>> What the heck did you search for?! It's kind of a rather specific
>> question...
> 
> I searched for "newton apple myth".  First hit took me to a page that 
> linked to this.

And that WORKED??

>>> You might refute it, a straw poll might be a start, but a poll of 20
>>> people isn't a particularly statistically valid poll.
>> Well it would be more valid than a straw poll of *one* wouldn't it? :-P
> 
> I don't think statistically it would be.  A sample size that's too small 
> is too small.

I don't think stats works like that. You get a number which indicates 
how accurate your estimate is. You them apply some arbitrary threshold 
to decide what is "valid" and "invalid". Choose the right threshold and 
anything can be "valid". My point is that a larger sample size will give 
a better result (assuming reasonable sampling).

> Still, you might give it a go anyways, if anything it'll 
> get you talking to people in meatspace. ;-)

In other news, I just spent an hour and a half in a pub.

>> Still, I guess this is going to be one of those things where no matter
>> how much evidence I produce that nobody has heard of these people,
>> everybody will continue to assert that my statistics are just wrong...
> 
> That's because you don't *have* statistics.  You have a guess.  You say 
> "nobody", but to prove that, you have to prove that *everybody* hasn't 
> heard of them.  That's pretty easy to disprove.

Clearly I meant "nobody" in the sense of "a very small fraction of the 
population" rather than "zero people in the entire world". :-P

>> Quite a few of the names look hard to pronounce, but we'll see...
> 
> Such as?

Sagan?

Rechecking the list, it doesn't look so bad...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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