Wes Phillips

The story of Carl Friedrich Gauss' schoolboy triumph over a manipulative teacher is well-known, but Brian Hayes discovered a more interesting tale—and a moral.

As far as color perception goes, it's in the brain. Maybe. Probably.

Charting that "A ha!" moment.

I told no one about this, I swear, yet everyone seems to know. Word spreads like vermin. All eyes are up to the ceiling. As we walk down the halls of our Madison Avenue office, we hold a suspicious and trembling view of the dirty gray panels which hang, tentatively, above us. We are wary and watchful, cautiously anticipating the sudden fall.

"You've taken on a design challenge and come up with a solution that's been widely admired and won you accolades. But a year or so later, you realize you made a mistake. There's something horribly wrong with your design. And it's not just something cosmetic — a badly resolved corner, some misspaced type — but a fundamental flaw that will almost certainly lead to catastrophic failure. And that failure will result not just in embarassment, or professional ruin, but death, the death of thousands of people.

Evian may have produced the greatest commercial ever. Well, for water anyway.

On deadline? Need statistics to back up your project? Here's what you need.