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

London Mathematical Society2 HN recommenders · 2017–2024
601K views · lecture · evergreen · Uploaded 2014-04-24

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.

Used to illustrate that humans pattern-match and find spurious patterns in enough data points.

Recreational & visual mathProbability & game theoryData science & statistics

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3 comments from Hacker News

@Tistron2017 · in “FBI Investigation: “Louie Louie”, The Song (1964)”

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: [VIDEO]

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@rgoulter2021 · in “To be energy-efficient, brains predict their perceptions”

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

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@OnACoffeeBreak2024 · in “Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?”

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: [VIDEO]

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