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SUMMARY:Believing by Numbers - Edd Edmondson (University of Portsmouth)
DTSTART:20110425T180000Z
DTEND:20110425T210000Z
UID:TALK28926@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Andrew N Holding
DESCRIPTION:Edd works in astronomy at the University of Portsmouth\, tryin
 g to handle the large amounts of data from some of the current and upcomin
 g surveys of the sky. He's worked with surveys such as the Sloan Digital S
 ky Survey (SDSS)\, and on the 'citizen science' project Galaxy Zoo which l
 ead to the discovery of 'Hanny's Voorwerp'. As someone in the field of cos
 mology\, he's in the somewhat unusual situation of often having to tell pe
 ople that most of the universe is actually invisible and intangible and th
 at it's perfectly rational to believe that.\n\nHaving spent too much time 
 worrying about how to turn data into answers to questions\, he talks about
  the mathematics behind thinking skeptically (but not so many equations th
 at you can't follow him after a pint or two). What should we mean when we 
 say we believe something? How do you know when you have enough evidence fo
 r your beliefs\, and when should you change your mind when faced with fact
 s that don't fit your preconceptions? And what does this all mean when we'
 re faced with the task of assessing whether that claimed psychic really ca
 n do what they say?
LOCATION:The Maypole
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