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<blockquote data-quote="jaelis" data-source="post: 7628750" data-attributes="member: 60210"><p>Well, the claim seems to have drifted from "scientists use complicated mathematical formulas to try to explain their theories" to "scientists use math." The second statement is certainly more defensible, but still I think misses the point. Science is fundamentally about having an idea, testing it objectively against some form of experiment, and then revising or rejecting the idea as required. Math is often useful for making an objective comparison between the idea and experiment, but its not the central concept. Saying that all scientists use math is maybe like saying all carpenters use hammers. While its probably true that the vast majority of carpenters do sometimes use a hammers in some way, I bet that not many of them would agree that hammer use is a defining quality of the trade.</p><p></p><p>And though you are right that including statistics brings more scientists into the math arena, a lot of the time that doesn't mean much more than plugging data in to a software package and seeing what it tells you. While a good biologist, say, should have a pretty clear conceptual understanding of what the software is doing, they wouldn't have any reason to delve into the math itself.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="jaelis, post: 7628750, member: 60210"] Well, the claim seems to have drifted from "scientists use complicated mathematical formulas to try to explain their theories" to "scientists use math." The second statement is certainly more defensible, but still I think misses the point. Science is fundamentally about having an idea, testing it objectively against some form of experiment, and then revising or rejecting the idea as required. Math is often useful for making an objective comparison between the idea and experiment, but its not the central concept. Saying that all scientists use math is maybe like saying all carpenters use hammers. While its probably true that the vast majority of carpenters do sometimes use a hammers in some way, I bet that not many of them would agree that hammer use is a defining quality of the trade. And though you are right that including statistics brings more scientists into the math arena, a lot of the time that doesn't mean much more than plugging data in to a software package and seeing what it tells you. While a good biologist, say, should have a pretty clear conceptual understanding of what the software is doing, they wouldn't have any reason to delve into the math itself. [/QUOTE]
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