After listening to Göte Nyman at TEDxHelsinki about Null hypothesis (H0), I just had to write down some thoughts that arose from it. First a recap:

Göte presented examples from popular news media, such as “coke and pepsi activate different areas of the brain”. Well duh, if they are experienced differently, someone might assume that the experience manifests itself as brain activity. So the null hypothesis behind the news item was that coke and pepsi affect the brain in the same way. So the point was that looking at the assumptions behind “revelations” tells you something about the naïve assumptions people generally have about the topic. I mean, it’s not news unless it challenges current thinking. So each scandalous headline reveals something about the assumptions of the editor about what the audience thinks about the topic. Read the rest of this entry »