So there I sit thinking to myself ‘but nothing in the video changed…’ Confused, he asks us if anyone saw the change. Nothing. No one raises their hand. So we all look at him like he’s crazy or something and he says ‘Fine, fine, I’ll show you the video again.” He shows us the same video. Still nothing happens. He asks again if anyone noticed and one person raises their hand and in a meager voice suggests something. He just laughs and says no. Nasson then rolls his eyes and shows us the video a third time. This time about three people raise their hands to say they noticed a change. I still don’t see anything. So he shows us a fourth and a fifth time before about half the class is raising their hands to say they saw something. One of the students says that a rock disappeared when Nasson asks what they saw. A bunch of people start to laugh, after all, it’s not like our entire class wouldn’t see a rock disappear!
Nasson just smiles and shows us the video again, this time telling us to focus on a rock in the foreground. Sure enough, the rock disappears. I was shocked to say the least, I saw that video five times and I couldn’t even see a rock disappear before my own eyes! Nasson then showed us several more videos where things either gradually appeared, disappeared, or changed color and with each passing video everyone, including me, got much better at spotting the change. The trick to the whole thing was the fact that it was a slow fade and not an abrupt change, so it didn’t catch your attention. He explained to us that our brains focus on movement and sudden changes, so when the change happens gradually we are really bad at noticing it. Nasson then explained that a lot of companies have problems with this because they don’t notice gradual shifts in their market or problems the company is encountering. All in all, I found it to be a very interesting lecture and was shocked that I didn’t notice it the first time. And if you’re sitting there thinking to yourself that you would have seen it, just remember that our entire class of 70 people took three tries before anyone noticed it, and these are some of the top business students in the world.
Oh, there was another memorable event in this class today. So, when it was cold I wore my USC sweatshirt to class everyday to stay warm, and Nasson made fun of me once for it. So, for the first month of class I wore something that said USC on it to this particular class either by choice or by sheer coincidence. As such, I became known as ‘the USC kid.’ Professor Nasson did his graduate work at USC and so it became a running joke that he was always nice to me and favored me because I was from USC. So today I was getting dressed and decided not to wear anything USC and see what happened in class. To make sure of this I grabbed my new jacket instead of my USC sweatshirt to wear. So I about half way through class Nasson calls on me and after I make my comment he remarks that I’m not wearing anything USC today. Right before class though, I noticed that I had my USC marathon team shirt on underneath by accident (believe me, I honestly did know and was trying not to wear anything). So, I just smile at him and slowly unzip my jacket. Underneath my jacket is my USC tee-shirt in Cardinal. He starts to laugh and the kids below me turn around and start to laugh. Then I slowly turn to my right and my left to show the rest of the class what was so funny. By now the entire class is cracking up and continues to laugh for the next two minutes. Score one for me.
Today was very exciting, because in addition to my adventure in class, I also had an adventure outside. I wrote a few days ago in my blog about my hiking adventure along the beach where we saw a waterfall off in the distance. As such, you can probably guess that I went hiking today with Brian to go and find that waterfall. We started out by climbing down a steep embankment to a river we could see from the path. When we got to the water it was white and bubbly, the sort of water you’d see coming out of a washing machine. We then hiked along this river until we reached the top of the waterfall where I grabbed a somewhat questionable tree and stood near the edge to try and get a better view. It was a difficult journey to get there and there was trash everywhere, but a pleasant hike nevertheless.
You can see the horrible looking water.
The view from the top of the waterfall. It's a 300 foot drop from there.
A nice shot I took of Brian.
This was the waterfall from a distance
One of my artistic shots of the day.
After that we walked back down that path to try and find the base of the waterfall to take pictures, but couldn’t find a good path. The river ran through an ‘Organic Farmers’ thing that had no trespassing signs all over, so after great deliberation we wondered through the forest amid tons of leaves and brush to try and get to the river, only to be stopped by a very steep cliff we couldn’t get down and were forced to abandon our endeavor.
For more pictures of this little excursion, check out the photo album below.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2227818&l=3be9a&id=3423216
On the bright side of things, we managed to actually book tickets for Thailand after 3 hours of debate and hassle.
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