Inteligence of the mass (use it!)

When our good man Francis galton went to the market around 1906.
you know... in those times when they still sold you big blaring cows on the street

A farmer came to the market with one of his big cows
and he started a big guessing game for all the public: guess how heavy this cow is.

No participian succeeded to guess the actual weight.

Smartypants Galton, collected all the guesses (787) on little papers.
He added all the guesses and divided it by the number of participants...

The number rolling out was amazing! It was the closest guess of all. --> 1.197 pounds
the cow was in reality 1.198 pounds.
The crowd defeated the most knowledgeable farmers and butchers.

this is how wisdom of the crowd came to us.
the law of large numbers: if there is sufficient variation, outliers are averaged together. It is essentially a statistical phenomenon --> can be found back in your old school books under chapter: normal distribution.

The mass for charity

Sure there are discussion about the intelligence off the mass.. But let me get to the real deal:

a "company"named fold it, is using the mass for real science. They developed a game where you can fold proteins. Humans can be way more efficient in folding the complex structure of proteins than computers.

There have already been some great discoveries by fold it players:Like the protein causing AIDS in rhesus monkeys has been solved.

This is how it works:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGYJyur4FUA&feature=relatedh

You can give it yourself a try at: http://fold.it/portal/

pretty amazing!! I love their idea, and how they transformed in an actual attractive game for their players!

So next time you feel like playing puzzles: Maybe give your Sudoku book a little rest, and help science

Portal says it is down for technical reasons, unfortunately

It says it is having too many new folk but they are working on it. I could at least see it this morning

too many new folk: hmmm... thats a very positive problem
happy many people are helping !!

The protein folding is interesting, but turns out to be more complex than previously thought. The assumption was that newly formed proteins fold up to create their "working" shape. It is certainly true that the shape of proteins determines their function. I imagined that proteins were like lego blocks, fitting together. However this is the wrong picture, proteins are much more dynamic. Some do not folding into their working shape until certain trigger, for example they have a dangling end like a tentacle. Some proteins actually are dynamic when working, for example, the proteins that transport stuff around the cell have "feet" that "walk" along structures in the cell.

They are more like tiny machines, rather than lego blocks. This makes the job of determining their function much harder, but the protein folding computation can still give useful results.

Maybe it can:but I have tried the introductory puzzles on the site now: and I am afraid that I am not going to be contributing to the sum of human knowledge this way, at least: far to hard and too frustrating for me. I wil stick to "Folding at home" which does not require me do any more than remember to start it when my PC is on

All you brain boxes go right ahead and do these things though: I have heard that some people enjoy this kind of puzzle. Nowt so queer as folk

Well, enjoying puzzles is what got us humans where we are today!

I had not thought about why I do not like it but I think you have explained it very well: there was nothng to think about: it was just fiddling about. I have no patience with that, either