One of the (many) things that annoy me is people, on finding something they’d lost, saying “It was in the last place I looked!”. Because you’ve found it, you’re going to stop looking, yes? So the last place you look, even if it’s the first place you look, is always going to be where you find it. When Kate lost the key to the mailbox this morning I approached the situation with characteristic sang froid (which admittedly involved a screwdriver, a hammer, and a trip to the hardware store, although sadly not to buy rawlplugs): it was only the comment “it’ll be in the last place I look” that annoyed me.
People don’t think about what they’re saying.
Now, that’s a bit of fun. But what’s more interesting is my observation that things tend to be found in the last possible place they could be. The last place you look—obviously—but in the last place ever. In other words, if you search your house for an item, starting at the most probable place and working down a list, the item will be in the least probable place. But conversely, if you look in the least likely place and end up in the most likely, guess where it will be? And sometimes you can look everywhere and still not find it, until you start over and find it in the first place you looked.
What the world is crying out for is a full mathematical treatment of this phenomenon. Ideally the mechanics of the search process could be understood so that we can find whatever we lose with consummate ease (perhaps iFind for the iPhone? Apple, are you listening?).
Apart from the mailbox key, I’ve lost a letter from Doc Beckett (with his email address on it, dammit) and a small camera tripod (and the old trick of buying a new one didn’t make the latter turn up. Puzzling). With Pickfords going through the house today I did, however, find a set of camera -> TV cables and a marble or two (but not the full complement), and a host of other inconsequentia that weren’t actually ‘lost’ as such, but nonetheless resulted in ‘oh, so that’s where it got to’ moments. (Including, as I write this, a cold cup of coffee.)
Nearly all my material possessions are now in boxes, and I won’t see any of it for a couple of months. But ultimately, it’s only stuff0, and I’m now far more excited about getting to the UK and facing the new opportunities and challenges in London.
What will I find there?
fn0. Except my iMac. You get that when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
People don’t think about what they’re saying.
Thou speakest truth, Richard, and how.
I can tell you that we have a full-blown lab superstition along the same lines, which is that when you are looking for a mutation in a large gene with lots of exons, you will always find it, should it be there to be found, in the last exon you sequence.
There are more examples of this than can possibly be due to chance. Bob, we need you here!
My kids are rubbish as looking for things, so when I am called into the case the missing item is usually in the first place that I look.
“I’m still the best looking man in the house then.” I tell them. These days, this remark brings hands to hips, cocks the head to one side and elicits the reply “Yeah. Right.”
Well, you see Stephen, the search has already progressed enough to cover all non-obvious places. This simply means that the effect is observer independent.
Yeah.
bq. There are more examples of this than can possibly be due to chance. Bob, we need you here!
I need cold hard data. Without it, I’ll go all Ben Goldacre and suggest it’s recall bias.
Ooh! A challenge!
Now, where did I put that list of things I’ve lost? Damn, just a minute…
I foresee you will find a piece of paper, upon which is written “Things to take to Australia”
haha! I bet we only find that once we’re in London.
It’ll be with the poxy letterbox key…
I have a bad habit of jotting ideas for things to write up later, on a pad or sheet of paper. Sometimes they lurk in my bag for a while, and other times they vanish into thin air. I hate having to try and recall what I’d written before. Even worse is when I have made another jotting about that topic, and then find the original one and have to somehow merge the two together.
I think I need a computer.
Have you tried tattoos? Worked very well for that bloke in Memento…
Good luck on finding your stuff!… I usually never do, if they are lost… they are gone, forever.
I forgot what I wanted to say.
I feel the same way about my macbook.
rather unluckily for me, I still have moments of “where did that go” months after moving.
@ Stephen: it’s funny how you suggested the tattoos from Memento instead of its old school Polaroids. and as much as I hate to admit it, occasionally I’ll call my mother to ask her to help me think of where I may have misplaced my things…
occasionally I’ll call my mother
I will sometimes ask my partner if he can help. That’s because it’s usually he who tidied it away in the first place!
I lost a little bit of confidence on the Alpine slopes today. But I think that was down to the blizzard.
You didn’t hurt yourself, did you Jenny?
For me it’s ski minus 3 (days) and counting.
I think I read a paper somewhere saying that the best way to find a lost object is to use the foraging strategy of some small rodent or other. Or maybe it was a bee. I think it was in Current Biology. Hang on a minute…
…Found it!. It was not in Current Biology, and it was not specifically about rodents or bees.
