Physicists vs Chemists/Biologists
Differential Equations: The most successful math for modelling natural phenomena, and the focus of my program.
Whenever I speak to physicists about some of the mathematical models in their field I'm familiar with (e.g. heat, wave equations), they know exactly what I'm talking about. Some even helped me out with my homework. When I talk to (PhD-level!) chemists or biologists, it's a different story. Last Sunday, I spoke with a PhD student in chemistry at Georgetown and brought up the BZ reaction, the first reaction shown to oscillate between different colors before settling on an equilibrium. "What reaction again?" was her response. A few months back, I also talked to a neuroscience researcher at the NIH about the cable equation (which models conductance along an axon) and looked at me like, "WTF are you talking about?" |
biologists don't do math.
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I am surprised a Chemist would have that reaction though. |
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Most principal investigators of medical studies don't understand the math that they cite in their own papers. The vast majority of physicians have no training or ability to understand the methods sections of the papers that they read. |
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two areas in medical sciences are demanding a higher level of math. Both have to do with the problem of multiple comparisons, sifting through large amounts of data.
Genetics and MRI. But for the most part the medical sciences use simple statistics. I have made these observations, what is the chance that they are the product of randomness? |
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Right now in cognitive science researchers are reporting impossibly high correlation numbers in fMRI studies. This is damning. http://pipeline.corante.com/archives...rrelations.php |
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As Mike pointed out, most researchers don't even understand the math used to conduct their own studies. |
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