3 ms·

Reminds me of the story I read where the guy's car wouldn't start depending on what flavor of ice cream he picked and when investigated he was right. Some kind

Reminds me of the story I read where the guy's car wouldn't start depending on what flavor of ice cream he picked and when investigated he was right. Some kind of evaporation/vacuum leak or something that was dependent on time and some flavors were farther away in the store and took more time to buy.

nudgeee 3y ago
Vapor lock. Legend here: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cone-of-silence/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cone-of-silence/
- RajT88 3y ago
  I heard a similar tale in high school. A friend of mine had an aunt who passed away, and so he ended up inheriting her car. The car came with a petrified apple pie in the back. He was insistent that the car would not start without the pie in the back window. Several of his friends who he played in a punk band with confirmed this, that they had tested it. Take the pie out, car won't start. Put the pie back in, the car starts. I don't think anyone ever figured out what was going on, I graduated a couple of months after hearing the story, and fell out of touch. But - timing and vapor lock makes sense, if they were always testing it by first starting the car, removing the pie, and then putting the pie back in. As an aside, the aunt who had passed away was one Aunt Martha (after which the car was also named), which in honor of the strange car and its strange pie was what their garage punk band was named after. There's some totally unrelated band now called Aunt Martha - any evidence of their band is not on the internet.
superfrank 3y ago
Up there with the "I can't send an email over 500 miles" story https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles
- suzzer99 3y ago
  I love this one so much.
gostsamo 3y ago
This one is a legend. I love it, but you can find the debunking on the fact checking sites.
- trehalose 3y ago
  The Snopes page doesn't really seem to debunk it, but merely points out that the legend's been retold with many variations and contradictory explanations. Suspicious, definitely, but it doesn't seem clear that none of the variations could ever have happened?
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    It's a just-so story. The null hypothesis is that it's not true.
    - sfink 3y ago
      That is the definition of null hypothesis, yes. Not to be blunt, but you might get a closer shave with Occam's Razor.
      - IshKebab 3y ago
        The null hypothesis isn't "it's not true" it's "what's has the highest prior probability?". If my wife said "I'm going to the shops" I wouldn't assume she was lying until proven otherwise.
        sfink 3y ago
        Sorry, but no. The null hypothesis is that there is no relation between two variables. You have to do experiments to estimate the probabilities of the null and alternative hypotheses. You don't get to label the one with the higher prior as the null hypothesis; that's simply not what that term means. It does indeed mean "it's not true [that A affects B]". > If my wife said "I'm going to the shops" I wouldn't assume she was lying until proven otherwise. I certainly hope you wouldn't! But the null hypothesis would indeed be that the words she speaks have no bearing on whether she is going shopping. I don't know your wife, but I find it easy to believe that your prior probability of that hypothesis is quite low. (At least, until it becomes a pattern where she's regularly staying out all night with more and more flimsy excuses....)

nudgeee 3y ago

Vapor lock. Legend here: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cone-of-silence/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cone-of-silence/

RajT88 3y ago
I heard a similar tale in high school. A friend of mine had an aunt who passed away, and so he ended up inheriting her car. The car came with a petrified apple pie in the back. He was insistent that the car would not start without the pie in the back window. Several of his friends who he played in a punk band with confirmed this, that they had tested it. Take the pie out, car won't start. Put the pie back in, the car starts. I don't think anyone ever figured out what was going on, I graduated a couple of months after hearing the story, and fell out of touch. But - timing and vapor lock makes sense, if they were always testing it by first starting the car, removing the pie, and then putting the pie back in. As an aside, the aunt who had passed away was one Aunt Martha (after which the car was also named), which in honor of the strange car and its strange pie was what their garage punk band was named after. There's some totally unrelated band now called Aunt Martha - any evidence of their band is not on the internet.

superfrank 3y ago

Up there with the "I can't send an email over 500 miles" story https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles

suzzer99 3y ago
I love this one so much.

gostsamo 3y ago

This one is a legend. I love it, but you can find the debunking on the fact checking sites.

trehalose 3y ago
The Snopes page doesn't really seem to debunk it, but merely points out that the legend's been retold with many variations and contradictory explanations. Suspicious, definitely, but it doesn't seem clear that none of the variations could ever have happened?
- IshKebab 3y ago
  It's a just-so story. The null hypothesis is that it's not true.
  - sfink 3y ago
    That is the definition of null hypothesis, yes. Not to be blunt, but you might get a closer shave with Occam's Razor.
    - IshKebab 3y ago
      The null hypothesis isn't "it's not true" it's "what's has the highest prior probability?". If my wife said "I'm going to the shops" I wouldn't assume she was lying until proven otherwise.
      - sfink 3y ago
        Sorry, but no. The null hypothesis is that there is no relation between two variables. You have to do experiments to estimate the probabilities of the null and alternative hypotheses. You don't get to label the one with the higher prior as the null hypothesis; that's simply not what that term means. It does indeed mean "it's not true [that A affects B]". > If my wife said "I'm going to the shops" I wouldn't assume she was lying until proven otherwise. I certainly hope you wouldn't! But the null hypothesis would indeed be that the words she speaks have no bearing on whether she is going shopping. I don't know your wife, but I find it easy to believe that your prior probability of that hypothesis is quite low. (At least, until it becomes a pattern where she's regularly staying out all night with more and more flimsy excuses....)