Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [September 20, 2024]

The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: May I ask a simple question? What aspects or elements of a probability distribution can be computed or quantified, and how are these computations used to describe the distribution? - Why are some creatures nocturnal? Why aren't humans? - Is the normal distribution related to the complexity of the dynamics, or is it found equally at all scales? - ​Does pi have a normal number distribution? - ​​Google says the average human height is 5'9"–​​it's 5'10" in the US. - I read that there is a puzzle over why no new body plans developed since the Cambrian. In your machine learning view of adaptive evolution, what's happening here? - Apparently Japanese kids are getting taller, correlated with red meat consumption. - ​​Do you think there are so many variables that it's impossible to figure out? Everyone knows about corn syrup, but there are also things like smoking was very common, etc. - ​​What kinds of diseases that have afflicted humanity for almost all of our history would stunt growth? - If you consume less energy, your processes including various damage and aging slow down, right? - Could we have evolved out of needing an appendix because of diet? - Is it possible to measure somehow the intelligence of dinosaurs?