Photos
Quotes
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Charlie Eppes : You know who else doesn't like to talk about their love life?
Don Eppes : Your boy Larry.
Charlie Eppes : What do you know?
Don Eppes : That Megan thinks he's *beautiful*.
Charlie Eppes : [Mouths silently] beautiful?
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Charlie Eppes : Thank you for getting on this so fast.
Amita Ramanujan : Hey, I don't want to be shot or struck by a brick while driving any more than the next person.
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : Yeah. I guess there's nothing to be done about meteors. Well not just yet.
Charlie Eppes : No Larry. Not even the FBI can stop meteors.
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : Well not yet, but someday when we have plasma cannons, steam rockets...
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Charlie Eppes : Lady luck, chance, randomness... Human beings, truly, have a hard time understanding it. Raindrops fall randomly. Now which of these two images best represents raindrops falling on a sidewalk? Is it image A?
[grouped pattern]
Charlie Eppes : Image B?
[even pattern - the class chooses this one]
Charlie Eppes : Okay. You're wrong. Our brains misperceive evenness as random, and wrongly assume that groupings are deliberate. Because of this people make all sorts of irrational decisions. Like, they won't work in a high rise building, or they're afraid to live in an earthquake prone area. And yet mathematical assessment tells us that you are far more likely to suffocate in bed than you are to you are to die in a terrorist attack. You are ten times more likely to die from alcohol than from being in an earthquake. And it is three times more likely that you will be killed while driving to buy a lottery ticket than it is that you will win the lottery.
