Simple Statistics Bust the MythBusters

Hosting the Discovery Channel’s MythBusters must seem like every teenager’s dream job. Money, fame, and most importantly, you get to blow stuff up. As is often the case with dreams, however, the reality of the job is comparatively quite ugly. Using a rubber band on the gas button of a lighter until it explodes is one thing, but doing so in an attempt to prove something under the critical gaze of millions of viewers (and thousands of nerds) is quite another. Sometimes you might not get to blow anything up at all – and your success may depend on math of all things.

As this article shows, the MythBusters episode addressing whether or not a yawn is contagious is just one such instance. Sure, the hosts got to do more exciting things while the lackeys carried out a pyro’s worst nightmare of an experiment, but in the end, it was Adam and Jamie who had to interpret the results. Little did they know their accuracy was about on level with… well, a teenager.

Be careful what you wish for, adolescents of the world, you might one day get it and be held accountable to OmniNerd.