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Monday, January 16, 2006

Beyond Coincidence

Regular readers of this here blog might know that I'm no fan of excessive photoshopping. Hence, I'm not real fond of this cover, especially the dramatic dropshadows. But this sounds like a good read:

"Just as nature abhors a vacuum, human beings resist the idea that events occur in random fashion. They are highly receptive to divine messages that suggest otherwise...but the math behind strange coincidences shows that most people simply have a poor grasp of statistics." (from the NY Times review)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The dramatic dropshadows here are pretty coool ... but border on inappropriate. They look very unscientific and un-mathematical (to me). In fact, the first thing I thought of was this:

http://www.scifi.com/taken/dvd/

(I haven't seen the series, but there was an advertising campaign all over the city a couple years ago)

And now ... sort of off topic: Interestingly, the iconic "I WANT TO BELIEVE" poster of "X-Files" fame eschews the "fancy" photoshop-dropshadowing effects that many designers would automatically consider for execution. But its starkness makes it all the more effective, yeah?

Kitty said...

Here's another fascinating book on coincidences; just don't judge it by its cover.