In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: The Way Your Eyes Move Can Predict Your Personality This Hilarious English Phrasebook Has Been in Publication Since the 1800s "English as She Is Spoke" The Mysterious Battery That Has Lasted More Than 175 Years
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/personality-predicting-eye-movements-a-mysterious-battery-and-english-as-she-is-spoke
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn how an algorithm can predict your personality based on how your eyes move. We'll delve into a hilarious English phrase book from the 1800s, and we'll explore how a battery has been able to last more than 175 years.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, do you know your Myers-Briggs type?
CODY GOUGH: The personality test? I've taken it, but I don't remember what it is.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's OK because it's not actually based in science.
CODY GOUGH: Right.
ASHLEY HAMER: The only personality test that has really been supported by scientific literature is called the Big 5 model.
CODY GOUGH: What are the Big 5?
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, they are five personality traits. Those include openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. If you forget, just remember the acronym OCEAN.
CODY GOUGH: OCEAN, got it.
ASHLEY HAMER: So anyway, in a new study, researchers were able to use artificial intelligence to predict at least four of those five personality traits in individual people without them ever taking a test, and it's all based on how their eyes move.
CODY GOUGH: What?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. A team from University of South Australia showed how an eye-tracking method was able to measure every trait other than openness, plus something called perceptual curiosity. That's a person's tendency to investigate new sights, sounds or other sensory stimulation.
Eye-tracking might seem like a weird way to judge personality, but actually, past research has shown that it works. One study showed that optimists will spend less time looking at gross medical images than pessimists will, and another study showed that people with a lot of openness spend more time looking at locations in abstract animations.
So in this study, the researchers had 42 students fill out a personality test, to assess their Big 5 personality traits, then wear eye-tracking smart glasses while they performed a task around campus. The team fed that data into a machine learning algorithm that crunched the numbers, and you can read which movement correlated to which traits, specifically in our write-up on curiosity.com.
But the predictions were not mind-blowingly accurate. They were just 7% to 15% better than chance. But it's a small study, and machine learning usually uses thousands or millions of data points to make accurate predictions.
The team expects the accuracy to improve, but there are ethics to consider. I mean some people are pretty unhappy about big data predictions that advertisers and big tech companies are making these days. Remember Cambridge Analytica? More advanced personality prediction could open an even bigger can of worms for privacy. So we'll keep an eye on where this story goes in the future.
CODY GOUGH: And you don't have to track our lie to know that we're going to follow up.
ASHLEY HAMER: Ooh, yup.
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: Ashley, have you ever visited a place where you didn't speak the language?
ASHLEY HAMER: I have.
CODY GOUGH: How did you communicate? Did you try to learn some of the language? Did you have a phrase book?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. I tried to learn some of the language. I wasn't very good at it, but I did my best.
CODY GOUGH: Well, phrase books are popular. Have you ever used a phrase book?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: OK. I think I've used one or two. They have basic things, like, where's the bathroom?
ASHLEY HAMER: Sure, the stuff that you need. Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: The common stuff. Yeah. Well, today on curiosity.com, we wrote about what might be the most hilarious, ridiculous, and completely unusable translation aid in history.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. The name says it all. It's called English as She Is Spoke.
ASHLEY HAMER: Get ready.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
He was the brainchild of an aspiring Portuguese translator named Pedro Carolino. He wanted to create a phrase book for Portuguese students visiting abroad, but he didn't actually learn English. And he didn't hire somebody who spoke English. No, he didn't even use an English-Portuguese dictionary.
ASHLEY HAMER: What did he do?
CODY GOUGH: Right? So this is a Portuguese guy who doesn't speak English and isn't consulting any English to Portuguese materials to write it. Instead, he used a Portuguese to French phrase book by Author Jose de Fonseca and a French to English dictionary.
ASHLEY HAMER: What?
CODY GOUGH: So he translated Portuguese to French and then French to English.
ASHLEY HAMER: like when you use Google Translate to translate one language to another language to another language, and it just turns into gibberish.
