finding a four-leaf clover is supposed
to be a stroke of good luck but we can
increase our odds of being lucky with
science first science can help you find
the real thing the four-leaf clover of
legend is of the species trifolium reap
ends or more commonly known as the white
clover what we call leaves are actually
the leaflets of a single leaf other
plants like pepper wort and iron cross
usually have four leaflets but you can
tell a real four-leaf clover from an
imposter because the fourth leaflet is
usually smaller a statistical analysis
can tell you how much clover you need to
look for before you find one with four
leaflets some growers report one in
10,000 clover plants have four leaflets
assuming that this is a reasonable
estimate we can figure out how much
ground we need to cover to maximize our
chances a typical clover field contains
about 200 clovers per 60 square
centimeters that means you need to scan
one point two square meters roughly the
surface area of an office desk to
observe 10,000 clover leaves no
guarantee for a four leaf er but at
least it gives you a sporting chance
science can also tell us the best way to
look for four-leaf clover if we scan
each leaf individually it will probably
take a really long time and also wear
out our attention expert clover hunter
say it's better to take a more passive
approach look and then wait for
something to jump out at you something
that deviates from the normal pattern a
classic psychology study explains why
this approach might work radiologists
were shown mammograms for one fifth of a
second and then asked to identify which
contained a tumor this isn't nearly
enough time to scan an entire image but
the radiologist could flag tumor
containing images better than by chance
alone this pattern recognition indicates
that a quick scan approach might work
well for clover hunting finally if
you're just having no luck finding a
wild four-leaf clover you can always fix
the game a 2010 genetic study from the
University of Georgia found that the
trait for four leaflets maps to a
specific region of the white clover
genome and it's not that it
in this region actually suppresses the
growth of many leaflets this notion
seems to be supported by the fact that
if you take two four-leaf clover plants
and cross them the offspring is more
likely to have four leaflets do this
many times over and you can get a plant
that has up to 56 leaflets the current
world record and presumably 14 times is
lucky for scientific American's instant
egghead I'm Erik Olson happy hunting
and I think that the fundamental core
reality comes written in two-dimensional
sheets like this piece of paper in this
you our world is a three dimensional
projection information that's written on
a two-dimensional surface and