the fungus that accompanies cancer online? It sounds quite interesting. I do agree with you that it is possible that not all scientific endouvers needs lots of funding but as with the case with the Italian doctor he is only solving one part of the issue, there is still is the much more complex issue of the genetic side of cancer. Plus not all scientific problems can be solved with duct tape and some elbow grease.

[YogiToad]

actually you can view his vids right here on youtube, they are in italian but i think they have subs.... just type in cancer is a fungus, that should do it. let me know what you think.

[goliatmo]

Im from Norway, honey. (thats not the capital of Sweden, its a country, in Europe.)

[YogiToad]

First thing. Why are you calling me honey? Honey is an affectionate term the opposite sexes use in my country toward one another, so unless your gay,stop that. Also, I know where Norway is, I've visited there and my grandfather is from Norway and I speak some pretty shitty Dutch to. What's your point junior?

[krzsistof]

They dont speak Dutch in Norway ;)

[YogiToad]

Of course they speak Dutch in Norway, as well as other Germanic languages, of which the Norwegian language is part, it depends if your family is among the native speaking families or like mine immigrated from the Netherlands, from Germany so I grew up speaking Dutch, German and French, and some Portuguese,but a mix of Dutch and German mostly. If you speak German or Dutch in Norway, you will have no problems communicating.

[goliatmo]

Im gay, and I dont speak a word dutch.

My point is that by calling yourself the last generation of well educated Americans you put yourself in the long line of people who has no problem seeing all that is wrong with the world (thats a good thing) and a huge problem seeing your own problems.

Anyway, lets not start a youtube flamewar, I am in no position of psychoanalyzing you from two comments on the internet, so sorry for acting like a brat. Now lets all eat healthy and be happy<3

[Personmang]

fag

[YogiToad]

No problem I was not angry about anything.I can see my own problems well enough, the statement was based on some statistics I had read.

[smeghead666]

@goliatmo so true, I've learnt more from this Youtube channel than 6yrs of secondary school, Hooray for the fubar UK curriculum!

[JaksProductions]

cool video!

[Paxmax]

Yeah, I wish many more started stating the uncertainty...

[solomsolomol]

No , you can't say it : )

Awesome video as usual , but i hated how you didn't let prof. Moriarty finish what he was talking about in the last video ,it was just about to get thrilling ,and cutting it in the last second was as annoying as the "ceasium in water trailer" video : ) , But seriously , you should make a video about the entanglement in quantum mechanics !

[sixtysymbols]

@solomsolomol: Sorry, but cutting Prof Moriarty off wasn't my fault.... The point of the video (not one of our usual films) was giving him 10 minutes without me doing any editing. Not my fault he raised a new concept at the end.... Entanglement will come up again if we get to do "another sixty"!

Regarding Caesium, well that was my fault. Just having fun! Promise tomorrow I'll post a nice caesium vid (@ periodicvideos) plus some of the usual bonus footage (@ nottinghamscience).

[Brucey117]

First! Plus or minus 1....