Talks to Watch

Clutching at Random Straws, Matt Parker | LMS Popular Lectures 2010

601K views · Apr 24, 2014 · 1:03:07 · 2 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2017–2024

Matt Parker's LMS popular lecture on how seemingly incredible results can be meaningless random patterns. He ranges from ancient Woolworths civilisations to shoelaces and DNA.

Why Hacker News points people here: Used to illustrate that humans pattern-match and find spurious patterns in enough data points.

“gave a very informative and entertaining lecture in 2010”HN comment, 2024

What Hacker News said 3

RecommendsTistronMay 2017

“he does a fun demonstration of how perception is a process of actively patternmatching for what we expect”

Fun demonstration that perception actively pattern-matches expectations

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Matt Parker (standupmath at youtube) does a presentation he calls "Clutching at Random Straws". It doesn't, as far as I can recall, specifically deal with Mondegreens, but about 38 minutes in he does a fun demonstration of how perception is a process of actively patternmatching for what we expect: this video

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RecommendsOnACoffeeBreakJun 2024

“gave a very informative and entertaining lecture in 2010”

Informative, entertaining lecture on finding spurious patterns in enough data points.

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Matt Parker ("Stand up Maths" channel on YouTube) gave a very informative and entertaining lecture in 2010 titled "Clutching at Random Straws" [0], which, among other things, covered something similar. From the subtitle of the video: "Did aliens help prehistoric Britons find the ancient Woolworths civilisation?" The answer is "no". Given enough data points, you can find all sorts of patterns. 0: this video

in “Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?” · view on HN
Cites itrgoulterNov 2021

“One more demonstration like this is in Matt Parker's”

Matt Parker lecture demonstrating how patterns appear in random data.

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One more demonstration like this is in Matt Parker's "Clutching at Random Straws" lecture. this video

in “To be energy-efficient, brains predict their perceptions” · view on HN