Sunday 18 November 2012

Eat Chocolate, Get Smarter

Not being a regular subscriber to the New England Journal of Medicine, i almost missed the latest scientific breakthrough and i would of just been stuffing my face with chocolate not knowing that rather than just stuffing my face with chocolate, i was actually improving my intelligence.   
The studies author, Franz Messerli of Colombia University, was apparently wondering one afternoon about the power of chocolate after reading that cocoa was good for you and reached the conclusion that the higher a country's chocolate consumption, the more Nobel laureates it spawns per capita.
Apparently regular cocoa intake leads to improved mental function and there is data in rats showing that they live longer and have better cognitive function when they eat chocolate, and even in snails you can show that the snail memory is actually improved.
So Messerli took the number of Nobel Prize winners in a country as an indicator of general national intelligence and compared that with the nation's chocolate consumption. The results were, he said 'striking'.
"When you correlate the two - the chocolate consumption with the number of Nobel Prize laureates per capita there is an incredibly close relationship," the prof explained before turning into geek mode and continuing 'This correlation has a 'P value' of 0.0001. This means there is a less than one-in-10,000 probability that this correlation is simply down to chance.'
No idea what that means, i haven't eaten enough Snickers today obviously, but what it boils down to is eat chocolate and your chances of winning a Nobel Prize go up.
I'm on it Prof and booking that plane to Sweden as we speak.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

the highest correlation possible is +1.0

the lowest correleation (no correlation) is -1.0

if i recall correctly, it has been many years, 0.00001 is equal to a coin toss... not all that correlated.

q

Anonymous said...

i don't really like chocolate, but i do like chocolate with sugar...

q

Lucy said...

Don't ruin it q, just reach for the sugar and chocolate and enjoy.