“Bénichou and colleagues created the model by assuming that foraging animals exhibit two distinct phases of behaviour. In the first phase they move quickly on a single trajectory from one location to another. Then in the second phase they search the new location by moving around more slowly and randomly — akin to molecules undergoing diffusion. They carry on this two-phase process until they find the object. […] Bénichou told PhysicsWeb that the results could be extended to human activities, such as searching for a lost object or perhaps even a victim in an avalanche.”
You may also be interested in this.
“human activities, such as searching for a lost object or perhaps even a victim in an avalanche.”
I thought we used dogs for the latter? Also, how serendipitous that it’s about snowy mountains again.
No, not really serendipitous. What’s that phrase for when the same things keep popping up? (Not the Bader-Meinhoff phenomenon because that’s only about odd things you’ve never heard before.)
Well, it’s winter (for most of us). So we’re talking about skiing and snowy mountains more often than usual…
I think they tend to use quite complex technology to find avalanche victims these days – lots of people carry beacons etc., so you need a human to operate the scanner. My husband has a patch on his ski jacket that doesn’t actually trasmit, but makes the wearer more reflective to the scanners, so they can find you more easily. The writing on the patch says “Warning – does not prevent avalanches”. I kid you not…
Thanks for the link to the Bader-Meinhoff phenomenon – that’s happened to me a lot, but I’d never heard the name before. One memorable New Year’s Eve, my sister heard the word placebo for the first time at lunch time, and then it came up in multiple independent conversations with different people about 4 more times before midnight. Although, as she said, that’s what you get for hanging out with scientists.
I had it happen recently with a Robbie Burns poem – Henry blogged it as part of a joke I think, and within a few days I read the same poem in a book. It was also very close to Burns Day which I hadn’t really been aware of before, but that only explains Henry (in as much as anything does!) and not the book I was reading.
The origin of the name for that phenomenon is extremely odd, and it’s weird to read it in this context. Even weirder when you check out the explanation of the name’s origin on wikipedia.
Concerning the Baader-Meinhof group, the telegraph actually had an interesting review of the movie that came out last year. This was my parents generation, and I was in primary school when the biggest kidnapping was going on, so seeing a ‘curious phenomenon’ named after this in a humorous way is just… odd. I wonder whether there’s a more scientific term for this?
Sorry – Kate, I feel bad about the keys. Hope Richard didn’t destroy the mailbox…
Frank, that’s a bit like me. Occasionally I remember to jot things down, but then I have to decipher them: most times I forget where my notepad is.
Frank and Richard, concerning lists: ever find your shopping lists days later (after you’ve been to the shop)? Yeah. That’s me.
I sometimes find notes that say “Important!” or “Oct 15-25” or “WEDNESDAY!!!” with no further explanation.
That’s a little Jasper Fforde, Eva.
Jenny, did you find it again?
Yes, but it would help if you all would stop talking about bodies lost in avalanches.
I said nothing about them!
Seen any St Bernards?
What a great set of links! I feel a post coming on, what with all those open tabs…
(forces herself to get back to the culture room before someone else nabs the hood)
Morphic resonance?
Could be.
A little while ago we lost Sid the Snake.
Sid the Snake, last year. Approximately. Now he’s the size of a bus and eats three whole rejected Nature authors for lunch
The first place we looked was behind the fridge. This is because it’s dark and warm, and snakes like dark, warm places, and ‘behind the fridge’ was where our Keep A Pet Snake book (and several people on helpful internet fora) said that escaped snakes go. But he wasn’t there. Among the many other places he wasn’t were
the fireplace (which I dismantled)
inside the sofa (which we dissected)
behind the dishwasher
behind the washing machine
inside the tumblee dryer
inside the dog (we checked Heiddi for a guilty expression and/or snakey bits)
inside the cat (Fred, ditto)
behind/inside the cupboard that holds a lot of carefully wired together wireless routers, Hi-fi equipment
inside the hi-fi speakers
behind books.
So, we gave up, except that three weeks later, Penny dropped something on the kitchen floor, and, bending down to retrieve it, happened to glance behind the fridge – and there he was.
That’s the ‘first place you look’ rule, isn’t it? Oh, and the ‘You always find something you can’t find when you’re looking for something else’ one.
QED.
I think I’ve lost the point of this discussion.
Nice snake though. Refreshing change from all the kitteh photos.
Have you looked behind the fridge, Richard?