CODY GOUGH: Yes. Except apparently, he figured that he could just translate the French side of the phrase book to English. And again, that somehow ended up with a Portuguese to English phrase book. And he published it the first edition in 1855. And when he did that, he gave part of the credit to Fonseca, who is not happy about it.
[LAUGHS]
Like, at all. But there's a happy ending in a bizarre twist. Even though the book was absolutely absurd, it became a critical success. When the second edition was published in 1883, the American version came with a foreword.
ASHLEY HAMER: What?
CODY GOUGH: Do you know who wrote the foreword?
ASHLEY HAMER: Who?
CODY GOUGH: Mark Twain.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: He wrote that the book is quote "perfect. It must and will stand alone. It's immortality is secure."
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh my gosh.
CODY GOUGH: Unquote. We'll put a link to by the book in the show notes if you want it, but you can read some choice phrases in our coverage today on curiosity.com. My favorite common English phrases from the book include "dress your hair's, he burns one's self the brains, and all trees have very deal bare."
ASHLEY HAMER: Wait. What do those things mean?
CODY GOUGH: I don't know. And there are also some great idioms or as the book calls them "idiot-isms." These are the best. "The stone as roll not heap up not foam."
ASHLEY HAMER: So rolling stones gather no mass, right?
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
[LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: OK. Give me the next one.
CODY GOUGH: That's good. "To buy cat in pocket."
ASHLEY HAMER: I have no idea.
CODY GOUGH: No idea? And of course, the classic "he is beggar as a church rat."
ASHLEY HAMER: Nope.
CODY GOUGH: Nope?
ASHLEY HAMER: No idea.
CODY GOUGH: No idea?
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. So English as She Is Spoke, a literary classic.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, how much do you love batteries?
CODY GOUGH: I love, love batteries.
ASHLEY HAMER: A lot of our readers really love batteries.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. it's a thing. There are battery lovers out there. And today, we wrote about a battery.
CODY GOUGH: Is it like a super battery?
ASHLEY HAMER: It's a mystery battery. It is a super battery. It's a very old, still ticking battery.
CODY GOUGH: The batteries tick?
ASHLEY HAMER: It's making stuff tick. OK. So here's the story. There's a bell in the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University, and it's been ringing for more than 175 years, and nobody knows how.
CODY GOUGH: What?
ASHLEY HAMER: So the bell goes by a couple of names-- the Oxford Electric Bell, for some, and the Clarendon Dry Pile, for others. And you'll find out why it's called the Dry Pile, which sounds a little weird, right? It's been ringing since 1840. Although, ringing is a strong word because the bell is practically inaudible, because it's behind a protective glass case. Because it's 175 years old, you want to protect it. But if you get up close, you can see the clapper vibrating at a pretty impressive speed. According to the university, the bell, which is powered by the single, seemingly immortal battery has rung approximately 10 billion times.
CODY GOUGH: Wait. It's been ringing non-stop?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes.
CODY GOUGH: Oh.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. So the mystery is how? How has it lasted so long? And how is it still going? This battery is what's called a Dry Pile, which was one of the first types of electric batteries. Those work by using alternating disks of silver, zinc, and sulfur, plus other materials to generate electricity.
Back when people were still figuring out the dry pile, they even experimented with organic materials, like radish and beet slices. Well, we don't actually know what the piles in the Oxford bell's battery are made of. And researchers would almost certainly ruin the streak if they opened it to find out what's going on inside. One paper estimates the clapper seems more likely to wear out than the battery. So this mystery could be going on for many more years.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Wouldn't you love that in your phone?
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: Just goes on forever.
CODY GOUGH: Somebody get me a dry pile in my cell phone. That'd be great in a smartphone.
ASHLEY HAMER: Smartphone powered by radishes.
CODY GOUGH: I mean, as long as it doesn't smell.
ASHLEY HAMER: You can read about all these stories and so much more on curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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