So what's the going rate for the tooth fairy?

[Milo]

I got a quid. I was devestaed when I dropped my first tooth down the sink I wanted it to be clean for the tooth fairy. Found a quid by the sink next day.

 

[Milo]

I got a quid. I was devestaed when I dropped my first tooth down the sink I wanted it to be clean for the tooth fairy. Found a quid by the sink next day.

 

[karen.488walker]

Ours brings £2 or 5CHF. But we live in an affluent area.

 

[karen.488walker]

Ours brings £2 or 5CHF. But we live in an affluent area.

 

[Arch]

I don't remember getting a particular amount, just a selection of shiny coins, probably about 10p worth per tooth.

In a specially made little lace bag, and accompanied by a tiny chatty letter my Mum wrote for each one, saying thank you from the fairies.

I've been saving the newest coins, the one with the royal standard on the back in pieces - they still tend to be shiny, and I fished out one of each to give Oli in a little knitted stocking tree decoration at Xmas. The moral of the story being, collect shiny ones when you get them!

 

[Arch]

I don't remember getting a particular amount, just a selection of shiny coins, probably about 10p worth per tooth.

In a specially made little lace bag, and accompanied by a tiny chatty letter my Mum wrote for each one, saying thank you from the fairies.

I've been saving the newest coins, the one with the royal standard on the back in pieces - they still tend to be shiny, and I fished out one of each to give Oli in a little knitted stocking tree decoration at Xmas. The moral of the story being, collect shiny ones when you get them!

 

[BigonaBianchi]

BS! It's a quid and you know it.

Stick this in your pipe and smoke it



The Tooth Fairy

? A brief exercise in critical thinking


Abstract

Following on from my article about skepticism, I thought it wise to give a practical example. Here, we shall study an apparently supernatural phenomenon and attempt to draw conclusions about it's validity. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent, rational and open-minded enough to draw his/her own conclusions from this discussion. [1]
Premise

The Tooth Fairy is a common childhood myth. It is usually defined like this:
When a tooth falls out, leave it under your pillow when you go to sleep. During the night, the Tooth Fairy will visit your room, take the tooth and leave a small amount of hard cash. Going on the empirical evidence, this appears to be a good hypothesis. As a child, when my teeth fell out I would tell my parents, and they would tell me to put the tooth under my pillow. In the morning, the Tooth Fairy had indeed been, and I was 10p better off.

Investigation

It never occurred to me to do a few controlled experiments. Such experiments could be:

• Tell your parents a tooth has fallen out, but do not put it under the pillow.
• Tell them a tooth has fallen out, when in fact it has not.
• When a tooth falls out, put it under the pillow, but do not tell your parents.
• When a tooth falls out, do not tell your parents, and put the tooth in a different location instead.
• Put something other than a tooth under the pillow.
• Stay awake all night to see what transpires.

All these experiments would provide a wide range of empirical evidence that may then be used to postulate a theory. It should be noted, however, that the last one (stay awake and see what happens) should be tried first. This will invariably (but perhaps not always) show that it is in fact your parents, and not a supernatural entity, that removes the tooth and leaves money in it's place.
Another procedure is to attempt to deduce the properties of the Tooth Fairy, should she actually exist (after all, you may not be able to stay awake _all_ night to catch your parents at it).

Deductions

So, what can we deduce about the Tooth Fairy, from her known characteristics. She is not affiliated with any known religion, in the way that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are associated with Christianity (although their origins seem to predate Christianity). Therefore, she is presumably not be restricted to visiting Christian children. This gives her a much greater range than Santa Claus.
She does not need to visit all children in one night, once per year (as Santa Claus does). She may eventually visit all children, but it takes place at irregular, infrequent intervals.
It is possible to predict the number of visits per child by the average number of teeth per child.
The amount of money left per tooth varies according to the child's age. This is reasonable, as younger children are less interested in money than older children.
The amount of money left per tooth also varies according to the level of income of the parents. This suggests that she either unfairly favours wealthy families, or she does not wish to encourage poverty stricken parents to use their children's teeth as an alternate, tax-free source of income.
She is able to detect the loss of a tooth. There are several possible explanations for this. The parents contact the Tooth Fairy when they hear of the loss. The Tooth Fairy actually does visit each child every night, just in case. Some form of radiation or exotic particle is emitted on the loss of a tooth. We shall call these "Toothions". The Tooth Fairy is able to detect this radiation (or particle stream). To investigate this properly would require placing a child in a large particle detector and removing it's teeth, measuring any emitted radiation/particles. Nuclear Physics research centres, such as CERN should be contacted about this sort of experiment (also, the parents should be notified).
She has almost unlimited funds. Individually, each child's "reward" is quite small, but the overall cost per year must be enormous.
She is able to carry with her vast quantities of coins (of different currency) and teeth. (it has been proposed by Pratchett et al that if the Tooth Fairy does not have the correct change, she may extract the appropriate amount of teeth to ensure a fair trade).
She is acutely aware of all current monetary exchange rates.
She can travel at relativistic speeds (i.e. nearing the speed of light).
She has the ability to enter and leave locked houses at will, without being detected by burglar alarms, security systems, dogs etc.
Some of the above items can be explained if there is an army of Tooth Fairies, and not just one.

