Missing Socks and Abnormal Dumplings: HSE MIEM Holds Pseudoscientific Conference
For the first time, the HSE MIEM Pseudoscientific Conference brought together students from different faculties to find answers to absurd but surprisingly profound questions. Why can't Skynet cook dumplings? How do the stars affect your grades? The organisers and participants of the conference proved that even the strangest joke can sound scientific if approached with a qualitative methodology.
Success Formula: Cross Disciplines and Humour
Eight papers selected from 27 applications were presented at the Pseudoscientific Conference 2024. Students of the Faculties of Social Sciences, Economics, Humanities, Biology and Biotechnology, Physics, and Creative Industries submitted their ideas, which made the event truly interdisciplinary. The winners received awards in three categories: ‘For the Most Scientific Report’, ‘For the Most Unscientific Report’ and ‘Audience Award’.
The following experts evaluated the reports: Sergey Aksenov, Deputy Director of HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM HSE), Eduard Klyshinskiy, Academic Supervisor of the Master’s Programme in Computational Linguistics, Associate Professor at MIEM, and Arkady Shanenko, Chief Research Fellow at the Centre for Quantum Metamaterials. Sofya Parshina, student at MIEM and the curator of the event, explained that the Pseudoscientific Conference is more than just entertainment—it provokes interest in science through reports structured as real scientific research.
Astrological Success
The prize ‘For the Most Scientific Report’ was awarded to Varvara Nechitailo, student of the Bachelor’s Programme in Applied Mathematics, who spoke about her research on the influence of the astrological compatibility of teachers and students on final exam grades.
The study is based on the analysis of 150 grades for oral exams. Using open data, she learned the zodiac signs of students and teachers, and then calculated the compatibility level from 0 to 1 for each of the examiner–examinee pairs. Based on the data obtained, the researcher drew up graphs of the correlation between the indicators of zodiac sign compatibility and the grades obtained in the exam.
Sober Mathematics
Anastasia Varfolomeeva, student of the Bachelor’s Programme in Applied Mathematics, presented ‘The Most Unscientific Report’ and proposed a new interpretation of the famous three-body problem, adapting it to real life. ‘Imagine that the party is over, you are sober, and there are three drunk friends nearby. How do you take them home?’ asked the speaker.
The three-body problem is a classic problem of celestial mechanics, where it is necessary to predict the motion of three point masses that orbit each other in space under the influence of gravity. Due to the complexity of these interactions, the problem has no general closed-form solution, which makes it one of the most famous problems in mathematics and physics.
Anastasia suggested the following classification of friends: the calm friend—‘a peaceful creature who strives to help and does not cause problems’, the insane one—‘the one who hardly speaks and is too drunk to walk’, and the aggressive one —‘the one who is looking for trouble both for himself and for others.’ Each of them has their own trajectory.
The calm friend, according to Anastasia, moves randomly, the insane one moves along a sinusoid, periodically falling over to take rest, and the aggressive one demonstrates ‘an exponent that shows us how badly he wants to fight with someone or to start a conflict, depending on the amount of alcohol he has drunk.’ Inspired by the three-body problem, Anastasia showed how the interaction of friends creates a complex dynamic system: the calm friend does not affect the rest, but his presence can stabilise the situation, while the aggressive friend sometimes makes the system ‘insoluble’.
From Language to Socks: Unexpected Perspectives of Pseudoscientific Discoveries
The ‘Audience Award’ was given to Yaroslav Popov, student of the Faculty of Mathematics, who captivated the audience with a story about unexpected aspects of the development of Russian linguistics. He also offered a very unusual take on the emphasis in words.
Ksenia Zabeyvorota, student of the Integrated Communications programme at the Faculty of Creative Industries, made a presentation on ‘The Quantum Theory of Socks: Why One of Them Is Always Missing’ in which she proposed a hypothesis that could challenge ideas not only about our wardrobes, but also about quantum mechanics.
Innovations in Pseudoscience: From Dumpling Thinking to AI Aura
The conference also featured a report by Artyom Lyakhov, student of the Programme in Applied Mathematics, in which he presented research on the impossibility of cooking dumplings with artificial intelligence. Daniella Gafurova, student of the ‘System Analysis and Mathematical Technologies’ Programme, spoke about the factors affecting student productivity and suggested unexpected parameters to improve them. For example, the influence of the azimuth of the Moon and the cost of lunch turned out to be important elements of her mathematical model.
Igor Danilov, student of the Information Science and Computation Technology Programme, touched on the topic of AI emotionality, presenting the concept of an ‘AI Aura’ and the conditions which can help train models like ChatGPT more effectively.
The organisers were satisfied with the conference. ‘We achieved what we wanted: a full house, excellent reports, and most importantly, an atmosphere of kind, smart, playful communication that should be integral to this event,’ said Sofia Parshina.