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Sequential Testing for Determining Cat Chirality
- gwern 9y agoThe end result: sequential testing terminated without accepting either hypothesis http://blog.dimview.org/math/2017/10/15/cat-chirality.html http://blog.dimview.org/math/2017/10/15/cat-chirality.html
- amelius 9y agoHmm, there should be three hypotheses: cw, ccw, and no-preference.
- jstanley 9y agoNo-preference is the null hypothesis.
- charlieo88 9y agoOr a forth, subjects become aware of data collection and purposefully skew the data because lets face it, cats are jerks.
- pps43 9y agoH0 is no preference, H1 is preference for either clockwise or counterclockwise. In this test with N=1, there was not enough evidence to reject H0.
- partycoder 9y agocc and ccw are not the only cat sleeping positions. I've seen some cats sleeping on their backs, and others sleep in a sphynx-like position.
- unknownkadath 9y agoI believe that the technical term for that last one is "loaf."
- colanderman 9y agoRabbit parent, not cat parent here, but I hear "loaf" used to refer specifically to the pose in which the front feet are curled underneath the body, and thus hidden: http://i.imgur.com/Y2bBtBy.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Y2bBtBy.jpg Whereas the Sphinx has its feet extended in front of itself: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza_-_20080716a.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Great_Sp... (which is indeed another rabbit sleeping pose; presumably cats do as well)
- jjgreen 9y agoI've heard the "loaf" position called the "lozenge" (my fat barely-a-mouser does that a lot).
- dfox 9y agoI dont think that I've ever seen cat really sleeping in one of these positions, they usually change position after they are really deep asleep and are then either curled up or in some totally ridiculous position.
- gwern 9y agoMy understanding was that it only becomes a 'loaf' when the legs get tucked underneath so that they look like a bun with rounded corners. When the paws are parallel out front, then you get the sphinx. See, of course, Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Catloaf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Catloaf/
- unknownkadath 9y agoYou're right, I stand corrected!
- pps43 9y agoThose observations were excluded.
- trothamel 9y agoResearch of this importance is deserving of an ig-Nobel prize.
- raverbashing 9y agoWe need an AI chirality analyser from webcam data
- DaiPlusPlus 9y agoWe now need to determine the spin direction of buttered toast.
- yesenadam 9y agoThat field met its Einstein with Chris Smith's epochal 2013 work. Google "chris smith manchester toast" and persevere longer than I did to find the paper the newspaper stories are talking about.
- tempodox 9y agoThe spin direction is such that it will land on the buttered side if let fall.
- Theodores 9y agoI think that these observations are important. Imagine if some cats did have a preference for sleeping on one side rather than the other, 'clockwise' rather than 'anti-clockwise'. Why would that be, and why would nobody have noticed until now? There must be important evolutionary benefits to sleeping on each side an equal amount, more study is definitely needed.
- raattgift 9y agoI'm reminded of the question of whether cattle prefer to stand aligned north-south: https://www.nature.com/news/the-mystery-of-the-magnetic-cows-1.9350 https://www.nature.com/news/the-mystery-of-the-magnetic-cows...
- exabrial 9y agoOk, I know this is a little bit silly but on the similar subject... but has anyone noticed pomeranian dogs tend to circle clockwise instead of counter-clockwise? My friend's dog does it so much we nicknamed her "The Anti-NASCAR".
- discoursism 9y agoI would have expected the center area to get wider as we move up and to the right.
- cornholio 9y agoBecause the sample number increases, the confidence improves and the test can detect lower and lower biases from the 0.5 chirality preference probability.
- pps43 9y agoThe exact shape depends on your cost function. If you want to stop as early as possible when a strong effect is present (at the cost of running the test longer when the effect is weak), you can make the area get wider.
- ianai 9y agoI’m betting there may be preferences for individual cats, but not symbolic of the entire cat population. If anything, cats are almost pathological about generalizations. If you assume to know what cat will want to do then cat just might detect your assumption and decide to change. I’ve seen them do this too much to discount it.
- PakG1 9y agoThe unfortunate thing is that to get complete data, you'd need full web cam coverage of your home in order to catch all instances of your cat sleeping over 24 hours. Otherwise your data risks being incomplete, or worse, skewed. The level of rigor required necessitates that only the most dedicated cat owners can study this phenomena.
- jimmcslim 9y agoI initially thought this has something to do with the concept of chirality in lifeforms... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiral_life_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiral_life_concept
- xelxebar 9y agoYou might like the book Axiomatic. It's a collection of short stories by Greg Egan, and one of them has a plot involving Chiral humans.