Questions raised

Other questions that are raised are: What, exactly, does she do with all those teeth? Possibilities are:

• Building materials.
• Jewelry.
• Mineral extraction.
• Sinister medical experiments, possibly in collusion with the CIA.
• Sold on to third parties. Possibly the chinese traditional medicine market (investigations should be done into the aphrodisiac/healing properties of ground child-tooth).

Also, assuming that you do indeed stay awake all night, and actually do see the Tooth Fairy herself, it becomes necessary to address these issues:

• Could it have been a dream or an hallucination brought on by lack of sleep, and the expectation of seeing such an entity?
• Is there third-party evidence to support the visitation theory?
• Did you install video recording apparatus?
• Do you have a history of mental illness?
• Are you taking strong medicinal/recreational drugs?
• Is there physical evidence remaining, such as fairy dust, ectoplasm, or fragments of wing scale?
• Have you ruled the possibility of fraud/hoaxing by third parties?

Summing up

Having studied the above evidence and arguments for and against the existence of the Tooth Fairy, the critical thinker should now be in a position to apply Occam's Razor and select the simpler explanation.
[1] Creation Scientists should note that the simpler (and, in this case, correct) explanation is "It's the parents doing it."
It's not really a fairy.
© Adrian Barnett 1997

 

[BigonaBianchi]

BS! It's a quid and you know it.

Stick this in your pipe and smoke it



The Tooth Fairy

? A brief exercise in critical thinking


Abstract

Following on from my article about skepticism, I thought it wise to give a practical example. Here, we shall study an apparently supernatural phenomenon and attempt to draw conclusions about it's validity. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent, rational and open-minded enough to draw his/her own conclusions from this discussion. [1]
Premise

The Tooth Fairy is a common childhood myth. It is usually defined like this:
When a tooth falls out, leave it under your pillow when you go to sleep. During the night, the Tooth Fairy will visit your room, take the tooth and leave a small amount of hard cash. Going on the empirical evidence, this appears to be a good hypothesis. As a child, when my teeth fell out I would tell my parents, and they would tell me to put the tooth under my pillow. In the morning, the Tooth Fairy had indeed been, and I was 10p better off.

Investigation

It never occurred to me to do a few controlled experiments. Such experiments could be:

• Tell your parents a tooth has fallen out, but do not put it under the pillow.
• Tell them a tooth has fallen out, when in fact it has not.
• When a tooth falls out, put it under the pillow, but do not tell your parents.
• When a tooth falls out, do not tell your parents, and put the tooth in a different location instead.
• Put something other than a tooth under the pillow.
• Stay awake all night to see what transpires.

All these experiments would provide a wide range of empirical evidence that may then be used to postulate a theory. It should be noted, however, that the last one (stay awake and see what happens) should be tried first. This will invariably (but perhaps not always) show that it is in fact your parents, and not a supernatural entity, that removes the tooth and leaves money in it's place.
Another procedure is to attempt to deduce the properties of the Tooth Fairy, should she actually exist (after all, you may not be able to stay awake _all_ night to catch your parents at it).

Deductions

So, what can we deduce about the Tooth Fairy, from her known characteristics. She is not affiliated with any known religion, in the way that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are associated with Christianity (although their origins seem to predate Christianity). Therefore, she is presumably not be restricted to visiting Christian children. This gives her a much greater range than Santa Claus.
She does not need to visit all children in one night, once per year (as Santa Claus does). She may eventually visit all children, but it takes place at irregular, infrequent intervals.
It is possible to predict the number of visits per child by the average number of teeth per child.
The amount of money left per tooth varies according to the child's age. This is reasonable, as younger children are less interested in money than older children.
The amount of money left per tooth also varies according to the level of income of the parents. This suggests that she either unfairly favours wealthy families, or she does not wish to encourage poverty stricken parents to use their children's teeth as an alternate, tax-free source of income.
She is able to detect the loss of a tooth. There are several possible explanations for this. The parents contact the Tooth Fairy when they hear of the loss. The Tooth Fairy actually does visit each child every night, just in case. Some form of radiation or exotic particle is emitted on the loss of a tooth. We shall call these "Toothions". The Tooth Fairy is able to detect this radiation (or particle stream). To investigate this properly would require placing a child in a large particle detector and removing it's teeth, measuring any emitted radiation/particles. Nuclear Physics research centres, such as CERN should be contacted about this sort of experiment (also, the parents should be notified).
She has almost unlimited funds. Individually, each child's "reward" is quite small, but the overall cost per year must be enormous.
She is able to carry with her vast quantities of coins (of different currency) and teeth. (it has been proposed by Pratchett et al that if the Tooth Fairy does not have the correct change, she may extract the appropriate amount of teeth to ensure a fair trade).
She is acutely aware of all current monetary exchange rates.
She can travel at relativistic speeds (i.e. nearing the speed of light).
She has the ability to enter and leave locked houses at will, without being detected by burglar alarms, security systems, dogs etc.
Some of the above items can be explained if there is an army of Tooth Fairies, and not just one.

