Calculus
I saw an article in the scientific journal Nature about the importance of a good night’s sleep to the creative process. In the clinical trial, two groups of volunteers were given problems to solve. Some of the volunteers were allowed to go to sleep and work out the problems in the morning, while others were forced to stay up late and try to figure out the answers even though they were tired. Sounds like good old-fashioned college cramming to me. Not surprisingly, the group that slept was twice as likely to solve the problems correctly as the group that was forced to stay awake.
The first thought that came to mind for me when I read this study was: I wonder if the late-night problem-solving group had electrodes attached to them that would juice ‘em up good when they started to nod off. I remember when I was in college there was a handful of students who regularly volunteered for these kinds of studies, usually hosted by the psychology department. The students who did this sort of thing were always hard up for cash and $100 seemed like a lot of money to them, especially when all they had to do to earn it was have electrodes skewered into their brains that made them see broccoli when a bowl of carrots was placed in front of them. As I recall, there always seemed to be electrodes involved.
I used to run into these guys (and they were mostly guys) at the campus ratskeller on Saturday nights after they got paid.
“Hey, man, I thought you were too broke to party?”
“I did another clinical trial.”
“Dude. You still have some wires coming out of the back of your head.”
“Oh, those. You know, after a while I forget they’re even there.”
I never participated in a clinical trial, but I know that these researchers are on to something when they talk about how hard it is to solve problems when you’re tired. I remember once when I was a sophomore in college I had a take-home calculus final exam. Of course, I waited until the last possible moment to do it and was up late agonizing over the problems. I was just too tired when I got to the final problem of the test. I remember staring at it as though it was written in Swahili. (In retrospect, Swahili would have been easier to learn and provided a more useful language skill.)
I fell asleep at my desk that night. When I woke up I noticed something very strange. The problem that had given me fits just hours ago was solved. On the page in front of me there were several lines of numbers and mathematical symbols all linked together, and at the end there was an equal sign followed by an answer. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Had I done this? Well, it turns out I had not. My roommate, Andy, had done it. Andy, who had gone to bed before me and had a good night’s sleep, woke up early and found me hunched over my exam. He scribbled down the math notation on my paper thinking it was a pretty good joke. What Andy didn’t realize is that his answer, wrong as it was, was still better than anything I could come up with, so I turned it in anyway.
Is there a moral to all this? Nah. It’s just a good story. And I dedicate it to all the volunteers in the sleep-deprived group from the problem-solving study. Good work, guys! You can remove the electrodes now.
10:19:57 PM  Stories
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