Monday, May 22, 2006
Playing the Numbers
More qualified medical providers is a good thing, right? Apparently not, or at least, not always. Researchers have found that cities with many paramedics in first response settings have poorer cardiac arrest outcomes. Cities whose first responders were less trained, even when paramedics followed soon after, had better outcomes. I can guess at reasons here - excessive care, poorer coordination, etc., but this is a really puzzling result.
Speaking of numbers, it seems that pigeons, and maybe even humans, think in logarithms. Birds taught to distinguish between long and short LED flashes seemed to be reacting as if the longer times were more 'compressed' than shorter - like a log scale. I wonder if this works for object counting as well?
Speaking of numbers, it seems that pigeons, and maybe even humans, think in logarithms. Birds taught to distinguish between long and short LED flashes seemed to be reacting as if the longer times were more 'compressed' than shorter - like a log scale. I wonder if this works for object counting as well?