Questions raised

Other questions that are raised are: What, exactly, does she do with all those teeth? Possibilities are:

• Building materials.
• Jewelry.
• Mineral extraction.
• Sinister medical experiments, possibly in collusion with the CIA.
• Sold on to third parties. Possibly the chinese traditional medicine market (investigations should be done into the aphrodisiac/healing properties of ground child-tooth).

Also, assuming that you do indeed stay awake all night, and actually do see the Tooth Fairy herself, it becomes necessary to address these issues:

• Could it have been a dream or an hallucination brought on by lack of sleep, and the expectation of seeing such an entity?
• Is there third-party evidence to support the visitation theory?
• Did you install video recording apparatus?
• Do you have a history of mental illness?
• Are you taking strong medicinal/recreational drugs?
• Is there physical evidence remaining, such as fairy dust, ectoplasm, or fragments of wing scale?
• Have you ruled the possibility of fraud/hoaxing by third parties?

Summing up

Having studied the above evidence and arguments for and against the existence of the Tooth Fairy, the critical thinker should now be in a position to apply Occam's Razor and select the simpler explanation.
[1] Creation Scientists should note that the simpler (and, in this case, correct) explanation is "It's the parents doing it."
It's not really a fairy.
© Adrian Barnett 1997

 

[snorri]

I think it was 3d in my day. Don't know what inflation has done to that.

That would have been a silver threepenny piece.

 

[snorri]

I think it was 3d in my day. Don't know what inflation has done to that.

That would have been a silver threepenny piece.

 

[badkitty]

... (it has been proposed by Pratchett et al that if the Tooth Fairy does not have the correct change, she may extract the appropriate amount of teeth to ensure a fair trade)...

That is just soooooooo wrong.

 

[badkitty]

... (it has been proposed by Pratchett et al that if the Tooth Fairy does not have the correct change, she may extract the appropriate amount of teeth to ensure a fair trade)...

That is just soooooooo wrong.

 

[Lisa21]

Im afraid I no longer believe in the tooth fairies, I lost faith ever since I had my wisdom teeth out and all I got were 2 black eyes and a headacheWould have preferred 20p

Mind you-I was about 32 at the time............is there an age limit do you think??

 

[Lisa21]

Im afraid I no longer believe in the tooth fairies, I lost faith ever since I had my wisdom teeth out and all I got were 2 black eyes and a headacheWould have preferred 20p

Mind you-I was about 32 at the time............is there an age limit do you think??

 

[summerdays]

Stick this in your pipe and smoke it



The Tooth Fairy

? A brief exercise in critical thinking


Abstract

Following on from my article about skepticism, I thought it wise to give a practical example. Here, we shall study an apparently supernatural phenomenon and attempt to draw conclusions about it's validity. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent, rational and open-minded enough to draw his/her own conclusions from this discussion. [1]
Premise

The Tooth Fairy is a common childhood myth. It is usually defined like this:
When a tooth falls out, leave it under your pillow when you go to sleep. During the night, the Tooth Fairy will visit your room, take the tooth and leave a small amount of hard cash. Going on the empirical evidence, this appears to be a good hypothesis. As a child, when my teeth fell out I would tell my parents, and they would tell me to put the tooth under my pillow. In the morning, the Tooth Fairy had indeed been, and I was 10p better off.

Investigation

It never occurred to me to do a few controlled experiments. Such experiments could be:

• Tell your parents a tooth has fallen out, but do not put it under the pillow.
• Tell them a tooth has fallen out, when in fact it has not.
• When a tooth falls out, put it under the pillow, but do not tell your parents.
• When a tooth falls out, do not tell your parents, and put the tooth in a different location instead.
• Put something other than a tooth under the pillow.
• Stay awake all night to see what transpires.

