{"id":7292,"date":"2010-12-09T03:00:10","date_gmt":"2010-12-09T08:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=7292"},"modified":"2010-12-09T03:00:10","modified_gmt":"2010-12-09T08:00:10","slug":"attack-of-the-math-monster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/7292","title":{"rendered":"Attack of the Math Monster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Uncertain Principles: Two Cultures Within Science<\/a><\/p>\n

[No equations in a paper] is almost completely inconceivable to me (at the risk of leaving myself open to the Vizzini joke). In my part of science, a paper without<\/em> an equation is suspect, and I’m not exactly the world’s most mathematically inclined physicist. Physics is so intimately connected to math, and the business of doing physics is so inherently mathematical that its difficult to imagine a scientific paper about physics that doesn’t contain at least one equation. A press release or popular article, sure, but to a physicist, the equations aren’t some offal to be avoided en route to the science. The equations are<\/em> the science. Objecting to the presence of an equation in a scientific paper is like objecting to the presence of meat in a steak sandwich.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had the serendipity of reading another post just before reading Chad’s, related to the closing remarks concerning physicists sometime needing to learn some less “standard” math to do the physics they are interested in pursuing:<\/p>\n

Medical researcher discovers integration, gets 75 citations<\/a><\/p>\n

My more reasonable friends claim that this abstract isn\u2019t really as amusing as I make it out to be. And to be sure, they\u2019re right.<\/p>\n

Murray Gell-Mann developed the \u201ceight-fold way\u201d to explain the spectrum of hadrons in the 1960s. It wasn\u2019t until after he\u2019d developed this formalism that he discussed his model with mathematicians, who then told him that he\u2019d rediscovered group (representation) theory. This ushered ina new era in the history of particle physics where symmetry became our guiding light and group theory became a necessary tool for any particle theorist. Though, to be fair, in the 1960s group theory\u2014unlike calculus\u2014wasn\u2019t something that physicists were expected to take during high school.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m also aware of a few instances of some of my colleagues struggling through some new way of analyzing clock performance, only to find out that the math is standard analysis of some other sort of problem. As they say, math is the language of physics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Uncertain Principles: Two Cultures Within Science [No equations in a paper] is almost completely inconceivable to me (at the risk of leaving myself open to the Vizzini joke). In my part of science, a paper without an equation is suspect, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,35,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-math","category-other-science","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}