"We think that humour is personal, but evolutionary psychologists have talked about humour as being a message-sending device. So if you laugh, you let someone else know that something is not dangerous," says Westbury. He uses the example of a person at home believing they see an intruder in their backyard. This person might then laugh when they discover the intruder is simply a cat instead of a cat burglar. "If you laugh, you're sending a message to whomever's around that you thought you saw something dangerous, but it turns out it wasn't dangerous after all. It's adaptive." Just as expected (or not) The idea of entropy as a predictor of humour aligns with a 19th-century theory from the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who proposed that humour is a result of an expectation violation, as opposed to a previously held theory that humour is based simply on improbability. When it comes to humour, expectations can be violated in various ways. In non-words, expectations are phonological (we expect them to be pronounced a certain way), whereas in puns, the expectations are semantic. "One reason puns are funny is that they violate our expectation that a word has one meaning," says Westbury. Consider the following joke: Why did the golfer wear two sets of pants? Because he got a hole in one. "When you hear the golfer joke, you laugh because you've done something unexpectedyou expect the phrase 'hole in one' to mean something different, and that expectation has been violated." The study may not be about to change the game for stand-up comediansafter all, a silly word is hardly the pinnacle of comedybut the findings may be useful in commercial applications such as in product naming. "I would be interested in looking at the relationship between product names and the seriousness of the product," notes Westbury. "For example, people might be averse to buying a funny-named medication for a serious illnessor it could go the other way around." Finding a measurable way to predict humour is just the tip of the proverbial... ( more at http://m.phys.org/news/2015-11-world-mathematical-theory-humor.html ) The findings were published in the Journal of Memory and Language. More information: Chris Westbury et al. Telling the world's least funny jokes: On the quantification of humor as entropy, Journal of Memory and Language (2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2015.09.001 Provided by: University of Alberta Livro 2011. Mais uma laconica viagem tempo e no espaco. DOWNLOAD PARCIAL. LARCEN, Cesar Goncalves. Mais uma laconica viagem no tempo e no espaco: explorando o ciberespaco e liquefazendo fronteiras entre o moderno e o pos-moderno atravessando o campo dos Estudos Culturais. Porto Alegre: Cesar Goncalves Larcen Editor, 2011. 144 p. il. Livro 2012. As regras do Truco Cego. DOWNLOAD GRATUITO. FREE DOWNLOAD. AGUIAR, Vitor Hugo Berenhauser de. As regras do Truco Cego. Porto Alegre: Cesar Goncalves Larcen Editor, 2012. 58 p. il. Livro 2013. Clusterizacao. DOWNLOAD GRATUITO. FREE DOWNLOAD. LINCK, Ricardo Ramos. LORENZI, Fabiana. Clusterizacao: utilizando Inteligencia Artificial para agrupar pessoas. Porto Alegre: Cesar Goncalves Larcen Editor, 2013. 120p. il. Livro 2013. Pedagogias Culturais. DOWNLOAD GRATUITO. FREE DOWNLOAD. LARCEN, Cesar Goncalves. Pedagogias