All these experiments would provide a wide range of empirical evidence that may then be used to postulate a theory. It should be noted, however, that the last one (stay awake and see what happens) should be tried first. This will invariably (but perhaps not always) show that it is in fact your parents, and not a supernatural entity, that removes the tooth and leaves money in it's place.
Another procedure is to attempt to deduce the properties of the Tooth Fairy, should she actually exist (after all, you may not be able to stay awake _all_ night to catch your parents at it).

Deductions

So, what can we deduce about the Tooth Fairy, from her known characteristics. She is not affiliated with any known religion, in the way that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are associated with Christianity (although their origins seem to predate Christianity). Therefore, she is presumably not be restricted to visiting Christian children. This gives her a much greater range than Santa Claus.
She does not need to visit all children in one night, once per year (as Santa Claus does). She may eventually visit all children, but it takes place at irregular, infrequent intervals.
It is possible to predict the number of visits per child by the average number of teeth per child.
The amount of money left per tooth varies according to the child's age. This is reasonable, as younger children are less interested in money than older children.
The amount of money left per tooth also varies according to the level of income of the parents. This suggests that she either unfairly favours wealthy families, or she does not wish to encourage poverty stricken parents to use their children's teeth as an alternate, tax-free source of income.
She is able to detect the loss of a tooth. There are several possible explanations for this. The parents contact the Tooth Fairy when they hear of the loss. The Tooth Fairy actually does visit each child every night, just in case. Some form of radiation or exotic particle is emitted on the loss of a tooth. We shall call these "Toothions". The Tooth Fairy is able to detect this radiation (or particle stream). To investigate this properly would require placing a child in a large particle detector and removing it's teeth, measuring any emitted radiation/particles. Nuclear Physics research centres, such as CERN should be contacted about this sort of experiment (also, the parents should be notified).
She has almost unlimited funds. Individually, each child's "reward" is quite small, but the overall cost per year must be enormous.
She is able to carry with her vast quantities of coins (of different currency) and teeth. (it has been proposed by Pratchett et al that if the Tooth Fairy does not have the correct change, she may extract the appropriate amount of teeth to ensure a fair trade).
She is acutely aware of all current monetary exchange rates.
She can travel at relativistic speeds (i.e. nearing the speed of light).
She has the ability to enter and leave locked houses at will, without being detected by burglar alarms, security systems, dogs etc.
Some of the above items can be explained if there is an army of Tooth Fairies, and not just one.

Questions raised

Other questions that are raised are: What, exactly, does she do with all those teeth? Possibilities are:

• Building materials.
• Jewelry.
• Mineral extraction.
• Sinister medical experiments, possibly in collusion with the CIA.
• Sold on to third parties. Possibly the chinese traditional medicine market (investigations should be done into the aphrodisiac/healing properties of ground child-tooth).

Also, assuming that you do indeed stay awake all night, and actually do see the Tooth Fairy herself, it becomes necessary to address these issues:

• Could it have been a dream or an hallucination brought on by lack of sleep, and the expectation of seeing such an entity?
• Is there third-party evidence to support the visitation theory?
• Did you install video recording apparatus?
• Do you have a history of mental illness?
• Are you taking strong medicinal/recreational drugs?
• Is there physical evidence remaining, such as fairy dust, ectoplasm, or fragments of wing scale?
• Have you ruled the possibility of fraud/hoaxing by third parties?

Summing up

Having studied the above evidence and arguments for and against the existence of the Tooth Fairy, the critical thinker should now be in a position to apply Occam's Razor and select the simpler explanation.
[1] Creation Scientists should note that the simpler (and, in this case, correct) explanation is "It's the parents doing it."
It's not really a fairy.
© Adrian Barnett 1997

I'm going to print that out to put with the £1 - sloppy fairy obviously forgot to visit last night. So far it went unmentioned due to the daughter having a major strop about her favourite school trousers not making it through the wash at the weekend and how she couldn't be seen dead in any of the other pairs.

As to some of the theories in it... well our fairies (note each child had their own tooth fairy and name), apparently build/paid for their toad-stools with the teeth. And we did manage to get photographic evidence of the fairy ... in a shadow on the wall (the eldest asked this year how we did that), they always left notes, some times foreign money if abroad, and apologies each time they were late.

And we did conduct one experiment when my eldest hadn't yet lost her first tooth. We had read a book called Arthur and the tooth fairy, about how Arthur's sister put out a fake shark's tooth after a visit to the museum. Then we visited the Natural History Museum and like the character my daughter had to buy a shark's tooth with her money. We duely carried out the experiment and as in the story someone else helps the tooth fairy out but she was warned it would only work once.